Transcripts of Sean

My name is Sean Burke, and I'm from Columbus Ohio, and my major is computer science and engineering. Was math, and science always your favorite subject? Math mainly was my favorite subject, but I liked science too. How did you feel about reading and writing when you were younger? I liked, I mean it was alright. I didn't like vocab that much, just because it doesn't... I know people say like, you'll use those words, but I don't seem like I'll use those words that much. Just like the high school vocab books. It just seems like most of those words... But I mean I've picked up a few and I've used a few too. In high school, were you quizzed on vocabulary, did you have to like answer like, answer 20 different, did you have to match the definitions of words or something like that, how was the quiz? They were like, it was like a couple, it was either complete the sentence with the vocab word. It was antonyms or synonyms. Like circle the right word, or... I think that was it. But it was kinda like the book, like they would take the questions out of the book and then put them on the... But most teachers, they wouldn't give the answers to the books, so you would have to, if you really wanted to you could just study the, like the sentences in the book and you could figure out like the answers from there. What do you mean? Like, you know the vocab, like, the Sandler vocab books? No. Well we, like there's like A through G of these books, vocab books that we that I mean, I've done all of them. Starting like in middle school. But basically, every week we would have to fill out sections of like, we would get 20 words, per unit, I mean per section. So, and then we would have to take those words and there would be 20 completing the sentences. So you would have to put words in all those sentences. And then... Oh so you would study the sentence from the book? And then match, just remember the sentence for the quiz? Well some teachers would take it from the book, so you could do that with some. But I mean that wasn't really learning the words. But others, my favorite teacher would take 5 random words out of the 20 and say, like, make a sentence using this word that, like, you will know them meaning of. So I thought that was the best like teachers that actually tried to like bring out the meaning of the words instead of just saying like memorize like, just, taking them out of the book. How did this teacher foreground meaning? Emphasize meaning? She just seemed more, like it just seemed like instead of just using the sentences in the book, we could create our own sentences. So not like all the sentences. Like most of them we probably wouldn't use so we could just create our own. This was in high school? Yeah. Can you tell us a story about that class? Maybe not related to vocabulary but maybe to some of the other things that were going on in that class that that teacher did that you thought were effective or that you enjoyed? Were there any essays you were writing, were there any specific books that you remember reading and liking? Well that was my, I think it was my sophomore year. And we read a bunch of like paragraphs, in that class but... You wrote paragraphs? Like we would write like essay type things, so... I kinda liked more, like he was kind of a laid back teacher, like he would make a lot of jokes too, so... A lot of the English teachers seemed to be really strict, well at least at my High school. What were they like, the strict teachers? Well I mean, well um... It would be more like if you did anything wrong they would punish you severely. So, like, I mean they would be strict to people they didn't really like. Well I mean... Like, what kind of criteria did they have to judge their students? Or like why do you think they favored certain students over others? I think it was the students that actually liked English and like wanted to like do the work. They would like a lot more. So, can you tell us a story about a time like you had a strict English teacher and what they did and what you disliked about that? Or was it just like, I don't know... Was it not that distinct of a feeling, was it just sort of a general feeling you had. Like what about Senior year English? What was that like? Well Senior year we had to write our Senior paper, which was like a 5 to 7 page paper. About a book, like a critique about a book. So what I thought when we were doing this paper, I thought, there were some problems that I was kinda confused by like, we were supposed to read the book, and then... And like halfway through the book, she told us that we should have been picking quotes for our paper. But I was really... You weren't approaching it that way? Yeah I was just going to read the book and then I thought maybe after I would try to find the quotes. But like I mean I was just really confused about like what is like a good quote. Because it seems like there could be a lot of quotes for a lot of different topics, so... Because we didn't know our topic until we read the book or read most of the book. What book did you end up writing about? "Cry the Beloved Country" What's that about? Who wrote that? I'm not very good with... Maybe the author isn't that important, but what was that about or what did you write about? It was about, a country like priest, who came to the city and he was trying to find his brother. But on his way, he found his sister... Oh wait no. Nevermind, he was on his way to find his son, but he found his sister and his brother there as well. And his brother had a son, well the sister had the son, and she was a prostitute, so... It was an illegitimate child. I'm not sure if there was, I forget who was the father of the son, but the sister, he tried to take, he wanted to take her back to... He lived in like a rural village type of area. But he wanted to take her back there. Just so she would do better, and like he wanted to help her. But she ran away and left the son there with him. So, and then, eventually the main plot was like when he got there after searching for a while he found his son had committed a murder, or didn't actually committ... It was like kind of an accident, because his son and a couple other people broke into a house and were going to steal some stuff, and they brought a gun but they weren't planning on using it. So they like, the owner of the house came up and he just got surprised and shot they guy, and the guy died, so. What did you choose to write about, was there a specific theme? I chose, like... Did you know what you were going to write about like right away? Or did you have to think about it, or what was that process like? I thought about it a lot, because I wasn't quite sure. I wasn't very sure even what would be a good topic or what would be a bad topic. But I wrote about poverty in the book, and like what were some of the reasons why like there was a lot, why like village areas seemed to be like a lot more happier than urban areas. Did you get a good grade? I think I got a 92 overall, so. Right on. I was pretty happy about that. For someone in engineering I would imagine yeah, I mean... Polar opposites right? You enjoy computer science? You've been doing programming for a while? I took a programming class about C++ my sophomore year. And then I took AP computer science my senior year, which was about Java, so. What could you say about like the differences between like learning and writing in a programming language versus reading and writing in English? Is there any connection or is, I don't know, it seems that you prefer computer programming if that is what you're going into. Well there's some, I guess there's some, there's probably a lot of connections, just because... Well I mean, I would think grammar would kind of be like the order of like what you're supposed to write in computer science. Like if you have bad grammar you're like it's not right, like you need to put certain things in certain places. Or the program will go in an infinite loop or something. If you could say anything to the graduate students who are going to be teaching English 110 this fall, about the kinds of reading materials that they should have their students read, or they should require their students to read, what would you say? I would say make it kind of in between like not, I mean, you don't want too much action, too much like guy stuff that only guys would like. But you don't want the drama, soap opera kind of books. I guess just pick an in between book and try to I think just try to be relaxed. Just not like relax, just try to make the class enjoyable. Are there any kinds of topics that you would suggest that the new graduate students require their students to write about? Or are there any topics that you're interested in that you think other students would be interested in writing about? Topics as in... For example, like a contemporary issue thats in the news? Such as gay marriage or healthcare or the war in Iraq. Or something similar? Yeah like, I mean like writing about big issues I think would be pretty enjoyable. Like writing about, like if you got to choose like one big issue that you felt you were really for or really against and like just write a paper about why you are for or against that.