Transcripts of Blaique

Why don't you introduce yourself? Like full name and everything? My name is Blaique, I'm a first year biochemistry major. Where are you from? I'm from Centerville Ohio. Can you tell us a story about when you first learned to read when you were young? Well the way that my family did it is that they were big on Hooked on Phonics, that's the way I learned and everybody else in my family learned that way. So kind of the really traditional vanilla story of just flashcards. Is that what you remember about it is flashcards? Lot's of flashcards, I also remember my parents like reading to me a lot, and I would take the same books and kind of look them over as I got older, as I became able to understand them more. What kind of material were around the house? Like what kind of books would your parents read to you? We had a lot of Dr. Seuss from like the 70s from when my brothers and sisters had them. And then a lot of disney books because I'm a big fan of Disney. Did you watch the Disney movies and then read the books? Yeah, I read the books a lot before bed, they kind of calmed me down at night before I actually went to sleep, so. So, like, were you writing at all? Not when I was first learning to read, but as I got older I started to a little bit. Everything I wrote was like really really tragic, but it's writing nonetheless. Were you writing on your own or in your journal? There was a lot of journal writing going on. Sometimes I would just get like ideas and just write them down just because. I've always liked, I've just kind of always been writing down everything that goes through my head. So I don't like forget it. Could you tell us a story about like, or could you tell us about a story you wrote or some of the kind of things you would write about when you were younger? I would kind of write about my friends and my family and if something was really good that day or really bad that day, just write it down. Typical journal stuff. Or sometimes there would be things in my head like my parents would ask me to remember a whole bunch of stuff and I wouldn't be able to so I would like write it down with my terrible handwriting. And you would remember. Yeah I would remember it better from writing it down. So like when you were younger, like would you be doing the same kinds of things at home as like you were doing in school with other students, involving like reading and writing? Or were you kind of on your own? It was a little bit of both. What do you remember about like primary school, like... Is that too long ago? No, I remember some stuff, but it's like really really vague memories. Ok well what about when you got older, like when you went to High School? Can you tell us a story about like what that was like being in an English class there? Didn't you say in your email you sent me that your Junior year you had a really influential English class? No, that wasn't me. But, however, it was really my second year of English. My second and my last year of school were kind of big for me. Because my second year I took Honors English. And I read a whole bunch of stuff that I normally wouldn't ever read. Like I read a whole bunch of Freud which kind of freaked me out a little bit. And then we read Frankenstein, which I still like to this day. Oh, Mary Shelley. And then I read The Bell Jar, it's still one of my favorite books I've ever read So, when you're reading these works of literature, what about them appealed to you? Were they assigned in class or did you kind of...? Well Frankenstein was assigned in class, but the Bell Jar wasn't. The thing that really attracted me was like... It's kind of strange that I'm the kind of person that likes books and movies that are a little bit twisted. It seems kind of weird, like that's really normal, but it appeals to me for some reason. So I mean like what about the Bell Jar appealed to you? I just, I actually like that fact that Sylvia Platz is trying to say that you know, women have these predefined roles, and like the main character is like "I'm just not going to go along with that and do my own thing" Which I really liked. What were some other things that were going on in High school that you remember in English class? Was there anything kind of more innovative? Or were you just focusing on works of literature and just traditional kind of writing assingments? My last year I took contemporary literature, and that's one of my favorite classes that I have ever taken. Because like instead of writing a research paper, based on like a book, I got to write it on some sort of contemporary issue, like for me I wrote mine on prostitution. And then I also read like, I read a book on my own called Freakonomics. Which I still read it now, read often. Because it's a really funny look on how like certain things are like, why drug dealers live with their moms, and how teachers and sumo wrestlers are related. Like it was really really weird, but the way that the author is like the way that they put it together, it makes so much sense. And it kind of sheds light on society as it is right now. So what was your essay about? Was it about freakonomics? It was about legalizing prostitution. Could you tell us kind of what that essay was about? It was basically, I focused on three major points. About how prostitution and pornography are essentially like the same thing. There was a really good article I found, that talked about, like compared the two. And if you look at it really closely they're basically the same thing. Except one is live and one is not. And then the second point was that, if you're not going to at least legalize it then decriminalize it, because there are prostitutes who get raped and they can't turn to the police because they'll be arrested for prostitution. And the third point was, like, it's the persons body, the Goverment has shouldn't be able to regulate what that person does with it, it should be their choice.  What was the response by the teacher about your essay? She I guess she liked it because she gave me an A on it. Did she give you any comments? She said that the first point that I made was one that she never heard before. Which, I had to dig really deep to, because I had the last two points, I was like, "I really can't find the first one" then I found that, and I was like "This is exactly what I need, I love it." What were some of the other essays that students were putting together? Some about flag burning, there was, there was some about should baseball players or sports players in general be given salary caps because the salaries are just ridiculously high. There were some about, is global warming like real. And then a whole bunch of stuff on Vietnam and the ethics of that. With different books that we read. Were there any English classes that incorporated visual media? The last one really did, like we watched "An Inconvenient Truth." When we were doing kind of like the more controversial issues. And then we watched "Apocalypse Now" and we read "The Things They Carried' to try to see the similarities between the book and the movie. What do you think about that? Was that like an effective? Yeah, I'm a very visual learner, so that really helped me. Especially with Apocalypse Now, and The Things They Carried, I could really like see similarities. And how like the things that I read, how they might look if you were to actually visualize it. Do you think most people your age are visual learners? Or do you know people that are kind of like not visually don't have as much visual aptitude, they're more like lexical thinkers? I feel like really what it is, is it's not so much that people are visual learners vs. not. It's just that they'd rather watch a movie than actually read the book. It's just a preference? Yeah, but I feel like either way, although like the movies sometimes tend to have a little less detail than the book, it still kinda gets the same point across. But there's just like minor things or major things that are just pulled. Do you do any kind of, I ask this question because the 110 classes next year are going to be doing a blogging assignment. Where the students in the class have the opportunity, rather than writing a formal essay, they can go online and blog about a certain issue like a contemporary issue or something that the class is focusing on. Do you blog, or do you read blogs, or? I sometimes read them. I'm not like really big into it. There's a lot of things that my parents and I don't agree on, like certain like more controversial issues like gay marriage. But so, and then like with religion and school, and how those interfere. And so we'll get into like family little arguments I'll go online and I'll research and I'll pull it out and show it to them. So it kinds of gives me more backup. Because the issue is like their knowledge and I have evidence. Do you think it's a good source of evidence for persuasion? I think it depends on where you go, if it's not like a... obviously I wouldn't use like wikipedia. Because it could be deemed credible but not really. But mainly it's, I feel like it kind of gives you more, it, I'm trying to think of what I'm trying to say. It gives you, it makes you seem more like you know what you're talking about because you actually have something to back you up that you can like show to them and like this is proof. It might not be credible proof, but that person probably doesn't know it. If you could say something to the first year writing instructors this fall about ways that they could maybe improve their curriculum or like, incorporate these new forms of media, blogging, film, like what would you say? Or would you suggest anything? Based on your experiences in English class, would you suggest anything to them about how they could best teach? I feel like all those ideas. Like incorporating new ways to teach could be better, because I feel like everyone is just so sick of the whole lecturing and then the essay thing that everyone's just so over it. And I feel like you could do the movies and the blogging but you have to have discussion along with it. So that way like after all is said and done you can kind of talk about it. And I feel like in high school that really helped me, like afterwards we sat and discussed it and then I felt like I really had a better understanding of what was going on. What do you mean people are over this whole like lecture thing? What do you mean by that? It's just, like when you think of normally the college class, you think it's like lecture and people like falling asleep in like the back row. I feel like if you were to make it like a little more interesting people would actually like, I don't know I feel like they would be more involved in what they were doing. Do you have any experience with video editting yourself? Not at all. Are you interested in learning anything like that? I'm interested in it, but I'm just like not like that kind of person who's like big into that. I'd like to learn because I think it's cool, but I just can't figure it out. As a bio-chemistry major, could I ask you, what do you think about the relation between literacy and science? Do you think that you need to have the fundamentals of literacy down before you can really understand science? Or do you think that there's no connection there? As much as I hate to say, there definitely is a connection. Because I feel like a lot of like the books that you have to read, they have just so many words that you wouldn't see on a day to day basis, but you might have seen them in like your English class, and be like "I know that word because I've already seen it." So it helps and I'm not like a huge English but they really are connected.