Week 3: Adichie as advice for composing in the Social Sciences

• Adichie offers advice on our own biases and assumptions we may have. She emphasizes how we can identify them and the importance of setting them aside. In my work this semester, I will try to identify any biases I might have toward a particular topic and will not use biased wording in my final published works. 

Week 4: Tan & Lee 

• In both the readings, I believe immigrant culture is present. As a child from an immigrant household a lot of the messages from the readings resonated with me. Especially when Lee references the “awkward scene, and that I would have to speak up to help my mother.” Also, in Tan when she refers to the scene at the hospital where the staff had told her mother that they had lost her CAT scan until she spoke up for her. I related heavily to these scenes because I’ve also had to deal with them. Lee brings an insider perspective of what it’s like to be a Korean-American living in New Rochelle, New York. Tan brings an insider perspective to experiences a Chinese mother might face in Oakland, California. In both readings, we can see the outsider perspective of how other people act towards their mothers. Keeping these in mind, I plan on keeping my reactions to my interviewee’s responses in check. I don’t want to make a face and make her feel a certain way.

Week 6: Observation Experience with Image 

• From the observation I completed, I realized I do not know a lot about field working. I know that it has to do with observing, but I still have several questions that run through my mind. Questions like what do I jot down? What should my notes look like? What do I deem important enough to jot down? Am I being obvious in my observations? Can other people notice me observing them? As a fieldworker, I noticed I felt uncomfortable when observing. I felt like a stalker and an intruder, even though my only interaction was when I ordered coffee. I also noticed I focus on descriptions more than analysis. 

Week 7: Naylor’s Mama Day 

• The character of Reema from this excerpt of Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day reminded me of the character Toni Childs from the show Girlfriends. Toni looks down upon her family who lives in Fresno, California. She often brings up how she escaped that hellhole and thinks the people of Fresno are dumb. Much like Toni, Reema looks down on the people of Willow Springs and since he left to a big city and came back knowing “good English” (pg. 107) he sees himself as better than everyone else. I would describe Naylor’s writing style as authentic. Authentic in the sense that she writes in the way I have heard people talk and she does not correct it. This also stood out to me, since dialogue like “Cause if Mama Day say no, everybody say no. There’s 18 & 23, and there’s 18 & 23 – and nobody was gonna trifle with Mama Day’s” (pg. 106) is not considered academic dialogue. In the second reading, I finally realized that Willow Springs is not a real place. Some ideas about culture that I noted was that sentiments about gentrification and being pushed out from your own land can be felt by many different cultures and people. As sad as it is, it is one way people from different backgrounds can bond. 

Week 8: Wehle 

• An element of field working I found in Wehle’s essay is her descriptive writing. She describes the settings she’s in with such detail. An example of this is how she describes her mother’s bedroom, the way the bedspread would never touch the ground, the carefully placed pillows, and the flat quilts. She also uses dialogue to show the messages left on the answering machine (which honestly almost brought me to tears) and dates to show the passing of time. In my field observation work, I will most likely use time to timestamp my observations. 

Week 9: Baldwin & Shively 

• This article provides cultural information about Harlem and the brutal culture surrounding the police. A question a fieldworker might ask to further uncover this culture is how does culture make you feel? What changes do you wish to see in this area? I think questions that provide insight into how the people of Harlem feel about police brutality are what a fieldworker would ask. I think to get an insider perspective a fieldworker would have to spend a day alongside someone that lives in Harlem to get a sense of what life there feels like. I think the passage of time between both readings shows that even though conditions for black people have improved, there is still a lot of work that has to be done. Black people are still facing racism to this day, and although it might not be blatant like back in Baldwin’s day, it still being felt. Shively recommends we hold the officers who killed George Floyd, Baldwin says we should investigate the Police Department although he believes that would be impossible.

Week 10: One CLO (except #7)

CLO: develop and engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes

• I have engaged in this CLO during the entire semester. When we are asked to do peer review, I believe this CLO aligns most with it. I take into consideration the feedback I receive from my peers and try my best to incorporate it into my revised work. I also believe I have gotten better at providing others with feedback as well. 

Week 13: Benefits of a Literature Review 

• I believe a Literature Review is beneficial in the Social Sciences because it allows us scholars to see what information there is available to us in our respected topics. It also allows us to see what limits there are to our chosen topics. The work I am doing aligns with these benefits because I need to include both available and unavailable work into my final Literature Review. To me, the most interesting detail about my Literature Review is how restrictive reproduction laws set barriers for women seeking abortion care. I find this detail so interesting because I do not see a lot of coverage about specific laws in the news and how those laws affect women. The intended point of my Literature Review is to show my audience the impacts of restrictive reproduction laws, advocacy surrounding abortion in the U.S, and the history of abortion in the country. These points are essential in helping other students understand what is at stake when the government implements restrictive laws.  

Week 14: Reverse Outline 

• I found writing a reverse outline helpful to me. It helped me edit my paragraphs to make sure there was one sentence that completely captured what the gist of the paragraph is. This also helped me with determining what information was most important to show in my Multi-Modal Translation. I have a research prospectus due for another class I’m taking this semester, so I think a reverse outline will help me with making sure I get my point across to my audience. 

Week 15: Composition Process 

• I learned that outlining helps me a lot in my composition process. Before college, I never used to outline because I found it pointless. Now that I am writing longer papers that are at a different standard of writing, I have realized that an outline helps me keep my ideas organized and provides me with a format to follow when I am not sure what to write about.