For this blog entry, I shall be reflecting upon Alex Perlman titled “How to Sound Smart”. I chose this particular entry of his because I know that verbal communication is very important, and not necessarily something I have always been good at, so I will always take time to try and improve it. His post was based of a Tedtalk he watched called  “How to sound smart in your Tedtalk” by Will Stephen.

The list that Alex lists as major takeaways are a solid list of things one can do while giving a speech to make themselves sound more intelligent and therefore more persuasive, as the person will have a larger perceived ethos from the viewpoint of others. I know I personally am more likely to listen to someone I consider smart, such as Neil Degrasse Tyson or President Obama.

Alex then takes this revelation a step further, attempting to apply it to his own writing, laying out another list of definite steps he will take to improve his writing. I think that his list is a very solid list with actual benefits that could be produced by following his rules. What I find fascinating is how strongly the ideas of Logos, Ethos, and Pathos reflect themselves in the rules he created for himself.

Ethos is particularly important for intelligent writing, as the need for people to think what you are writing is credible is the main way to convince them of your point. The rules he created, such as “Cite very credible sources that strengthen your argument.” are direct ethos tie-ins, and “Cite less credible sources to show what certain organization, people, or society is saying about bla.” is another way to create a sense of ethos to ensure people that your argument are right.

Overall, I approve of the ideas that Alex outlines, trying to reinforce the need for strong ethos in academic writings, and will certainly attempt to incorporate some of his rules into my own writing.

How to Sound Smart

Nate Miller

They are being BEAM-ed down

I really make myself laugh with some of these titles. Anyway, BEAM (More lasers i’m sorry) is a set of vocabulary that allows close interpretation of sources as an alternate to Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary sources. BEAM is more aligned with organizing sources by how they are being used rather than how they are written intrinsically. This is not an idea that I had heard of before I read the article about it, but it does present a better model for categorizing sources, and I have never been a big fan of Primary/Secondary/Tertiary source cataloging anyway.

A lot of my assignments in high school had to have a certain number of primary and secondary sources, which was always very irritating, as it was sometimes hard to find enough sources of the proper types to create a cohesive argument. However, if I was to apply the BEAM vocabulary, and if I had one or two sources for each letter in BEAM, then

Get it? it’s a beam!

you would be able to create an argument that has all of the pieces necessary to be convincing. This is at least another interesting way to consider the sources I use when I do research, and should be able to allow me to gather a greater number of useful sources, without trying to worry about having primary sources and secondary sources. As long as you have some Background, a few Exhibit pieces, a source or two to help your Argument be strong, and framing the whole thing with Method pieces is the basis for a strong argumentative essay, as well as something I am going to strive to do for future research assignments.

In Michael Klein’s article “What is it we do when we write articles like this one — and how can we get students to join us”, he discusses research as a hunter/gatherer dichotomy. This is great way to divide the concept of research into two distinct schools. A hunter searches, he knows what he desires, and tries his best to capture it, and then use it in an essay or article. A gatherer discovers, just as a crop is not ready until much after it is planted, gathering research may not give you immediately what you are searching for, but can ultimately give you insights you would not have had before. There are benefits and drawbacks to both of these stratagems. If you are hunting, there is a chance you will miss valuable information in the text, things you overlook not because they are not important, but because they are not what you are searching for at that moment. A gathering strategy is much slower, consuming much more time, and may not always yield results that are as effective, especially if the source you are trying to gather from is not very topical. The optimal option, as discussed by Klein, is a combination of both “strategic hunting and heuristic gathering”.

I am guilty of not taking the time to gather properly the majority of the time I do research. The difference between me and the people that Klein discusses in his article is that they are all doing research about something that interests them. They have no problem spending hours doing gathering style research on whatever topic they are interested in, as whatever they find will be truly enlightening for them. I find it very difficult to properly gather information when I am researching a topic that I have little interest in. This is a major part of why I have less problem doing research for CTW, as we get to choose our own topics, and write about things that interest us. I still need to strive to be more patient as I do my research, but with topics becoming more interesting to me, my style of information collection has definitely improved.

The artifact that I ended up choosing is the constitution of the Block SC Society of Santa Clara University. While I was scouring the internet for any reference of them, as well as trying to glean more information about spirit groups at SCU, I found an application for the Job of Manager of Athletic Game Day Promotions. I found this to be an interesting find, not only because I was not aware that such a position existed, nor that there is a fairly extensive list of requirements for the job, but because I wonder if this position would have been fulfilled by SC Block back when they existed. It makes me wonder why there is a recent application for a position that I would have hoped would already be filled. However, the overwhelming lack of support for the athletics department from the student body points to the idea that we really do need someone or something to come in and make a change.

This ties nicely into an article I found on The Santa Clara, The undergraduate newspaper’s, website titled Santa Clara Has No School Spirit. This article discusses the lack of people who attend sports games, blaming largely the student body for our sports team’s mediocrity. I would like to Imagine that there was a time when this was not the case, and our sports teams had fans. I personally can attest that it is a lot more fun playing in front of a home court crowd than anywhere else. Maybe the SC Block of antiquity carried the duties of school spirit, allowing the athletics to excel. It requires more research for sure, but brings up a fascinating idea about the advantages of a crowd at a sports game.

I am excited to look more into this idea, especially as if I was able to make a solid claim, and even more farfetched if I can make some noise, then more people will come to our sports games, which are very fun to go to.

Well, upon returning to the archives for the second day, I have determined that I am going to need to go a third time. In exchange for my original idea, which was much better, I am going to examine the history of the athletic spirit groups on campus, which appear to have started with the group SC Block. The jackets seen in this image were once part of an athletic spirit group called SC Block, which is very similar to the Bronco Bench Foundation and the Ruff Riders combined. I think this will be a truly interesting organization to study, especially as I am an athlete at Santa Clara, so it will be pertinent to my everyday life.

This could also be a fascinating inquiry into how the archives actually work, and will allow me to practice finding information that I know exists for sure, rather than seeking out a question that cannot be answered by the way the archives are organized. Hopefully I will be able to find enough artifacts to produce a argument that connects to an ongoing argument. This is a good time to be studying the spirit groups of antiquity, as there is a new athletic director at Santa Clara, so there are ongoing changes in the athletic department as we speak. I will look into whether the changes that are currently happening are driving the athletic department and spirit groups in a way that aligns with the way it used to be, or if it will take the department in an entirely new direction.

I am very glad that I found a new topic in time for the essay to be completed, even if I do need to return to the archives for a third day. As it was actually impossible to find the sources i needed the first two times I went, I should be able to glean enough information from the third trip to create a solid essay.

Well, that’s that. In regards to my last post about my archive trip, the idea will have to be scrapped. The digital archives did not seem to have any works, student or otherwise, about any subject relating to computers or the internet.

time to try and come up with a new idea.

With our upcoming trip to the Santa Clara archives impending, we have been asked to create a question or idea we would like to look into in depth. What really sparks my interest was the digital archives. I think it will be fascinating to see the first student works in the digital archives, as it will be interesting for me to see what was being discussed around the time of the archives going digital. As a period of time, I would like to know what academia mentions of upcoming technologies, specifically the internet. This relates to my earlier blog post on technology and human intelligence, and will give me even more background in the subject.

Once I know the time frame I am researching, I could then pull up papers from the physical archives to see the internet naysayers papers,  which obviously would not have been submitted digitally.

Nate Miller

Research, the basis of any argument. It is impossible to make an educated stance on anything without having done some research into the subject at hand. This means, that in an academic setting, research is ubiquitous. This does not, however, mean that the research is good. My own personal research history is spotty, with many places that could be improved.

I think that the biggest problem with doing research is that it is all online. It is a rare occurrence that I go to the library and get physical books, so all my sources come from the internet. This makes it much less easy to tell if a source is valuable or reliable, as anyone can put anything on the internet and say it is truth. This is especially problematic when using wikipedia, which is almost always my first stop. As you can see below, the fact that anyone can edit wikipedia can mean that ridiculous pieces of information can be passed along as fact. This can be problematic, as you might imagine. 

The next step in my research process is searching for websites that relate to my topic. This is an easy step, but I am always careful to make sure my sources are credible, as one time I failed a paper because of incorrect information. Ever since then, I have been extremely careful about my online sources.

For many papers, teachers require book sources, and this is where things get tricky. As I said earlier, I rarely ever go to the library and get physical books, so I usually turn to online books. However, it is rather difficult to get full online books or journals or periodicals without spending money, which I don’t do. I have to be careful that I understand the context of any online book I use, as I may only have access to a small portion of the book, and I would not want to misquote or misunderstand the text in the book. In William Badke’s article The Great Research Disaster, a student discusses his research stratagem, which is shockingly close to mine. It would be so easy for me to slide into the errors that he makes with misquoting and filling in the blanks without double checking that that is what the article was about. However, since reading this article, I have been given an opportunity to asses my own research, and ensure that I stay on the right path. The most egregious error he makes involves quotes. He finds a quote he would like to use, but is unable to find the whole quote, just a fragment. Not to be dissuaded he presses forward and uses his own words to fill in the quote, but still attributes it to the author. This is absolutely unacceptable, and should be avoided at all costs. In summation, I must be more careful with my research projects so I do not fall into the traps that are so easy to trigger.

Nate Miller