As promised, here is the final copy of my Greek life poster (all photos courtesy of Instagram and Facebook for the respective fraternity/sorority):
I included photos from various events representing every sorority and fraternity. I hope this encourages members of Greek life to embrace the positive aspects like sisterhood/brotherhood, leadership, and service in order to bridge the gap between on campus and off campus life.
This quarter has been focused on the lengthy process of different research methods culminating in a paper and multimodal project to succinctly sum it all up. I started out with an interest in Greek life at SCU and it flourished into a grand research project involving digging in the archives, surveying current students, and sifting through online databases. All of this would not have been possible without some key concepts we learned this quarter.
First off, BEAM. What does this mean exactly? This is what BEAM stands for:
BEAM vocabulary helped me determine how I would use different types of sources. It taught me that it doesn’t matter how you label sources, it matters how you use them, and the BEAM vocabulary provided the initial map for my research.
map to researching
Next, Tirabassi helped me particularly in the archives, but also throughout the research process. Here are her principles:
In addition to these strategies, I also learned some writing strategies like metacommentary and the old/new contract. Metacommentary is providing clarification for something that you just wrote (find some examples here). It makes things more clear for your reader. In addition to using metacommentary, it is important to utilize the old/new contract. The old/new contract is a strategy in which you continue your next sentence with a thought or idea from the previous sentence to maintain a good flow in your writing.
BEAM, Tirabassi, metacommentary, and the old/new contract are tools that I believe have helped me grow as a writer. They helped me figure out what I want to write about and how I want to get the message across.
Another school year comes to a close, and as I look back it amazes me how much has changed in one short year. Freshman year of college has been a huge transition for me and I have learned a lot not only in my writing and other classes, but a lot about myself.
**cue sentimental playlist**
Excuse the awkward photo, but here I am with the quarter on “heads”
My college journey started here, college t-shirt day. That morning I had two choices: Marquette or Boston University. I was torn between the two schools, so I had my dad flip a coin. Heads it was which meant Boston University. I was all ready to head out East, but as per usual, life is a bowl of cherries and you never know what you’re going to get. Plans changed, and after a long, complicated process, I ended up changing to my my original dream school, Santa Clara. I was excited, yet nervous for a new beginning on the opposite side of the country from my family.
Orientation with my dad wearing our lanyards like true freshmen
By the time orientation rolled around, I was still clinging to my family and my roots. I wanted to explore all the new opportunities ahead while also holding onto everything I had grown to love about home. At orientation I hit it off with one friend. I felt like I was a little out of the loop since everyone else had their group chats and mass Facebook friending spurts with their new college friends. I was afraid that I wouldn’t have enough friends and everyone else was ahead of me.
My dad and I hanging out in Chicago one last time before the big move out West
Back to the whole clinging to my roots thing, after orientation I was very nervous about leaving. I spent my last couple weeks at home enjoying all the things that I loved about my home town. I visited my favorite coffee shop, diner, and touristy spots. I made sure there was a one-last-visit for everything. Even though I was nervous, I was comforted by the fact that my new roommate would be that one friend I made during orientation. We didn’t request each other, but it was meant to be.
Car all packed up for a road trip from Chicago to Santa Clara
The day to leave finally came. After planning out my dorm and preparing all summer I was a little bit more excited to leave. Once everything was set up in my room and I hung out my roommate, I was content. Then it sunk in that my parents were leaving. I was bummed, and I will admit I cried a little bit as I waved goodbye. I remember as soon as they left I felt free. It was a weird feeling going to Benson and picking out a snack without asking my parents if I could buy it. I was on my own now.
Looking back, I can’t believe how much has changed. I have gotten a little too comfortable with this freedom and the thought of a summer at home with different rules is a little daunting. After getting involved in my sorority and the rowing team, I have truly found my place on this campus. I am no longer the scared freshman that didn’t want to leave home. I have connected with people who have helped me get to where I am today in just a short timespan. I have also learned many valuable lessons in my CTW class that have helped me become a better writer. I am looking forward to continuing to grow as a Bronco, academically and as a person, and I can’t wait to see what sophomore year has in store.
New friends on the rowing team
My dad’s favorite time of year is when the black turtle necks and jeans come out. Sounds weird, yeah? Well, that’s what happens every time there is a new Apple announcement. It’s like Christmas day for him. He gets very excited for it every September, so it’s only fitting that his favorite quote comes from Steve Jobs, the Apple legend:
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
~ Steve Jobs
(Stanford Commencement Speech, 2005)
Before I left for college, my dad wrote me a notecard with this exact quote on it. I pinned it on my bulletin board as a reminder for when things got unclear and confusing. Freshman year of college has thrown many curve balls, and the path has been full of twists and turns. However, like Steve Jobs said, I can look back and connect the dots to see how I ended up here, at Santa Clara, finishing up freshman year of college.
The notecard, ready to be packed up with other mementos from freshman year
After thinking about this quote a little more, I have found that it can apply to my writing too. As my high school senior year rhetoric teacher taught me, every writer has a Shitty First Draft (check out the article, it’s worth a read if you’re into writing). Basically, it doesn’t matter what you write as long as you write something, you can go back and edit later.
Whenever I begin writing, I scratch out all these half baked ideas that don’t really connect. Then I go back and flesh out transitions to show how I connected the dots. In my college English class, Critical Thinking and Writing, my professor was a huge fan of reverse outlining. Reverse outlining is going back to a draft and writing out the main ideas of each paragraph, like you would with an outline, but it happens after the fact.
Similarly to Steve Jobs’ quote, it is easier to connect the dots when writing after the fact. Sometimes you just have to get the ideas out there before they start to make sense on paper. Oftentimes I start writing a paper with one thesis in mind, but then my evidence supports another thesis. This is where editing and revising come in handy since that’s where you smooth out the bumps. If a paper seems disjointed at first, I promise you it will work out in the end.
Ahhh we meet again. Last quarter I was tasked with condensing a lengthy, academic paper into brief blog post and now I am tasked with condensing a 10-page paper into a different medium. Similar concept, but this time I get a little more freedom to choose the format of the translation.
Yes! Freedom!
This time I find the task a little less daunting. This is the fun part that this whole quarter of research has built up to. I had to do all the heavy lifting in order tomato an informed multimodal project. My first idea was to create a Facebook page to inform students about Greek life. This idea flopped because I had a hard time displaying the information the way I had imagined and it would have involved making a fake Facebook account. Hmmm…back to the drawing board.
After doing some brainstorming, I decided on a creating a poster. At first I wasn’t quite sure how I would display this poster, but after some thought and help from classmates, I decided that it would be most effective if it was posted in the sorority and fraternity houses.
My goal was to display the positive aspects of being involved in Greek life, such as brotherhood/sisterhood, service, leadership, and community. Although parties, especially ones with an open invitation to all SCU students, build the bonds of our community, I chose to avoid using photos from these events because they are often associated with negative aspects of Greek life. I wanted to encourage sororities and fraternities to embrace more of their core values.
My original poster
At first I had a single picture of the mission church, shown above. I decided that it was missing the parts that define Greek life, and it didn’t really show what they do. As result, I decided to slightly change course once again. With the help of some friends, I was able to collect photos from various sisterhood/brotherhood events and philanthropy events while also showing leadership. This project is still in the works, but stay tuned for the final product!
Step 1: Pick a research topic
Step 2: Start flipping through the archives at SCU
Step 3: Find outside sources using databases
Step 4: Put it all together
I wish this process was that simple, and in a way it is, but it takes more time and effort than just that. By put it all together, I mean creating a conversation between my different sources. From Kantz’s article, I learned the importance of using many sources to play off each other in order to build my own unique argument.
According to Kantz, by combining a variety of articles it creates a more truthful argument. You get to view the topic from multiple angles which makes it easier to get a sense of how to proceed in the research process.
Viewing a topic from different angles is very helpful
The coolest part about this, is that I get to pull a little bit from different sources to create my own, new argument. However, I still have to maintain my credibility. Kantz describes this as decoders, encoders, and reality. Decoders are the people who I have to prove my ideas to, show them that the new ideas should count for something. They’re kind of like an audience. An encoder would be me, someone who is trying to build their credibility. Lastly, reality is “a resource to be used” and I get to choose how do that. I can use these skills in order to craft a better, well thought out argument that people will want to believe.
After finishing 9 annotated bibliographies and source paper, a day in the library was warmly welcomed. The librarians are always very friendly and eager to help our class and show us the next steps in the research process.
Yesterday we talked about peer reviewed sources. Peer reviewed sources can be very reliable as they are typically looked over by peers and the editor. That means that they have to pass at least 2 checks before they can be published in a specific journal. Even if a source isn’t rejected, it often requires some editing before it can move onto the next step. This process can take weeks, months, or even years to complete depending on the project. Highly renowned journals tend to have a greater rate of rejections since they are looking for the best research and writing possible.
In order to give credit to these very valuable sources, it is important to properly introduce them when incorporating them into your research paper. You wouldn’t jump into a deep conversation without introducing yourself and providing some background information first, so you shouldn’t do that in your writing either. First, start out by looking up some information on the author. Sometimes this information can be found in the article itself. Be careful about Googling the author; it might be hard to tell which John Smith is the John Smith who wrote your article. Next look at the publisher. This provides some background information on where that piece is coming from. Now you’re ready to introduce your source in your paper!
Let’s think it through: JK Rowling, who won the British Children’s Book of the Year award, said in her book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, “It is our choices…that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
Congrats on learning how to introduce a source!
It was hard to find resources that were more article based rather than scientific study based. I think this was the case because it is easier to prove things to an audience with scientific facts and in the case of my topic, this could be more powerful. For the most part, I was able to draw parallels between my sources. I did struggle to connect my article about career development to the other articles. Once I started picking out different articles, it kind of had a cascade effect that easily led to more articles that were somewhat related. Once I found an article that I liked, I skimmed it for key words in order to refine my search terms and find better sources.
skimming resources is a good strategy to use when starting out
I was surprised that some articles seemed like they’d be about one thing, but then I’d click on it and it would open up different opportunities. For example, I found an article called “On Fraternities and Manliness.” I expected it to be about how fraternities create gentlemen. Instead it was more of a background source on how fraternities have developed a warped image of manliness that involves drinking a lot of alcohol to alert their dominance over women who physically can’t drink as much. Even though this article went in a different direction than I expected it would, it was still useful in explaining how things came to be in relation to fraternities.
Back when women first joined schools, men set themselves apart by showing that they could drink more.
There we some gaps in my research that could not be filled. The databases did not provide information on Santa Clara specific Greek life problems. I will have to return to the archives for more on this topic.
?????
These are just a few of the faces I made when I found out that we would be using the library databases to do part of our research. Yes, they provide very solid and for the most part trustworthy information, but it’s just not as easy as Google. I guess Google has its own challenges like verifying sources, and checking for biases, but it is still my preferred research tool.
Databases are just too picky for my taste. You want to search a phrase? Gotta have that in quotation marks. You want to find results that include any form of the words sorority or fraternity? Don’t forget to truncate it with an *! You want current articles? Adjust the date range. And last but not least SIFTING. Usually I don’t meander past the first page of a Google search, but when it comes to databases sometimes I have to go through every. single. page. How many 40-page-extra-scientific studies do I have to scroll through before I get to a reasonable article related to my topic?
Sifting through pages and pages of articles can be a pain
I must admit, I did get a little lucky this time since I found my article on the first page of results (but this doesn’t happen too often!). However, it was not exactly what I was looking for. The title is, “Predicting Use of Protective Behavioral Strategies: Does Fraternity/Sorority Affiliation Matter?” I foolishly assumed that it would consist of bubbly interviews from students in sororities and fraternities across the country. Nope. Not so fast. It was one of those lengthy, but manageable, scientific articles. It provided some interesting insight on alcohol consumption in relation to affiliation. It did account for the fact that college campuses are high-alcohol consumption environments to begin with. According to the article, “members of fraternal social organizations experienced more negative alcohol-related consequences and also tended to use fewer PBS than their non-fraternity and sorority peers.” Interesting. Follows mostly what one would expect.
It is important to be responsible when it comes to alcohol
Ok so maybe my database excursion was not as much of a bust as I had a assumed it would be. I found valuable resources that included studies that are more thorough than my dinky survey that I conducted in 3 short days. Now time to compare results and see if there are any trends and crossovers between Santa Clara and national panhellenic organizations…
Now that I have found a topic that I am deeply interested, I have hit a bump in the road. I want to know and already have too much information, and now I have to figure out how to put it all together. My goal is shed light on to the question of why Greek life got kicked off campus at Santa Clara University. My thoughts are that students should know the history of this group to better understand how to interact with the Santa Clara community. If students know these things, then they will be able to realize how some of those problems impact campus today, which could lead to an easier (although probably still difficult) solution.
Santa Clara University: then and now
From here, I hope to explore national trends. Did many schools across the country disaffiliate with their respective Greek systems? Does Greek life align with Jesuit values? What percentage of Jesuit schools still affiliate with Greek life? My questions are boundless, which has me wondering where I am supposed to go from here.
I could take more of a local focus. If I choose this route, most of my research will be focused on the archives and I will focus more on informing the student body on what happened to Greek life. Or I have the option to look more broadly at national trends and why schools choose to disaffiliate. I don’t think this option will be as effective for my interests, since I am still very curious about the specifics of Santa Clara. Alternatively, I could combine the two and use national trends to shed light onto what happened at Santa Clara in particular.
I plan on surfing the databases next week to get a better sense of direction. Hopefully by looking over recurring issues I will be able to find a better focus for my research.
