Time transcripts of Blaique

[00:00:00.01]	Why don't you introduce yourself? Like full name and everything? 

[00:00:04.03]	My name is Blaique,

[00:00:08.05]	I'm a first year biochemistry major. 

[00:00:10.06]	Where are you from?

[00:00:12.07]	I'm from Centerville Ohio.

[00:00:16.11]	Can you tell us a story about when you first learned to read when you were young?

[00:00:24.16]	Well the way that my family did it is that they were big on Hooked on Phonics, 

[00:00:26.16]	that's the way I learned and everybody else in my family learned that way. 

[00:00:29.17]	So kind of the really traditional vanilla story of just flashcards.

[00:00:36.20]	Is that what you remember about it is flashcards? 

[00:00:38.22]	Lot's of flashcards, I also remember my parents like reading to me a lot, 

[00:00:41.23]	and I would take the same books and kind of look them over

[00:00:44.25]	as I got older, as I became able to understand them more. 

[00:00:46.9]	What kind of material were around the house? 

[00:00:49.28]	Like what kind of books would your parents read to you?

[00:00:52.30]	We had a lot of Dr. Seuss from like the 70s from when my brothers and sisters had them.

[00:00:56.32]	And then a lot of disney books because I'm a big fan of Disney.

[00:01:00.33]	Did you watch the Disney movies and then read the books? 

[00:01:04.36]	Yeah, I read the books a lot before bed, 

[00:01:08.38]	they kind of calmed me down at night before I actually went to sleep, so.

[00:01:12.41]	So, like, were you writing at all?

[00:01:20.45]	Not when I was first learning to read, 

[00:01:22.46]	but as I got older I started to a little bit. 

[00:01:25.48]	Everything I wrote was like really really tragic, but it's writing nonetheless. 

[00:01:31.2]	Were you writing on your own or in your journal?

[00:01:36.57]	There was a lot of journal writing going on. 

[00:01:38.58]	Sometimes I would just get like ideas and just write them down just because.

[00:01:44.61]	I've always liked, I've just kind of always been writing down 

[00:01:46.64]	everything that goes through my head. So I don't like forget it. 

[00:01:49.66]	Could you tell us a story about like, or could you tell us about a story you wrote 

[00:01:57.20]	or some of the kind of things you would write about when you were younger?

[00:02:00.74]	I would kind of write about my friends and my family 

[00:02:02.76]	and if something was really good that day or really bad that day, just write it down. 

[00:02:08.00]	Typical journal stuff. Or sometimes there would be things in my head 

[00:02:12.0]	like my parents would ask me to remember a whole bunch of stuff 

[00:02:15.4]	and I wouldn't be able to so I would like write it down with my terrible handwriting. 

[00:02:19.2]	And you would remember.

[00:02:20.89]	Yeah I would remember it better from writing it down.

[00:02:24.93]	So like when you were younger, like would you be doing the same kinds of things at home 

[00:02:31.00]	as like you were doing in school with other students, involving like reading and writing? 

[00:02:35.5]	Or were you kind of on your own? 

[00:02:38.3]	It was a little bit of both.

[00:02:41.02]	What do you remember about like primary school, like...

[00:02:49.04]	Is that too long ago? 

[00:02:51.05]	No, I remember some stuff, but it's like really really vague memories. 

[00:02:54.08]	Ok well what about when you got older, like when you went to High School? 

[00:02:57.60]	Can you tell us a story about like what that was like being in an English class there?

[00:03:05.14]	Didn't you say in your email you sent me that

[00:03:09.15]	your Junior year you had a really influential English class?

[00:03:13.21]	No, that wasn't me. But, however, it was really my second year of English. 

[00:03:19.27]	My second and my last year of school were kind of big for me. 

[00:03:22.30]	Because my second year I took Honors English.

[00:03:25.33]	And I read a whole bunch of stuff that I normally wouldn't ever read. 

[00:03:27.35]	Like I read a whole bunch of Freud which kind of freaked me out a little bit. 

[00:03:30.36]	And then we read Frankenstein, which I still like to this day. 

[00:03:35.1]	Oh, Mary Shelley. 

[00:03:36.24]	And then I read The Bell Jar, it's still one of my favorite books I've ever read

[00:03:46.47]	So, when you're reading these works of literature, what about them appealed to you?

[00:03:53.53]	Were they assigned in class or did you kind of...?

[00:03:56.54]	Well Frankenstein was assigned in class, but the Bell Jar wasn't. 

[00:03:59.55]	The thing that really attracted me was like... 

[00:04:02.56]	It's kind of strange that I'm the kind of person that likes books and movies that are a little bit twisted. 

[00:04:06.08]	It seems kind of weird, like that's really normal, but it appeals to me for some reason.

[00:04:13.62]	So I mean like what about the Bell Jar appealed to you?

[00:04:21.68]	I just, I actually like that fact that Sylvia Platz is trying to say that

[00:04:25.70]	you know, women have these predefined roles, and like the main character is like 

[00:04:31.20]	"I'm just not going to go along with that and do my own thing" 

[00:04:33.95]	Which I really liked. 

[00:04:36.72]	What were some other things that were going on

[00:04:40.74]	in High school that you remember in English class?

[00:04:44.76]	Was there anything kind of more innovative? 

[00:04:46.77]	Or were you just focusing on works of literature and just traditional kind of writing assingments? 

[00:04:53.3]	My last year I took contemporary literature, 

[00:04:56.2]	and that's one of my favorite classes that I have ever taken. 

[00:04:58.7]	Because like instead of writing a research paper, based on like a book, 

[00:05:01.25]	I got to write it on some sort of contemporary issue, 

[00:05:04.6]	like for me I wrote mine on prostitution. 

[00:05:06.99]	And then I also read like, I read a book on my own called Freakonomics. 

[00:05:10.47]	Which I still read it now, read often. 

[00:05:13.22]	Because it's a really funny look on how like certain things are like,

[00:05:21.00]	why drug dealers live with their moms, and how teachers and sumo wrestlers are related.

[00:05:25.05]	Like it was really really weird, but the way that the author is like

[00:05:29.07]	the way that they put it together, it makes so much sense. 

[00:05:31.09]	And it kind of sheds light on society as it is right now.

[00:05:37.12]	So what was your essay about? Was it about freakonomics? 

[00:05:40.13]	It was about legalizing prostitution. 

[00:05:42.15]	Could you tell us kind of what that essay was about? 

[00:05:47.6]	It was basically, I focused on three major points. 

[00:05:50.45]	About how prostitution and pornography are essentially like the same thing. 

[00:05:55.00]	There was a really good article I found, that talked about, like compared the two. 

[00:05:59.99]	And if you look at it really closely they're basically the same thing. 

[00:06:03.00]	Except one is live and one is not.

[00:06:05.26]	And then the second point was that, if you're not going to at least legalize it 

[00:06:09.29]	then decriminalize it, because there are prostitutes who get raped 

[00:06:13.00]	and they can't turn to the police because they'll be arrested for prostitution.

[00:06:17.34]	And the third point was, like, it's the persons body,

[00:06:20.35]	the Goverment has shouldn't be able to regulate what that person does with it, 

[00:06:22.36]	it should be their choice.

[00:06:25.38]	

[00:06:29.41]	

[00:06:33.45]	What was the response by the teacher about your essay?

[00:06:41.50]	She I guess she liked it because she gave me an A on it. 

[00:06:43.51]	Did she give you any comments?

[00:06:45.51]	She said that the first point that I made was one that she never heard before. 

[00:06:50.54]	Which, I had to dig really deep to, because I had the last two points, I was like, 

[00:06:54.9]	"I really can't find the first one" then I found that, 

[00:06:57.0]	and I was like "This is exactly what I need, I love it."

[00:07:01.63]	What were some of the other essays that students were putting together?

[00:07:09.69]	Some about flag burning, there was, there was some about should baseball players

[00:07:17.74]	or sports players in general be given salary caps because the salaries are just ridiculously high. 

[00:07:21.75]	There were some about, is global warming like real. 

[00:07:25.78]	And then a whole bunch of stuff on Vietnam and the ethics of that.

[00:07:33.82]	With different books that we read.

[00:07:37.83]	Were there any English classes that incorporated visual media? 

[00:07:47.3]	The last one really did, like we watched "An Inconvenient Truth." 

[00:07:52.3]	When we were doing kind of like the more controversial issues. 

[00:07:55.9]	And then we watched "Apocalypse Now" and we read "The Things They Carried' 

[00:07:59.99]	to try to see the similarities between the book and the movie. 

[00:08:05.01]	What do you think about that? Was that like an effective? 

[00:08:08.1]	Yeah, I'm a very visual learner, so that really helped me. 

[00:08:12.22]	Especially with Apocalypse Now, and The Things They Carried, I could really like see similarities.

[00:08:18.19]	And how like the things that I read, how they might look

[00:08:22.23]	if you were to actually visualize it.

[00:08:26.26]	Do you think most people your age are visual learners? 

[00:08:30.28]	Or do you know people that are kind of like not visually

[00:08:34.30]	don't have as much visual aptitude, they're more like lexical thinkers?

[00:08:42.34]	I feel like really what it is, is it's not so much that people are visual learners vs. not. 

[00:08:48.2]	It's just that they'd rather watch a movie than actually read the book. 

[00:08:50.37]	It's just a preference? 

[00:08:52.37]	Yeah, but I feel like either way, although like the movies sometimes tend to 

[00:08:55.39]	have a little less detail than the book, it still kinda gets the same point across. 

[00:08:58.90]	But there's just like minor things or major things that are just pulled.

[00:09:06.43]	Do you do any kind of, I ask this question because the 110 classes

[00:09:14.48]	next year are going to be doing a blogging assignment. 

[00:09:18.0]	Where the students in the class have the opportunity, 

[00:09:21.6]	rather than writing a formal essay, they can go online and blog 

[00:09:25.3]	about a certain issue like a contemporary issue or something that the class is focusing on. 

[00:09:30.00]	Do you blog, or do you read blogs, or?

[00:09:34.66]	I sometimes read them. I'm not like really big into it.

[00:09:38.69]	There's a lot of things that my parents and I don't agree on, 

[00:09:42.2]	like certain like more controversial issues like gay marriage. 

[00:09:45.9]	But so, and then like with religion and school, and how those interfere. 

[00:09:51.1]	And so we'll get into like family little arguments

[00:09:54.85]	I'll go online and I'll research and I'll pull it out and show it to them.

[00:09:58.88]	So it kinds of gives me more backup. 

[00:10:00.91]	Because the issue is like their knowledge and I have evidence. 

[00:10:03.93]	Do you think it's a good source of evidence for persuasion?

[00:10:06.96]	I think it depends on where you go, if it's not like a...

[00:10:10.98]	obviously I wouldn't use like wikipedia. 

[00:10:13.01]	Because it could be deemed credible but not really. 

[00:10:16.05]	But mainly it's, I feel like it kind of gives you more, it,

[00:10:23.09]	I'm trying to think of what I'm trying to say. It gives you, 

[00:10:26.1]	it makes you seem more like you know what you're talking about 

[00:10:28.11]	because you actually have something to back you up that you can like show to them 

[00:10:31.64]	and like this is proof. It might not be credible proof, 

[00:10:33.40]	but that person probably doesn't know it. 

[00:10:36.29]	If you could say something to the first year writing instructors this fall 

[00:10:42.6]	about ways that they could maybe improve their curriculum

[00:10:51.28]	or like, incorporate these new forms of media, blogging, film, like what would you say? 

[00:10:59.99]	Or would you suggest anything? Based on your experiences in English class, 

[00:11:06.6]	would you suggest anything to them about how they could best teach? 

[00:11:10.00]	I feel like all those ideas. Like incorporating new ways to teach could be better,

[00:11:15.41]	because I feel like everyone is just so sick of the whole lecturing

[00:11:19.44]	and then the essay thing that everyone's just so over it.

[00:11:23.45]	And I feel like you could do the movies and the blogging 

[00:11:27.00]	but you have to have discussion along with it. 

[00:11:28.47]	So that way like after all is said and done you can kind of talk about it. 

[00:11:31.99]	And I feel like in high school that really helped me, like afterwards

[00:11:35.52]	we sat and discussed it and then I felt like I really had a better understanding of what was going on.

[00:11:39.54]	What do you mean people are over this whole like lecture thing?

[00:11:43.59]	What do you mean by that? 

[00:11:45.60]	It's just, like when you think of normally the college class, you think it's like lecture 

[00:11:48.62]	and people like falling asleep in like the back row.

[00:11:51.64]	I feel like if you were to make it like a little more interesting people would actually like,

[00:11:55.66]	I don't know I feel like they would be more involved in what they were doing.

[00:11:59.69]	Do you have any experience with video editting yourself? 

[00:12:05.00]	Not at all.

[00:12:07.75]	Are you interested in learning anything like that?

[00:12:09.76]	I'm interested in it, but I'm just like not like that kind of person who's like big into that.

[00:12:15.82]	I'd like to learn because I think it's cool, but I just can't figure it out.

[00:12:19.87]	As a bio-chemistry major, could I ask you, 

[00:12:30.00]	what do you think about the relation between literacy and science?

[00:12:36.00]	Do you think that you need to have the fundamentals of literacy down

[00:12:40.01]	before you can really understand science? Or do you think that there's no connection there? 

[00:12:46.00]	As much as I hate to say, there definitely is a connection. 

[00:12:49.2]	Because I feel like a lot of like the books that you have to read, 

[00:12:54.7]	they have just so many words that you wouldn't see on a day to day basis, 

[00:12:58.3]	but you might have seen them in like your English class, and be like 

[00:13:00.3]	"I know that word because I've already seen it." 

[00:13:02.9]	So it helps and I'm not like a huge English but they really are connected.