Transcripts of Sarah

Okay awesome, so why don't you introduce yourself and then... Okay my name is Sarah Peterson, I'm from right here in Columbus Ohio, I'm a zoology major, I really want to do research with zoology, maybe focus in ornithology which is birds. Ooh, something just popped up. Oh no. Um, just yeah. Ornithology? Ornithology, yeah, I really like birds. Where did your interest in ornithology begin? I don't know, I think I liked watching birds, or currently like watching birds. They're just really interesting because they're so different from mammals but really not. I don't know. How are they different from mammals? Well they have feathers and they can fly (laughter). Okay, so do you go to like different conservatories, or? Actually I went to school at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. I did the zoo school program. It's a two year high school class thats like through the career center. And so we did research projects there and one of my projects was on the kiwi bird. And they're a bird that's so unbirdlike that they call them the "honorary mammal" in a lot of books. So I don't know, it just all started there that I wanted to do research. But I've been going to zoos and stuff since I was younger than 2, when my mom first brought me to the Columbus Zoo when we first moved to Columbus. Did, why, did your fascination with birds involve reading about them? When you were younger like when your mom was taking you to the zoo, was she also buying you zoo books? Oh yeah, I've had, you should see my bookshelves now. I've been collecting animal books and nature books since forever. And every time.... Could you tell us a story about when that started, like when you were younger, what that was like? When I was younger I would read little kid books that would tell stories, and I always liked the ones... Well I liked all books but the certain books like... What's that one, it's about, it's called "The Porcupine named Fluffy." And it's about a porcupine who doesn't want to be all pokey, because nobody likes him. So he tries to figure out what he's to do to make his spines not pokey. But then he realizes he needs to be himself and it's funny, it's a funny book. And then as I got older I started reading more non fiction. And I really like, you know, fiction. I've animal atlases that focus on different animals and stuff. So I still like reading for fun but I'm getting a lot more into non fiction as I get older. When you were in school, say in High school, what kinds of things were you reading then? Like... I'm sure, did you take standard English classes in addition to your special classes? Yeah, zoo school was only Junior and Senior year, and it was only half day, so I was still at regular High school the other half of the day and I did English classes. I was in I think all except for one year I was in either in advanced or an honors English class. And I've had really great English teachers every year. Last year I did a composition class and my teacher was Ms. Straub at Gahanna, Lincoln High School. And she is a great writer first of all herself, and then she, she can, when she's reading a persons writing she can really focus on what they're having trouble with even if it's not like really obvious. She just knows, and she'll pull you aside and do meetings with you in class, even if you're not having a lot of trouble. Because I'm a really good writer that's why I'm in the advanced classes. But she still found things I could improve on. And I got 100% on her first portfolio. And she's like "2 people in our class got 100%" Never have two people gotten 100% and rarely has one person got 100% on the first portfolio. So me and the other kid were really proud of ourselves. What was it about the way that she taught that you found very helpful, or very, like how did she grade? She graded hard. Which I think was really helpful. A lot of the kids hated it, because it was an advanced composition class, so they thought they were good writers, we all thought we were good writers. And she did one starting essay, she was like "Pick your favorite quote or a quote that means a lot to you, and write an essay around it. You can write about anything you want." And she said she wasn't going to help us at all. She was like "I'm not going to lie, you guys are going to be really upset with your grades." And a lot of people got Cs and Ds on this first paper when they thought they were really good writers, and it was kind of a kick in the pants for them. What do you mean like she didn't help them at all? She didn't do them meetings to help us, we turned in a draft. And that was, she said if you want to draft, you can draft but you don't have to, you can write it once and turn it in. Which is what a bunch of kids in High School did anyway, they would write the final and then go back and "Oh I changed this" even though they really didn't. And so she handed back our papers, and I got an A, (chuckles), but a lot of kids didn't get good grades and they were really shocked. And then from there she started, she kind of openned herself up and was like "Let's talk about this, I'm going to edit your paper for you, I'm going to have other students edit it for you." And she was like "You need to draft your papers." And I was guilty of writing the final and then going back and making changes to make it look like I drafted. But after her class I write drafts for all my papers now. I can't not draft anymore because my papers won't be as good. In terms of like, if you could give some advice to like someone who's going to be teaching one of these first year composition classes about how to grade their essays... Or about how to teach essay writing, if there's a certain method that you would recommend in terms of like, "Make an outline, make a draft, and then..." Is there something you would say to them? Because they're going to be the ones watching. I would say have the students read essays first. That's another thing Ms. Straub did. We had a composition book, it told us first how to write a certain kind of essay, a certain style of writing. And then it would give us two or three examples, so we could work off of that. We could get inspiration from the other essays. So before you write you should read either about what you're going to write about or read an example of the style of writing. And then make sure you do writing in steps. Because our teacher told us, she was like "Nobody in the history of the written word has been able to write a perfect piece of writing except William Shakespeare, somehow he did it" Even then people were like "Oh, he didn't write his stuff" So she's like "Nobody's perfect, except Shakespeare." So you have to brainstorm, outline, draft, do another draft, have as many people edit it as you can. Make sure it makes sense. Read it out loud. Do everything in stages. As many stages as you can fit into your time limit before your due date. Do that. And then, I don't know just really be involved in your students writing. Talk to them about it if they have questions, be willing to answer it. She didn't, when Ms. Straub editted our papers she didn't just edit, she would give us a cover page to our essay with comments. What she liked, what she didn't like. That's another thing, don't just say what's wrong with it, say what you liked about the essay. So that the student knows what their strong points are and can maybe either put those aside or be sure to use them in the next essay, be sure to use them to their advantage. If you could talk about the connection between like zoology, a field in science, and writing, is there a strong connection there? Yeah. Oh yeah, well with zoo school we did three research papers. And that was... In High school you do research papers too but that's just looking at books and basically restating what other people have already researched. In zoo school and then in Science majors you have to do your own research. Create your own thesis statement, your own hypotheses and do the math do the statistics, collect your data. And it's a completely different kind of research than we do in regular High School. So when you're doing that kind of writing, all of a sudden, you're not taking someone elses thoughts, you're taking entirely new pieces of data that nobody's ever seen before and you have to analyze it and put it into words that everybody can understand. And also in zoo school we did a statistics class. And you wouldn't think that math and writing would have to be connected. But when you're doing statistics you're taking the pieces of data and running all these crazy numbers on it. And then you know what the number means, but you have to somehow translate it into words for other people to understand. So it involves a lot of thinking and a lot of writing skill. To make it accessible to other people. So yeah, science and writing are so connected because a lot of people, and why science and math are so frightening to some people is because it's not easy to understand, because it's just numbers and they don't mean anything to a lot of people. So you have to really be able to communicate in science and math and that's why they're so connected. How are we on time? They said it expired at 49, it's 38. Do you want to end it? If you're done. Is there anything you want to add? Well not talking about science, but then about my childhood. I had this, well my parents started reading to me before I was born. My dad would read to my moms stomach, so they think that's why I like reading so much. But I learned to read like when I was four and I didn't start kindergarten til I was 6. So I've been reading since I was really little. And then I also had this teacher in 3rd or 4th grade who knew I loved reading, and the Harry Potter books had just started getting popular. And she was like "You need to read these" And I was like "Ok." So I tried to get through the first couple chapters. And the first chapters of the first book are really boring becuase they don't really talk about magic or anything. It's like the Dursleys and Harry's aunt and uncle, and they're not very excited. Didn't they go to the zoo in that book? I think that's like the second chapter yeah, I don't know. But I couldn't get through it because I didn't get it, it was so new, and I was like "This is not that exciting, I don't see what everyone loves about it." And so she sat us down, one day in class the whole class, and read the first two chapters of Harry Potter to us, and I couldn't put the book down and she had to stop me from reading during class, because once I got through those chapters... And she knew I was going to love those books, and now I've been following them ever since the last book came out and going to see all the movies. And so she was a really big influence on my life, and on reading because she was like "You have to, I'm not going to let you not read it" And I was like "Alright" and then I loved it.