research and rants

In current events with my English class, we are currently giving short presentations on the sources we found relating to our topics. The presentation is then followed by peer feedback on what they think of the topic and how our classmate should follow up with it.

One of my peers, Riley, introduced her topic of gender inequality to the class. She explained that she initially researched about women entering Santa Clara University for her archival research and decided to branch out her research on gender inequality in college.

She discussed the context of her sources in that the ones from the 19th century were primarily written by men and that the more current articles are predominantly written by women.

However, the most compelling thing that I found about Riley’s topic was the statistics of women majoring in the arts and sciences is significantly less than that of males.

It’s actually not that surprising thinking about it again. This statistic proves true at my own university. It’s become a fact that not that many women major in engineering, specifically. One could argue that women may not be interested in these subjects which accounts for the lack of women participation. But why would women not be interested? Why is gender associated with this argument?

Pursuing engineering or any science career for women is not encouraged by society.

As a woman myself, I feel societal pressures to worry about getting a boyfriend and being pretty. I believe that this is the real reason why there aren’t many women engineering majors. It’s a difficult concept to grasp, but I believe it’s important to highlight the societal pressures on women to act and look a certain way.

I’m excited to see where Riley will take this research because gender inequality is something that I’m extremely passionate about since I am so affected by it.

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I stumbled upon an interesting blog post written by my colleague, Ivanna. In her article, “Does School Really Kill Creativity?” she reflected on her own personal experience in theater and how that it has positively impacted her academic career as well as her own life. She describes the confined environment that the math and science classes enforce and the lack of creativity within these subjects, which causes most students to resent school. Ivanna proposes that the arts can “fix” the problems that arise from pressures to succeed and lack of creativity in the science and math courses.

In the PBS article Ivanna shared, it stated that “young people who participate regularly in the arts (three hours a day on three days each week through one full year) are four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement, to participate in a math and science fair, or to win an award for writing an essay or poem than children who do not participate.”

I think Ivanna and PBS article both make a striking point that arts are important to student development, and I completely agree that there needs to be more emphasis on the importance of art. Our society values the math and sciences over art, which teaches children that art is not as valuable as math and science.

Keeping that thought in mind, take a look at this photo below:

Albert Einstein says, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited; imagination encircles the world.” In other words, creativity is what drives innovation and the development of new knowledge. I agree with Einstein and think that our school system should not separate the arts and sciences from each other but rather entwine both subjects within each other. I also believe that learning both art and science together gives students a new perspective on the ways of the world.

Art and science, although seem like polar opposites, go hand in hand with each other. One cannot exist without the other.

For example, a mechanical engineer tries to fix a machine but cannot do so without an appropriate blueprint, or art. Additionally, if a new problem that was not taught in school were to occur, the engineer would need to use his creativity skills in order to solve the problem. Also, as Ivanna mentions in her post, art can solve the problem of boredom faced by students in the school system. Being creative will allow students to have an outlet for creative expression which can ultimately benefit their academic career and lives. 

Creative!

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What does being “smart” or “intelligent” mean? According to Miriam Dictionary, smart means being “very good at learning or thinking about things.” This definition seems inadequate taking into consideration that the word “smart” means different things to many different people.

I will be responding to this video that my colleague, Alex, wrote about in this article. To give a short summary, the video is called “How to Sound Smart” and is a TED talk given by Will Stephen who introduces his talk as “nothing.” He explains to that audience that he will make them feel as if they have learned something even though he himself has not conducted any research or has anything inspiration to say. Stephen claimed that he will create an illusion of intelligence by “using hand gestures, taking long pauses, adjusting his glasses, asking a question, telling a personal and embarrassing anecdote.”

In Alex’s article he describes the new techniques he will use for his own future presentations. He lists techniques such as engaging with the audience, having good posture, building up to a large idea, and many others. I agree with Alex in that these are great persuasive and public speaking skills. However, this was not the biggest take away from the video for me.

What fascinated me about the video was how engaging he was. Stephen’s presentation revolved around a simple idea: nothing. What he said did not fully relate or build on to the previous thought and he did not have anything “inspiration” or “revolutionizing” to see. Yet, he was very entertaining to watch. I kept listening and holding on to every word he was saying, waiting for the possibility that he would say something insightful and thought-provoking. Despite his claim that he was talking about nothing, I felt that his presentation spoke to a larger issue: what it means to be smart.

As defined earlier, smart means being “very good at learning or thinking about things.” Although Stephen is undoubtedly a very intelligent man, it’s interesting how he claimed that he could make himself “sound smart.” How can one “sound smart?” Based off Stephen’s TED talk, it seems that intelligence is linked with physical appearance and delivery. He claimed that he wore the glasses in order to appear smart and that by using hand gestures and asking questions would make him appear as if he knew what he was talking about. It’s puzzling to think that a characteristic can be connected to physical appearance. 

The definition of “smart” is complex. To Western Society, being smart can mean excelling in math and science subjects. To Indigenous nations, intelligence can be defined by the ability to retell traditional stories. And to Hollywood, smart can mean being able to memorize lines and dance routines the quickest.  In short, “smart” means a different things to different groups. However, the addition of physical appearances complicates this idea even further.

Do you think one’s intelligence can be linked with one’s physical appearance? I disagree completely, but we’ll save this debate for another time.

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We’ve definitely have all heard of the words “primary, secondary, and tertiary sources.” However, Bizup criticizes these vocabulary words as “rigid, disciplinary, and a-rhetorical.” So he introduces the concept of BEAM.

BEAM. What is it in terms of research? Well, According to Joseph Bizup, a professor at Columbia university, BEAM is background, exhibits, arguments, and methods. He wrote the article “BEAM: A Rhetorical Vocabulary for Teaching Research Based Teaching.

Background. 

Have you thought about the assumptions made by the author while reading his/her article? And how you also have your own assumptions that you are unaware of when writing? Bizup explains that writers tend to leave out these assumptions because they believe they are “common sense” and “facts.”

I notice that I tend to do leave out my assumptions in almost all forms of writing that I do because I sometimes forget that some people may not necessarily see things the way I do. However, I’ve been working on trying to recognize that I my assumptions made in my writing pieces. For instance in my earlier posts, Down With the Patriarchy,  I had to keep in mind that I was speaking from a feminist perspective and that not everyone can relate or understand that particular perspective,.

Exhibits.

Bizup states that giving an example of something is the most common form of an exhibit source. However, Bizup distinguishes between “evidence” and “exhibit.” He states that the point of “exhibits [is to] lend support to claims …. [and] provide occasion for a claims.” In other words exhibits, allow other to make their own claims while evidence is used to support already made claims.

I noticed that in my past research papers, I would use evidence to support my own claims. However, in contrast, for my Archival Research paper , I kept an open mind about what topic to research on and drew my own conclusions from the primary documents. Although that experience was very different from my past high school experiences, it was very beneficial and eye opening.

Arguments. 

An argument is what hat the author is refuting, defending, or extending. As Bizup puts it: “entering a conversation.”

I definitely struggled with an argument and “entering a conversation.” For my past assignment about college and inequality, I had to put various documents into “conversation” while voicing my own opinion. It was a very difficult task to do because I am so accustomed to a structured form of writing taught in high school. You can read about my first experience in putting articles in conversation here. 

Methods. 

Last, but not least, methods. In my understanding, Bizup explains that method sources are how writers establish a structure to their papers. From my personal experience in writing, I tend to write in a chronological order. I like to think that my transitions from each topic is smooth. Although my writing is still a work in progress, I feel like it has improved drastically from first quarter of my freshmen year.

So what? 

Writing the final research paper for my English class is going to be a struggle for me because I still have yet to master BEAM. Wish me luck on this academic roller coaster.

It’s not easy to write an entire research paper in less than two weeks while studying for four other classes, attending club meetings, and going to the gym. So it is no surprise when Michael Kleine is horrified to see college students just “copying” and not “analyzing, synthesizing, evaluating, selecting, rejecting…” different sources. Kleine wrote the article “What is it We Do When We Write Articles Like This One – And How Can We Get Students to Join Us?” In this article, he comments on the way students typically conduct research and performs various tests to see the research patterns of students.

In my previous post, I reflected on my research methods of the past and how I committed similar tasks as the college students Kleine mentioned above. However, I feel that after researching within the archival collection, my research method and views on research have changed drastically from merely gathering facts that support my argument to trying to find all the pieces of information before coming to a conclusion.

In this article, Kleine brings up a few options he believe would help engage students in conducting quality research. One of these stood out to me was “we need to promote genuine reading.” I think it’s interesting that Klein takes into account the fact that research is not described as personal and that in order to quality research to be done, one needs to be in isolation and in a personal space. Thinking back to my own research experience, I realize that I do not really work in my own personal space and am usually surrounded by constant distractions that prevent me from researching to my potential. 

Another interesting thing Kleine mentions is his idea of “building onto research.” What he means by this is to write research papers for a larger audience and to “downplay writing for the teacher.” I’ve never thought of writing my own papers for a larger audience since only my professor would be grading my papers.

Although Klein makes many valid points about researching, I feel that his suggestions and points are unrealistic to ask of on students because of the busy college lifestyle.

However, I do agree with him that research should be done in a quiet environment where one is alone with his/her thoughts.

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Archival research. Something that is rarely taught in high school and rarely spoken of.

As explained in my last post, for my college English class, we entered the archival collection to conduct research about my university’s past. My university archival room was not as large as I expected but it was a very regal-looking room with a lot of natural sunlight. It’s a beautiful room and despite the small size, the atmosphere made me feel as if I was in the Hogwarts library.

On the first day, the archival librarian introduced the different types of artifacts laid out and just as I had predicted, there was very limited information about Native Americans and Native American life during the creation of the university. Initially, I was disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to research about Native American life, but was excited to have found interesting information about the arrival of women to the university.  

I was mainly focusing on the information about women involved in sports. I found this photo of the first women basketball team in 1984.

As I kept flipping through the  entire album of women in sports, I noticed that there weren’t any photos of women of color. I wanted to know when women of color started playing sports, let alone started attending my university. The album was extremely large and so I gave up my search in finding a photo of the first woman of color to play a sport.

I became interested in finding more information about people of color at my historically predominate white university.

On the second day of archival research in the archive room, I found some documents regarding my college’s Multicultural Center (MCC) and Unity movement. The current MCC includes 9 cultural clubs and serves as a safe space for minority groups at my university.  Unity (currently Unity 4) is a group of students (mainly from the MCC) who work in bringing diversity and solidarity to our  campus. Although information was also limited on these two groups, there were some interesting documents that contained the mission statements for both the MCC and Unity.

This photo above shows the mission statement of the MCC which is to:

“Provide the minority student organizations of Santa Clara University an environment conductive to promoting an appreciation of the different cultures…”

This relates to my understanding of the university because it is still the same mission statement as it was in 1984. The fact that this mission statement is the same goes to show that the same problem that existed years ago, still exists.

There are many unanswered questions about the MCC and Unity movement and it’s impossible for one individual to understand what it was like during the time of the establishment of these two clubs. However, this doesn’t mean my curiosity has ended.