Learning Narative - Final Draft

    As students we are expected to retain a fair amount of information but between the speed at which it is received and the fairly superficial methods sometimes used to cover rather complex topics much of this information is quickly forgotten. Usually it is forgotten in one of two ways; disuse and letting it go. The former would be those long second language classes that we are now required to take in high school. We may acknowledge their usefulness but without practice and use to keep it fresh it will quietly slip away. The latter can be things like dates for history or those obscure math formulas you spent hours memorizing. How many more times in your life will it come in handy to know that Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated at the battle of Waterloo in 1804 or being able to find the missing side on a right triangle.

Early in life I was an avid student, I wanted to learn everything I could and I absolutely loved finding out new things and it showed in my school work. I was placed in the Talented and Gifted program early in elementary school and this got me put into things like the higher math classes and fun extra-curricular activities. I even had all A-plusses my seventh grade year, though much of that was just lenient teachers assigning entirely too much extra credit, other than my one A in math. Unfortunately this all changed for me in high-school.

By freshman year I was still in advanced placement math but I had elected to stay in general studies for most of my class because those were the ones that most of my friends would be taking. I was much more interested in having classes with my friends and hanging out between classes than I was in trying to further my academic career or thinking ahead to college and the real world. I did alright in most of my classes pulling down solid C’s and the occasional A in the classes I really cared for. However the class I should have paid the most attention to, my Algebra 1/Geometry class, that advanced placement math class, I wound up failing spectacularly. If my memory serves me correctly I wound up with a 37% in that particular class, the worst grade I had ever received.

My miserable failure in that class was in part due to the third or fourth unit covering triangles and how to find missing parts. For example, if you have lengths A and B, find the length of C on this right triangle. The required functions that I still vividly remember not being able to wrap my head around were the dreaded sine, cosine and tangents. Those buttons on my calculator that I could not fathom what job in the real world would ever require me to push them. Needless to say not being able to grasp these key concepts got me far enough behind in class that I wound up throwing in the towel. First period math was now the place where I caught up on sleep.

That summer my dad made me take a summer course to make up for that failed class, I passed it but only just. My sophomore year I stepped out of advanced placement and went back into math for my grade level but again I did poorly, after my one plain A back in seventh grade and the failure from the previous year I had written off math. Once again I wound up in summer school to make up for the botched class, again passing without incident but without much flair. Thankfully though, by this point I had reached the minimum level of math as required by the state and I no longer needed to take any more math courses. I flew through the rest of highschool pulling down decent grades knowing I wouldn’t need to deal with math again until college, thinking that I would again try to get away with as little of that cursed subject as possible.

Looking back on my time in high school I am more than a little annoyed with myself. I skated by passing most of my classes while putting in the least effort possible. I would deliberately take easier courses that I knew I could pass without having to apply myself too hard. Not to knock this completely, some of those courses helped me with things like a complete fear of public speaking or classes that forced me to read things outside of my normal wheel-house. On the other hand it really was not necessary for me to take another class playing with lego’s or most of the art classes I took just because I knew that the teachers were easy graders. I was being lazy and I was trying to ignore it. What drove this fact home for me though was that my family moved in the middle of my senior year.

This particular gem fell into place during the summer between my Junior and Senior year, but we were not well enough organized to have been moved out before the start of classes. As a result, the first week of class I went to the councilor and found out what it would take for me to graduate early. I had gone to school with most of these people since the second grade and I felt that if I were to go to another high school for my last two terms I would resent the whole ceremony and be angrier at my parents for taking my senior year away from me. In my lazy way I had managed to get most of the courses required of me by the state to graduate except a couple of English classes. I had also taken an after school class sophomore and junior year so I was well ahead in credits. After some finagling we got me into the classes that I needed to graduate and they agreed to let me walk in the graduation ceremony that spring. Those classes that I took my abbreviated senior year I got all A’s in. I had to admit to myself that I had screwed off most all of my high school years.

After school ended I went to work for my dad for a few years and eventually I moved out with my girlfriend and my best-friend from high school. When I moved out I knew that I needed to get a second job since the job for my dad had low but odd hours. It just so happened that my now-roommate wanted to quit his job and didn’t want to leave his employer in a lurch. Instead he offered me his position of total-station operator for the field crew of a small land-surveying firm. This was an amazing job as far as I was concerned, it had me outside every day and not trying to actively convince some random person that they really wanted to buy some product from me. It was part treasure hunt, part daily hiking trip and all fun.

One day while I had a bit of down time between measurements I got the idea into my head that I wanted to know how this magical instrument was able to collect the information it gathered from the limited information that was provided to it. Every time I took a shot it would collect a distance measurement from me to my crew chief. It also took a horizontal measurement from “0” and a vertical measure from “90”. After all my spare time between shots was spent trying to work the problem backwards, I had all the real answers since this thing knew how to solve the problem, I eventually gave up.

By happenstance a few weeks later I was going through the manual trying to troubleshoot an unrelated issue, when I came across the page that showed the magical math formula’s. These showed how my instrument could place all of the measurements I had taken on an xyz graph with precision down to the thousandths. There in the middle of the page was my old nemesis; sine, cosine and tangent. The subject that I had wound up loathing in high school, the exact unit that caused me to fail math several times, that horrible equation created by sadists thousands of years ago expressly to torture me in freshman math was at the center of my newfound job that I loved. Without this particular function my job could not have existed.

The whole time I was taking those math classes I could not conceive of a possible use for these functions and equations they were trying to beat into my head. I thought that once I was out in the real world somehow basic math skills would suffice and these more advanced functions served no use to anything that I would ever do. It really just showed me that no matter how trivial and useless a thing may seem at the time, you never know when it may somehow wind up being the lynchpin to your life.

Memorable things from the units readings

All three essays were trying to tell about how the author learned a particular skill or lesson, much like the assignment we were given. Franklin and Malcolm both told how they came about their own self-education while Rose talked about the way that the education system could have failed him. Each author took a slightly different approach in writing their story. Franklin told the account of him being shuffled between potential career paths by his father after his time at school had been interrupted and abbreviated. The whole account, while told from the first person perspective was rather dry of Franklin’s feelings and opinions in the matter. He does not offer much reaction to the things that are happening to him. While very interesting and easily a relatable story for me, the particulars of this one were lost to me almost immediately.

The excerpt from Malcolm’s autobiography on the other hand was less formal and gave the story of him coming to reading by being jealous of a fellow inmates apparent wealth of knowledge. Again told in the first person but it felt more like he was interacting with the reader rather than just giving them an account of his time in prison and the effect that it had had on him. From this story a few scenes will stick with me with one in particular, his reading by the hall light trying to sneak in every last word when able. I remember as a child always having a flashlight or book light under the blankets reading well past my bedtime.

Finally there was Rose’s essay which I think I enjoyed the most. While I have loved to read from nearly earliest memory the story that was drawn up by the final story painted the best set for the location where it took place. He gave a strong impression on the place where the story unfolded, allowing me to get a feel for what it must have been like to be stuck going to a place like that day after day. He described set pieces that were not strictly necessary for the narrative but helped the reader understand it in a way that may not have been possible without the elaboration. Even though I never went to Our Lady of Mercy I can easily conjure up an image in my mind of what the place may have been like.

Three ways of storytelling

Rose’s story was more akin to that of Malcolm X’s in that it felt like a more vibrant story. He fleshed out the characters by explaining personality rather than hard facts about them like in Franklins. One of the things though that I really liked about Rose’s essay was how well the environment was backfilled with characters. Strictly speaking it was not necessary for him to go into such detail about the different teachers as they were not directly related to the quote that he got from Ken Harvey, the title of the essay. More interesting than that was the fact that the teacher of the religion class was not called out as having a name or personality.

Even though Rose did not go into detail about this particular teacher I feel that it did not harm the story any. He described enough of the teachers so that the reader could get a feeling for how the system had delegated him to a lesser track and started planting this notion of all of them being unworthy or sub-par in some way. All of this leads to driving Harvey’s statement home because the reader can get a taste of what these kids went though.

While I personally found all three stories to be interesting I felt that Rose’s was the most filled out and was painted in the most detail. He gave the audience the set to work with filling in each corner and fleshing out the various characters. The other two were not tied as heavily to one location so they presumably did not see it necessary to flesh out all of the details.

How I Develop My Own Papers

While I have always been bad about the prewriting steps I have been a big fan of rough drafts and peer reviews. After I had gotten out of my high school days of not really applying myself enough to care what the grade was, most of the papers or really anything I would write I always re-read to go over it and do some revisions. After that I would give them to one of a few people who’s opinion writing I thought well of and have them look it over.

If I allowed myself the correct amount of time when I was writing a paper I would set it aside once I had finished writing the whole thing for a day or so, an hour or so if I had procrastinated for too long, and reread it. This would allow me to get some of the immediate preconceptions of what I was saying while I was in the thick of it to seep away and try to look at it a little more objectively. When I was reading again there were a few things I was looking for; first spelling and grammatical errors. In this age of F7 or spell check it was not as much looking for incorrectly spelled words but wrong versions of words or flat wrong words that had inadvertently been introduced by lavish use of these tools. After that I would look for sentences I found myself re-reading. I read quite a bit and as a result I have developed an ability to recognize something that does not flow well (it is not a perfect skill), as a result if I found myself rereading something it was likely because it had interrupted the line of thought in such a way that I could not continue. So I would rewrite the line until it would flow.

The final thing I would do is send it off to a friend who would then mark it up for me. Catch any other issues I had missed in the previous section but more importantly give me an outside point of view that does not have all of the context rolling around in their head. They could point of if something I had said was not well enough developed or an idea should be explored further to better help the reader understand what was going on. In addition to this they could tell me where I was getting a bit long winded and to wind up a particular thought or remove it entirely.

Cubing Math

So called “useless” information

Describe it-
When you are in a classroom and the teacher is talking about something that you think you will never use in life, be it Roman History or how to use a semi-colon. For me that was math, more specifically Sine, Cosine and Tangent. All through school I was in “advanced placement math” up until high school where they introduced me to these concepts. I was doing well until that unit and from there till the end of the class I had fallen behind to the point where I used that as my catch up on sleep class. I ended up taking the class again and passing the second time but only barely. That ended my attempt at math for High school. My first round at college I had to take that level course again since it had been so long. Again I did well until that unit where I then fell behind and wound up failing because I just could not get my head around how this could possibly useful. I would never have to use this in the real world for any reason. After I moved out of my parents house I got a job at a land surveying firm where it turns out that every time I take a measurement with the instrument those are the functions vital to the equations that made my job possible.   

Analyze it-
I am good at remembering random trivia, I do alright at retention of small things, but where it comes to larger concepts I have a very difficult time retaining them if I cannot link them to something functional in life. Math almost seems to embody this notion of stuff they are teaching you that you will never ever need to know how to do in the workforce. How many jobs actually require you to know how to find the long side of a right triangle, or mathematically be able to find a missing length with given angles. Now that I have the practical side of that down I know if I were to take it again I would have a much better time with it because I would be able to relate it to something functional and therefore force myself to retain it.

Argue-
You never know when something someone teaches you will come in handy. That rope knot used to pull a tarp tight, how to signal that you are turning on a bicycle, or how to set a splint. Some things you retain because you think they could be absolutely vital someday, others you remember by chance, but many are forgotten because they are deemed unnecessary for the life of the common man. Sometimes those ones you inadvertently forget are the ones that could turn out to be the underpinning of some major aspect of your life. Just because you can not see the use for it today does not make it useless.

Apply it-
One day while I had a lot of down time between measurements I decided that I wanted to try to figure out how the instrument could determine a horizontal distance based on a known angle off of a ninety and a known slope distance. I drew a diagram in my field book with all of the appropriate tools, the total station measuring device on top of a tripod, and a prism on top of a rod, and because I did know some geometry I knew to draw in a little triangle between the parts with the long distance being the slope distance and the known angle being my vertical axis. I then entered in known values and the true answers since the field calculator had done all of my work for me. From there I tried to work backwards to find out how the calculator arrived at the answers it had with the limited geometry I had retained. After about thirty minutes of filling the page with failing mathematical equations I gave up. About a week later I was going through the total stations manual for an unrelated issue and I came across the page that described how the total station did its magic. My old nemesis sine, cosine and tangent.

Being Average

1) Rose had a very sub-par educational experience at the hands of the teachers of Our Lady of Mercy, where the teachers ran a range of uninspiring characters. There was the abusive Brother Dill and the unnamed physical education teachers who would use physical deterrents to misbehavior like a paddle or Brother Dill actually slapping the students across the face. Then there were those that were not prepared for the roles they were given as a teacher like Mr. Mitropetros who had the students reading the same text, Julius Caesar, aloud and only changing up who read which character when the students finished reading the play. I do not remember having an experience like this in part because there were the classes that I was interested in and classes where I gave it my all. For the latter they were memorable and the former I probably could not list them off if I tried. The closest I would have would be the ones where the teachers did not have the control over the classroom that they should have, trying to hard to be friends with students rather than teachers, but nothing to the level that Rose describes.

2) Vocational Education marginalized the students who had the misfortune to be labeled as non-achievers by their poor test marks. This likely lead to the appointment of teachers who were not as effective at their position to this post or caused the teachers that may have had a chance at teaching the children to write them off. It also encouraged the students to think less of themselves or accept that they would not achieve, developing methods of floating along with the least effort possible.

3) There are a number of reasons why High School may have been disorienting to a student like Ken Harvy; high school takes place in a time in our lives where most cultures not viewed from our lense of the 21st century starts to mark a boy a man. An adult who is responsible for themselves and expected to do something. Instead high-school becomes a place where you are still marked as a child despite the contradictory message from your own body and thousands of years of society. Also the whole Vocational Education program described here was as the author described it as a “dead-end.” Holding the students long enough that society accepted them as adults without giving them much in the way of hope of climbing from the ranks of the lower class. Some, like Ken Harvey, just develop lower expectations of themselves and strive to do nothing better than get by.

4) The biggest level of disorientation I have experienced was the shift back into the school mindset from having been a “functional member of society” from ages 18-22. In this I mean I had moved out of my parents house, I had my own place with a job I held for that entire period. In order to go to school though I had to make certain sacrifices with the notion that it would pay off. Things like quitting a job that paid me well enough to not worry much about going to dinner with my girlfriend and taking her out to the movies with friends, and doing this without worrying about having to split the check or ask her to cover this one. I just keep my eyes on the prize, what I am working towards and accepting the change for a small stumbling block.

5) I found that in high school I did not care much. I would never do the homework but I could get by on good test grades because testing was one of my strong points. While I hated getting an F or D, I was happy with a C and I did not find myself trying to achieve those higher grades. After the four year hiatus that was joining the workforce I developed a better sense that school was not just a place to hang out with friends but to work towards a better end, and as a result I have been taking my college years much more seriously.

Pre-writing Techniques

I must admit I haven’t used most of the methods covered by the book as methods of pre-writing. I have done some brainstorming/listing when it comes to school work related projects and I have done some form of freewriting but even that would be by loose definition of the word. It is one of those skills I have not yet developed in a meaningful way but I have a strong suspicion its one of the reasons I do not have a fond appreciation of writing type assignments. I try to be an organized person for most of what I do but when it come to writing assignments in the past I almost always do a little reading then I start writing and go from there, doing spot revisions as I go and in depth research when I come across the topic I need information on. This results in a rough draft that I then review, do a few more spot edits, then I hand over to a friend for one final look through.

I think that if I were to develop some of these pre-writing skills it would make the whole project less stressful and significantly more enjoyable than they have been in the past. I should start the projects more with a listing type activity trying to think up many of the relevant topics or ideas. I can then use this to help develop the free writing, less as a whole paper and more as individual topics to help trim up the paper by finding the relevant ideas and remove some of the unnecessary fluff. Other ones that I think would be interesting on larger projects would be things like looping and clustering to help develop ideas in the early stages and find the transition points easier.

Response to "Learning to Read"

In the excerpt “Learning to Read” from Malcolm X’s autobiography he talks about how he first got onto his particular path towards learning. In his story he starts out by saying he was the “most articulate hustler out there” but still felt lacking in his writing skills. He goes on to talk about how he educated himself to the level of eloquence that he was better known for later in life. It started with his incarceration where a man called Bimbi was able to inadvertently point out Malcom’s own level of ignorance. This caused him to try to become as learned as he was but all of the books he picked up “might as well have been written in Chinese” again illustrating his lack of knowledge. Malcolm then started at the beginning, one of the most basic levels of learning a language you can get, he read the dictionary. This would allow him to greatly expand on his vocabulary and comprehend larger concepts.

Something about this that struck me was he did what many of us do many times we try to learn something, I know I can be guilty of this, he tried to start where he thought he should be and wound in over his head. Rather than take the common road of defeat though, giving up on the learning experience, he did something that many won’t do but is foundational to most educational experiences. By picking up the dictionary he wasn't trying to teach himself sentence structure, proper punctuation, or even how for format a paragraph, he was starting with the most basic blocks of all of the rest of it was dependent on, the words themselves.

I know myself when I try to learn something I want to jump straight into the level of what I am trying to emulate, and while trying to do it this way can occasionally produce functional results I feel that there is always a certain something you miss by doing it this way. Ever since I got my Android phone I have wanted to write some personal use type applications for it. Android uses Java for the coding language, but most times I would pick up a how to write Java type book one of the common early statements was “you should have some basic understanding of C or some other object oriented language, you can get by without it but you would benefit greatly but having this background.” As a result I have given up on jumping right into Java programming have instead I bought myself a C++ book instead.

Excerpts from Malcolm X and Benjamin Franklin

While the excerpts from the autobiographies of Malcolm X and Benjamin Franklin both talked about how they came to be as learned as they were there was definitely a different tone between the two. In both experiences they talked about what it was in their lives that lead them to be the voracious readers that they had become, and in both they showed in someway how their lives could have steered them in a different path had something gone different at key points, but one of the accounts felt more sterile than the other. In Franklin’s story if he had done as his father feared and “get to sea” or even been content in one of his earlier attempts at apprenticeship he may have never been put in the position that lead to his ability to read as much as he did. Similarly had Malcolm not gone to the Norfolk Prison Colony and had the access to the wealth of knowledge there he likely would never have gone down the path his life had led him to.

That would be where the excerpts differ though, I found Malcolm’s retelling to be much more personal. He would use the voices of his characters by including quotations from them and stronger punctuation, painting a much more colorful world. Whereas Franklins excerpt was much more cut and dry and it felt more like he was giving a chronological account of the time rather than telling a story. Even with that said I found both to be engaging and informative, so even without the level of voice that is presented in Malcolm X’s paper Franklin’s shows that it could be just as effective.

Cubing Goats and Fingerpaints

Today's in-class assignment was to use the cubing method to explore a topic with the group. Once a topic was settled on each person was supposed to pick one of the six "ways of looking at a topic"; Describe it, Analyze it, Compare it, Apply it, Associate it and Argue it.

GOATS - DESCRIBE 

Goats have freaky square shaped pupils. They are smallish four legged hoofed mammals in similar to cows or sheep in that they have been domesticated by humans over our long history. They usually stand anywhere from 24-36” at the shoulders with hair that is usually shades of black, browns and whites. This hair can range from short to long. Goats often have some form of horns on their heads, not as developed as say a bull or a ram may have but some short stubby sort of horn. One popularly depicted feature of a goat are their beards. Another common idea of goats is that they can be mean spirited, ramming into you just for the fun of it. They come in all sorts of varieties; they can be simple pets like the pygmy goat, they can produce milk for cheeses and drinking, or they can be a meat animal for consumption. They are also often found in petting zoo’s at county fairs, pumpkin patches and zoo’s. I have no idea where they come from before domestication but if I were to guess I would say Africa would be their continent of origin.  

 FINGERPAINTS - APPLY 

Finger-paints are can be used in a great many applications with the most commonly recognized mental image being that of young children covered in it in preschool and early grades. Here it is used as a creative outlet for the children that can be entertaining for the children but a potential nightmare for the people watching over them. This simple medium can be used as a great non-direct teaching method for children to learn colors, how the primary colors mix to create the whole color spectrum and how not to get themselves covered in it by the end of the project. The last usually takes a little longer to sink in or is ignored completely. Other uses of finger-paints is in art-therapy. I don’t know anything about this other than the fact that it is done.  

This method of analyzing as topic can really help to both explore and focus a topic. I found that while trying to describe a goat I wanted to move into the other categories to expand on what I was writing. I feel that trying to stick more to the chosen approach would make the project, if done in whole, better rounded. Each way of looking at a topic can potentially be developed into much larger sections on the subject, particularly if you were to use the easily found transitions to expand on a particular facet.

Getting an "A"

In order to get an “A” on this first project, these early blog posts that we create should play an integral part in the development of the final paper. Each of the responses we give to the various assignments during this section should somehow feed into the final paper, building on our knowledge base. When the time comes for us to finally assemble our first project we should be able to use this collected works to streamline the writing of the paper.

For example the first few readings showed different writing styles and from this small body of works we can help decide on a method and style of writing. For example both “How I Learned to Program Computers” and “How I Learned to Live Google Free” used a strongly chronological style narrative, with the former outlining his experiences based around the websites he had built and how each one built onto his foundation of knowledge. Something else that both showed was language could help to endear or alienate the audience. During the in-class discussion a number of people either liked or disliked one of the two papers in part due to the level of technical jargon or if the reader felt like they were being talked down to.Considering the audience that the paper will be targeted toward can help to avoid alienating the audience in order to keep them engaged during the course of the paper.

The first two articles, "How I learned to Program computers", and "How I learned Google Free", followed a more step by step progression, whereas the last reading "Learning to Read" came across more as a journey. There is far more emotion than the former readings, making it more evocative. The step by step nature of the first two are easy to digest and there goal is simply stated in the heading. "Learning to Read" is a little deeper than just the topic at hand.


Christopher M. Roberts
Jacob Holcombe
Anthony Villanueva

First Days Homework

For the first two readings in this course we were asked to read “How I Learned to Program Computers” by Feross Aboukhadijeh and “How I Learned to Live Google-Free” by Joshua J. Romero. Both of these readings talked about an experience that the author had with technology and the role it played in their lives and an experience they gained somehow in their interaction with it. I found both of the articles to be interesting with each having a slightly different approach at telling the story.

           Both of these articles shared a few things that I may try to incorporate into my own educational narrative. The thing that stood out to me the most was the use of humor. This can make all the difference between and engaging or a dry read. Of the two I felt that the one written by Romero incorporated this better, an example was his quoting the microsoft representative comparing google to cigarettes. Another thing that I liked was the organization, the way that the stories were chronologically told. I felt that Aboukhadijeh did a better job of this while Romero tended to ramble a little bit. “How I Learned to Program Computers” did a very good job of breaking the story into pieces and explaining why it was included.