Blog 7 - Second Interview Preparation

Who is your mentor and where do they work? If their workplace does not reflect their expertise, what makes them an expert? 

My mentor is Alison Baker, an english professor at Cal Poly Pomona. She is an ‘expert’ because she has years of experience as an english teacher, children’s english teacher and specifically with folklore. I’m not sure if I’m going to focus on folklore but I think it would be something to look into.

 What five questions will you ask them about their background? 

• What college did you attend and did it help you find your your current job?
• Did you plan on becoming  a professor or was it unexpected?
• When did you start to love reading/stories? (for ex. I didn’t enjoy reading until the 4th grade)
• Do you think you could be an author? If not, why not?
• How important do you think language is when telling a story?

"So Matilda's strong mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all the authors who had sent their out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone. "

-Roald Dahl, Matilda

Update on Mentorship

Here it is in all its glory, The Lewis Library and Technology Center

I have been working at the Lewis Library for a little more than a month now in the children's section. It's sort of like trying to sort through a dictionary the size of a small house and never being able to sit down for a break. Oddly enough, I still enjoy it (tiresome as it is) and I've started to refer to the books as my children.

Some difficulties I have encountered during my time here:

1) The bloody nonfiction section. I absolutely detest those horrible shelves of doom and pain. Just imagine putting an entire stores worth of clothes into your closet and trying to sort it by its shade of color. Now you have an idea of what the nonfiction section is like. I spend about an hour desperately trying to shelve a cart full of books by decimal points that go as far as the thousands. When I finish, I feel like crying because I'll turn around see that someone just dumped their pile of books onto my cart.

2) Children are strange. Something that I have noticed is that they are intimidated by me, despite the fact that I look 12. Whenever I have a cart, I see a few kids looking at it from afar as if they desperately need to know what's on it. If I ever talk to them directly to explain that they can look at the cart if they want, they scramble. So, since I have to cooperate and help as much as I can,I have devised a system. I leave the cart at the end of an isle near the kid and walk away with a couple of books. As they slowly drift towards the cart, I pretend to be busy with the books. I continue to straighten already straightened books or re-shelve some stragglers until they're satisfied and then I take back the cart and continue whatever it was that I was doing before.

3)  I was just minding my own business in the D section when it happened. You see, you can look through the shelve, past the books, into the next isle. Well, in the next isle (The C section) there was a boy about 7 years old. He hadn't noticed me but he was looking around like he didn't want to get caught so I watched to see what he was doing. He pulled out a pencil from his pocket and pushed it behind some books on the shelve directly in front of me. He checked again that he was safe, smiled, then walked away. Honestly, children are weird.

“Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along―the same person that I am today.”

 ― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game 

Blog 6 - Advisory Prep

My general reaction to the project so far.

1. What has worked well for you concerning senior project this year?  What has made it a positive experience for you? 
The research checks, they do me the most good. I sort of take a day to scour the internet looking for things I might be interested in surrounding my topic. I leave all of the links on a doc and every week for research check I just take two of the links I have saved. During research check when I’m writing notes I add extra notes an questions for myself for the topics that interested me most. Right now, thats’s the most important thing to me. I want to know what, specifically, I am going to be learning about. I really like the freedom of the sources. For example, I can get a lot of information about an author from an interview with them. It makes it easier to compare their writing to their personality when I can hear their voice and tone. I also really really REALLY like the fact that I know that my essential question can be more creative and less formal and stifled.

2. What are you finding difficult concerning senior project?  How can you adapt to make that portion work better for you?  How might the senior team help?

Since the senior team explained that our essential questions can be a lot more creative than last years, I’ve been having trouble knowing my limits. During the summer I made an essential question that was more formal. I used what I had seen from last year as examples of how to write it. It hadn’t made me very happy because I felt that my senior project wasn’t interesting anymore. But now, I don’t know how to write it. How creative is too creative? Can I ask questions like “what does the inside of an authors head look like when writing a book?” or is that too out there? What if I want to ask “How does a person choose a book to read?” but I want to talk about the readers opinions, not the analysis of book covers and sales rates? I want my project to be creative and filled with ideas and opinions. I want to present and feel the excitement and intrigue, something I felt was lacking last year. I want to know if I will still be able to come up with a good essential question and keep my creative ideas alive.

And more on that subject, what if the answers I find at the end of my project are more opinion based? Writing is not something that can be put down as fact. Writing styles are always changing from author to author. Even the rules of grammar can shift after a few years or an especially influential book is released. Do my answers need to be based on fact? Wouldn’t that mean that I would need to change my focus to something more definite?

"Lower the bar from "best seller" to "would not make someone vomit"

- Chris Baty, No Plot? No Problem!

"There is a theory which states that if everyone discovers exactly what the universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable."
"There is another which states that this has already happened"

- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Blog 4 - House Advisory Prep 1

What do I expect out of my senior topic? To be honest, I chose my topic because I knew I could use it as an excuse to read about my favorite authors and say it was for educational purposes. I wanted to take advantage of this year to answer my never ending questions about creating stories and characters and plot lines and everything.  It actually does work out that way because my favorite authors just happened to have written books on telling stories and explaining their experience as authors. 

Blog 3 - First Interview Preparation

1.  Who do you plan to interview?  Why?

I am going to interview my mentor professor Alison Baker because I want more information about my topic before I narrow it down and she is pretty experienced and I think the conversation will be great.

2.  Five questions will be assigned to all seniors to ask.  What additional questions do you plan to ask?  Ask open-ended questions.  

• How did you end up in your field? Did you always love books and stories or did you just fall upon it later in life? 
• Have you ever felt a really strong connection to a story or book or quote? 
• What was it and how did it make you feel?
• Do you think you could be an author? If not, why not?
• What do you think it takes to be an author? 
• How important do you think language is when telling a story?