Transcripts of Greg+Moon_final

  Or I could just throw some explicit content in there and then you have to edit it. (Laughter) Alright, go ahead. You can look at me, you can look at the camera. I'll just look at you, because that's just awkward. So, Ok, I'm Gregory Moon, I'm a Freshman obviously. Bio-Chemistry/Pre-Med major. Where are you from? Greenville Missouri. You said that's a small town? A small town in Southeast Missouri. What is the transition been like so far, from Missouri to Columbus? Well, nobody says ain't or y'all. So... What do you think of the difference? It's just weird, because everybody says pop. Just little communication differences. I mean it's soda, that's what it is. But different communication things are huge to me because it's like it ain't like Missouri, you know. Could you tell us a story about that? Like, you don't have to go in chronological order, Have there been any times when you've been like in Columbus so far and you've been like trying to understand the language? You know, I know you're not like that foreign. But like, has there been any experience you've had that's kind of like "Whoa, the culture shock" Everybody was like talking at orientation today, like about, oh you know, "Our football team, all this." We don't have football at our school. We're too small to have football, we're too poor to have football. So we didn't have... And they're like "Ah, that town that's down the road..." and everything, and I'm like "I have no... I know where Cleveland is" (Laughter) I know where Columbus is obviously and maybe Cincinnati, but just different, nothing really specific, but you know it's just... You know about the rivalry between OSU and Michigan? I was born in Cleveland so I know about that, yeah, are you kidding me? Yeah. No, no, I know about that. I told someone, I said "I applied to U of M" And they were like "What!?" I was like "University of Missouri! You know, it's right down the road, so." So you're from Cleveland originally? Were you going to like, primary school there? I wasn't even like, I was like still a baby when we moved down to Missouri. Just born here by birth, not like... But my dad grew up in Cleveland and my Mom grew up in Cleveland, so. So when you moved to Missouri, did they kind of emphasize reading? Or was it just sort of like a normal thing? I mean like did they read a lot when you were younger? Like what kinds of things do you remember them reading? Like the Newspaper, or... Well like, we obviously only had one newspaper every week, because that's how small we are, you know? But I remember my mom, she would always read like, we would always have like story time or whatever. But it wasn't like these little tiny kids books, she would actually read a book. And we would read like a little bit every day or whatever, you know. Like a couple pages or whatever. Even when we were young. Which was great because you know it kind of, you know, openned you up more. It wasn't just like you learn about the goose and the fox and the hen and all that. You're actually learning about learning bigger words and things that will help you out later. And they did help me I think. Because I got to school and I started reading a little bit faster than everybody else just because my mom kinda started out when I was young. Reading like some of the classics of literature? Or was it or was there... What kinds of books did you read? Just all sorts of kinds of books. I mean a lot of them kinda had a classical influence. You know they weren't just like the newest love/romantic novel or something with Fabio on the cover. They were like, I don't know, I would almost consider them educational. I mean they were fictional but they had a meaning to them and a deeper... Yeah, it wasn't just like "He did this because..." Obviously we didn't understand all of it, but that's part of what learning is, you know. So then when you went to school you said you had kind of a advantage? Yeah. What were you doing in school, in terms of reading? Just, what kinds of books were you reading? I can remember the first books we would read in school were really really easy because these were like 5 words on a page type thing, you know. And it's like "This isn't even difficult" You know. In our area, illiteracy is huge, so you know, it's just because such a rural community, It's just big on dropping out and everything. Could you talk about that? About the illiteracy? Well a lot of people are like, they kinda get this idea, they don't need education, they can just get a job at a factory. Which there's nothing wrong with getting a job there, you know but it's just the idea that, "That's what I can do, it's the easiest way to do it" And that's their mindset is, "I just want to do something that's easy" You know "I don't want to try and read, like take the AP English class or whatever. I just want to take my baby classes, you know, or even quit as fast as you can. And that's how it's been forever, so. Do you have friends like that? Yeah I did, I mean they kinda dropped off quick. Because after, you know, they leave school you don't see them that much because they're always working. But I had a couple. You know and I tried telling them "There is no life for you if you do that." Nowadays you almost have to have a college education to do anything, you know. How did they respond to you trying to persuade them to do something different? They would just shrug it off. They would just say "It's not important" or "I don't have the money" They would just make up excuses, you know. I mean they want to actually give you an educated answer. And give you a specific, reason why. I think they knew why, and they were kind of upset at themselves or something. Is this like, later on when you're older and you're in Secondary School, you're in High School, and was that when this was going on? Yeah, yeah, but I mean it started early because they started out... Their parents weren't giving them the type of like... Like, you know, they weren't doing like my mom and dad were, where they'd read to us and kinda help us out, learning the alphabet and all that stuff. Their parents didn't do that at an early age. And I think that kind of let... It was just kind of like a buildup. You know, their parents were expecting them to drop out, you know, because they dropped out. It's a cyclical thing. Right, yeah, it's just kind of... You know they keep the ball rolling. So can you tell us a story about when you were in High School English class? The kinds of things you were reading or the kinds of things the teacher was doing. Were you reading literature? Were you reading essays, non-fiction essays, about politics, about different issues besides literature? Or was it focused... What was the concentration? Well ours started out like... I think like Freshman year it was kind of like a basic English class, but it was all on American authors. It was all about American authors. And it went from Native American authors, they had African-American authors, Female authors, a broad spectrum. And it was just like, samples of their work. You know, we kind of just studied them and stuff, more composition, and then obviously grammar work was thrown in. But then our sophomore year was more like the classics type thing. And we learned a lot, we did a lot with Shakespeare. And a lot of plays is what our... Because our English teacher was also a Drama teacher, she pulled a lot of plays and stuff, which I liked. Like we did Julius Caesar and stuff like that, which was really, you know, nice. Then our Junior year it was more essay type thing, current issues was a pretty big thing. We would write papers on different modern problems and stuff in the world. Like we had to do a research project, it was about a 5 page paper, and you know you had to have your sources and everything. It was really a college prep and she was trying to get us to get ready for college. And we had to do it over a problem or a controversial topic. You couldn't just pick like "Why do apples grow out of the ground, or off of a tree" You had to pick steroid abuse, or drug abuse, or abortion, or homosexual marriage. Something that was very debated in politics, in social exchange. That was good. And then Senior Year I took AP English, Comp. and Literature or something like that. And that was mainly British influence, so we had a lot of British authors and stuff, which was pretty nice. Can you tell us a story about writing an essay? Or writing a paper for one of your classes? One of the papers that you particularly remember? As being kind of something you really put a lot into? If it went black is that...? Ok, yeah, well, my paper that I did, I can remember the controversial paper that we wrote. I remember writing that. We would always have debates in class too. Someone would bring up what their topic was, and then we would all just go at it. And mine was steroid abuse in Major League Baseball. Because I played baseball in High School. So it was kind of like a personal type thing. Which was good because that's what she wanted. She wanted us to bring something out of ourselves that we really liked or that at least we were interested in. So I did steroid abuse. And it was really, I loved it because like you learn so much about the research part than you ever would expect. I never expected to go to our library and I didn't know they had like these books, where you can open them up and they have all the magazine articles on different things, you know reference books and stuff. I didn't know they had that, because how many times do you go to a library and do a reference paper? Just on... And then you had to have your sources and everything, you had to document everything. Which was like a new thing for me, because we had never done that before. And it was really, really nice. I mean I liked the way it brought stuff out of everybody, helped us develop. You know it helped me in all my other classes that I took in High School. I hope it helps in college too, I mean I think it would. What position did you take, in that paper? Well that was the thing like, our English teacher, she had told us, "You're going to take this, and you're going to start out maybe thinking you don't want homosexual marriage. Let's say. But you might do your research, and you may run through all the information you know, all your sources. And your point of view might totally change. Maybe it won't, that's fine, but you never know, it might. And mine it kinda did. I mean it was.... Like my thesis was "Major League Baseball players accused, not convicted of steroid abuse should not be allowed into the hall of fame." But then it kind of changed after I was doing it and I had to change my thesis, Because I was like  "Wait a second, you know there's some people that shouldn't, but then there's some people that should because there's no proof, you know. So it was kind of like, I don't know, it was just, you know what I mean, it was just kinda... Turned your mind around stuff. It got you thinking is what it was. It got you to see different ways you might think this problem through. It's not necessarily you have to set your guidelines, and you can't. It gives you a broader perspective than just your narrow... Open your mind up. Was the internet a source you used? In addition to the reference books at the library? Yeah, definitely. I mean obviously we couldn't use Wikipedia, but we used like Encarta you know, different online Encyclopedias like that. And then obviously we went to like mine was over sports, baseball, so I would go to the MLB website and I'd go to ESPN, just the different newspaper and magazine websites and get sources. But our teacher, she gave us requirements. That you could not use all internet websites. Because you know any kid would get on there and get your 10 sources and you're done. You know, whatever. Like a day, right, copy and paste. But she made it, you know, you had to get one newspaper article for a source, one magazine, and like 2 books at least, as sources. Which really helped us because that kind of allowed us to see all the different types of articles we could look up. What did you think about that? Did you think it was acutally necessary to get your sources from a diverse set of materials? Or do you think that was just sort of a guideline that she would post? Well I think it was a good thing to do, because, well you can get anything on the internet. I mean you can probably get research papers if you really wanted to I guess. But what you're thinking or whatever, and it's not definitely accurate, you can get anything on the internet and it can say whatever it wants. But getting these sources, and if they're all saying the same thing then that kinda you know, oh, Ok, you know. But if like you get these newspaper articles that say this but an internet thing says this, well then you can sort of cross reference and say "Well I don't know if I can use that source or if should use that source" Because maybe it's not accurate. If I have these hard copies of... And all those different sources had different authors. So each person that wrote the article or the piece or the book had his own point of view or her own point of view. And that really helped us see different sides of the story. So you're going to be majoring in a Science. How much do you think literacy relates to understanding science? Well I think it's like one of the cornerstones or foundations, whatever you want to say. It's like the basis of any study. I mean even if you do mathematics, I mean yeah you can read the problem, but can you read a word problem? Communication is like the thing.... But it really... Literature and different things is a big thing in science because they have journals and science journals and different things, and that's how we get our, as scientists that's how we get our voices out there and are able to communicate to other people. It's a huge thing. You know, writing skills I think are going to be really important to me. If I ever do write a research paper for my BioChem degree. Or if I ever do do anything related to that. You have to document it, you have to keep your sources accurate. You don't want to give credit to some professor when it was another guy down the hall. And that guy is ticked off at you now. So, it's really important to learn those skills.