Interview 3

My interview went great!

This afternoon at approximately 1pm I met up with my dear mentor Mrs. Alison Baker. We talked a bit about the book she let me borrow, Folk and Fairy Tales, and I gave her some book recommendations as well. We went on to our interview and it was so good! By good I mean that it was incredibly thought provoking and inspired me to consider new answers to my EQ. We discussed her novel, a story about two children adventuring with Thor the Norse god. She explained what had inspired her story and what she left in the story that would tell us about herself. We also discussed the academic point of view on my EQ as well as her own. She recommended more authors for me to check out and then we wrapped it up with me asking why she wrote. I would label this as a success and I am excited to do another interview with an author I met at the Fontana library. I would like to compare their answers, since their genres, experience and sex are so different.

"When you hear people talk about talent, I have no idea what that is. All I know is that at a certain age, some kids fall in love with language."

-Bob Schacochis

Thoughts on Senior Project

I am so excited about senior project!! 

Lately I have been stressing about what I am going to do about my lesson. I wasn't sure how I could teach my first answer to my audience. And how could I keep them as I excited as I was about stories?

It felt like a chore rather than an opportunity to share what I have been learning. In reality, I am always waiting for someone to let me unleash the dam of built up excitement about stories. So why worry? The only thing I should be worrying about is how I am going to pick which things to talk about and which ones I cannot. The worst thing should be the thought of limiting myself.

Sometimes, I think that maybe my first answer is wrong. But then I remember that I am allowed to change my answer and that no one will tell me that I cannot. Then I worry that maybe I won't be able to back up my answer. But then I realize that nothing is concrete in literature. There are no set rules, not even to grammar and spelling. There are hundreds of possible interpretations to everything, which means that no matter what I decide, I can't be wrong. I just have to believe it.

My last thought just happened a few hours ago. I was reading one of my books, The Glimmer Train by Susan Brown and Linda Davies, which is an absolute gem. I was getting all bubbly because of all of the wonderful quotes when it hit me. I really like the senior project. Like, a lot. I always hear the other students complaining about how they are done with it and just ready for it to end, but I can't get enough. I am literally being given a grade to read books and talk to cool people. I get to spend a few hours of school every week just talking about what I love. And then at the end of the year I get two hours to share all of this with everyone else! How is this not something to love? The independent component is your chance to explore your passion however you'd like. The essential question is something that you truly want to know, that you get to explore for a year. This is such a good project!! All I have to say to those other students is, I'm sorry you picked the wrong topic. And to the teachers, thank you for giving us this opportunity, I appreciate how much work you put into this just so that we can enjoy school.

"When someone tells me that something is impossible, I feel sorry for them because they don't have any sort of imagination."

-unknown

Mentorship; Level Up!

  My beautiful creation, the graphic novel section

Today was a really cool day at the library. When I got there, I noticed that there weren't any carts of books to shelve so I wandered around trying to find a librarian to ask what to do. I found one and when I asked, he decided to let me take on the relocating of a section. It probably sounds lame, but it was actually really cool for me.

The graphic novel section had been getting sort of out of control recently. We were running out of space on the designated shelves and the books were suffering for it. It hurt just looking at them all smushed together and unorganized, most of the time almost falling off the shelf. So the library decided they needed to be moved, and then I was given the task of doing it. I was to relocate them to the front of the children's section and set up the displays. (the books that interest the kids so that they browse)

Let me tell you, it was tough work. It was two hours of carrying books, squats, organizing, reorganizing, and squatting more. My back aches, my eyes feel dry and my legs are sore. But it was worth it because the shelf looks awesome and I am proud of myself.

Besides that it was a pretty quiet day at the library. This has probably been the calmest Thursday I have ever worked. Usually there are kids running around or being tutored or even just making piles of books that I will eventually need to reshelve. But as you can see in the photo below, it was nearly empty.

The empty Thursday

“A story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.”

-Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Third Interview Preparation

There is so much within a story, is it possible that an author has not only put their characters into it, but possibly even a bit of themselves?

1.  Who do you plan to interview?  What is this person's area of expertise?
Ah yes, I am going to interview my mentor Alison Baker for the second time. She is an author and a professor at Cal Poly who specializes in Folklore. As an author I am hoping for another example of how an author can reflect themselves in their stories, particularly through their characters. 

2.  Verify that you have called your interviewee to schedule an interview.  What is the date and time of the interview? 
Next Monday  at 1:00 pm in Alison Baker's office in Cal Poly.

3.  Phrase an open-ended question that will help you find research resources that would help to answer the EQ.

• Teachers say that you shouldn't assume that authors are writing about their personal experiences, what have you read or seen that can support this?

4.  Phrase an open-ended question that will help you think about other useful activities you might do to help you answer the EQ (IC2, possible experts to talk to, etc).

• How would you engage students in an activity about storytelling when they are not as invested in storytelling as you are?

5.  Phrase two open-ended questions that help you to understand your interviewee's perspective on an aspect of your EQ.

• Do you believe that an author can be learned about through their stories?
• Do you believe that it is possible to over analyze? and if so how do you know when to stop?

“You must write every single day of your life... You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads... may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.” 

― Ray Bradbury

Blog 12: Holiday Project Update

This is me as a librarian except I don't wear glasses. But I do have the "I am the librarian, and I will not take your sass" look down.

1.  It is important to consistently work on your senior project, whether it is break or we are in school.  What did you do over the break with your senior project?

Unfortunately, I had a family emergency that occupied most of my time during the break. However, I was able to fit in a few things to my schedule. For one I still went to the library to volunteer on Thursday. I was also able to finish my book, the Red Tent by Anita Diamant, about Dinah the sister of Joseph King of dreams. I like the idea that there are more to mythology and lore than just Celtic and this was a perfect example. There was another book, a book of fairy tails, but I only got to read a few chapters over the past two weeks. 

2.  What was the most important thing you learned from what you did, and why?  What was the source of what you learned?

It's not so much something that I learned than it is something that I realized. There are two things. First, I really appreciate the roles of woman in stories, particularly in fairy tales. You can tell a lot about when and where the story was created by how the woman are treated. For example, in older Celtic lore the woman are portrayed as wise and beautiful. The husband is foolish and makes mistakes while the woman come up with clever schemes and solutions. This is a clear sign that when this story was created it was during a matriarchy. The woman were mostly in charge and the men had lesser jobs like hunting and fighting. 
The second thing that I realized is that I really want to know how an author's mind can affect the way they tell/ write a story. While english teachers will usually say that there is no proof that stories are autobiographical  I believe there has to be a connection. When an author writes a story they usually write what they know, or something they heard or maybe even something they wished had happened to themselves. And if an author does manage to separate themselves from a story completely, I wonder if they live more in their own stories than in the real world. It's all really interesting stuff and I think I want to use it in my lesson #2

3.  Your third interview will be a 10 question interview related to possible answers for your EQ. Who do you plan to talk to and why?
I think I want to talk to a librarian or a book critic or just another lover of books. I don't know for sure yet but I want it to be someone who really likes to look deeper into authors and their meanings. I want a second opinion on my answers. I want to know if what I am thinking is just the thoughts of a random book lover or if there are other people with theories like mine.