Final Weekly Update

This week in class we watched some work from Kip Fullbeck. A short film called banana split, I guess kind of a journey through a life? I’m not sure if it was exactly his life or something similar. The story telling was really great, I haven’t seen many films like this before. The story seems to follow the life of someone beginning to question a lot of his life. Who he has dated, the difficulties he has had with interracial dating. This is the type of film I’d have to watch multiple times to really make connections, on the surface I can tell it question a lot of issues we face today.

We also watched a film, Birth of the Dragon, a film that’s supposed to be about Bruce Lee and his fight with Wong Jack Man. It turns out to be a blend of that and a romantic drama. Steve Mckee trying to free a women he meets while making a delivery who is enslaved until she can pay off the cost of traveling to America, which in most cases is never. Wong Jack Man comes to America for penance because of something he did back home. When he arrives Steve wants to meet him, he does and wants lessons from him. Eventually Steve convinces Wong Jack Man to fight Bruce Lee. At first it seems like he agrees because he wants to help free the girl Steve met, but later reveals that he is only fighting Bruce Lee to show him the flaw in his teachings. The film had really bad reviews, understandably so. One thing that stood out to me was the fact that it was supposed to be set in the 60’s but it felt so modern, I can’t really tell what it was, maybe the dialogue, I just kept forgetting that it was set in the 60s. It also was supposed to be about Bruce Lee but he wasn’t really the focus, there was a lot of focus on the love story of Steve Mckee. Overall I found the film to be more comical than anything else.

Final Scissors

So I guess this is the last blog of the quarter, it’s been interesting and has really forced me to think. More specifically, think about issues and sensitive topics that we face today. Issues that I’ve always just ignored, I’ve had my own agenda, bills to pay, homework to do, sleep to get, family to support, it’s easy to find the excuse of being too busy to find the time for reading up on these issues and educating yourself on them. I’ve learned that it’s my responsibility to educate myself on problems that don’t just impa
ct me. So I will be doing this, in many forms.

I would say I have learned a lot this quarter in terms of being more educated on the issues we have of race and why they exist. I can’t really describe anything I’ve learned in details, I’ve been given a lot to think about. One thing I did notice, and I’m not sure if it’s good or bad, but I’ve ever thought about race or color as much in my life as I have in this class. I mean I grew up and spent many years of my life as a minority, not knowing the language or culture of the people I had to go to school with, eat lunch with, be neighbors with. For me I’ve always looked at people for whats under the skin, if I don’t like someone it’s because of actions, words spoken. But I’m realizing that there is more to it than just not judging someone or feeling differently about someone due to the color of their skin, it’s a much more complex and deeper issue than that so I need to
take the initiative to be more active in educating myself.

Final Paper

So I’ve written most of my paper, it’s all over the place though, the last few days of me writing the paper will be me organizing things. The exercise we did in class on Wednesday was actually really helpful, being able to just write things down, take the paper apart, put it back together. Normally I just use a notepad on the computer and just type things out but it’s hard to just put notes in the paper when you’re on the computer. I don’t know, guess it’s just a new way to approach working on papers. Honestly writing papers is really new to me, I know I wrote papers in High school but they weren’t really held to very high expectations, and you don’t really get great feedback in High School when it comes to writing.

While doing this research, much like taking this class, I learned a lot. About myself and the culture we live in. Computer Science has always had a lot of stereotypes, inside and outside of the industry. Outside of the industry, it’s a very common stereotype to assume that if you’re Asian, you’d be good at computer science, and otherwise not, or you’re assumed to be a computer geek or are just a nerd in general and in bad shape. Inside the industry, it’s not a lot different, unfortunately. It’s common for people to be looked at just on the surface, if you look like you’re good at programming, you might get an unfair edge against someone who doesn’t look like they’re good at programming, technical privilege. Now I admit this is totally a possibility and I know it does happen. But from my experience, and I have had to interview people and played a large role in who gets hired for certain programming positions at my previous job, I can tell you first hand that not everyone does this. I’ve had to interview plenty of people and I hire people based off of their displayed abilities and if I think they can work well with a team.

But overall this paper was really fun to write, learning how to write papers, how to use the references, formatting, it’s all been a good refresher to me.

Scissors Update

So the very first thing we did this quarter was sort of a group, ice breaker, get to know each other activity. Basically we walked around with a piece of paper with a bunch of different people, foods, places, things, and found out who knew what these things were. Basically the idea is we were supposed to know all of these things at the end of the quarter. If I had the piece of paper maybe I’d know more now, but honestly I’ve always been bad at retaining details, specific things, I’m good at getting a general idea. So if we read a book, I’ll remember the overall story, and most of the major events in the book, but I’ll forget the names of all the main characters within a few days. I’m not sure if we have covered everything from that paper is my point, but if I were to take anything away from the quarter at this point, it’s that I should be more active in trying to learn about the issues we’ve discussed, and even more than that. Not to say I need to become an activist, but I should just pay more attention, more than I have before, and get may be even get involved.

Paper Update

Some students gave a really interesting presentation in class. I think overall I learned a lot. We started off doing some circle group thing where we stepped into the circle if we had heard of the stereotype before. I think for me, some of the stereotypes were very…general. Could be applied to to a lot of people, but some were definitely things I’ve heard before. For the most part it was a really informative presentation and paired very well with the video we watched before the presentation. There was really only one thing I wasn’t
really sure about. They said, people take Disney movies as very factual…I mean as a kid, I was very aware it was just a movie, even at a very young age. I mean they have movies about mermaids…Beauty and the Beast…I don’t find any of these movies factual and I don’t agree that really anyone else does. That’s not to say that the movies shouldn’t try to be as accurate as necessary when it matter, they should definitely put in the effort. When I watch a movie like Moana, I don’t take what they’re saying and pretend like I know anything about the culture they’re trying to portray, but I do understand people/kids can be influenced very easily.

Project Update Week #8

This week I read some more articles and some papers about just general stereotypes in computer science. It’s been hard to find a lot of resources, and the ones I do find, are far and few. They have been really informative though, and given me some good perspective. This part of the blog is also kind of difficult for me to write, since a lot of it is just reading and research and I don’t want to write too much of what I explored in here as that’s meant for the paper. I guess my thinking process would be helpful? I think the
biggest challenge for me to achieve is the whole linking it to home in some way. I think this topic especially will be challenging, I have some, not so fully fleshed out ideas on how it will work.

Scissors update

Just some random thoughts on some of the themes of what we’ve been looking at, in the texts and movies. Such as immigration, so far almost every context we’ve used has had some note of immigration in it. It almost always involves the people immigrating losing their identity in some way, conforming to the western culture to fit in. Trying to fit in for many reasons too, some bad some good.

I’m sure I’ve said this already but this class has taught me a lot. A lot of just, issues in the world today, in America, issues that are very difficult for me to see because I have a different perspective. It’s also taught me a lot about myself, given me opinions on these issues that I didn’t have before, kind of opening my eyes a little more I suppose? It’s not that I was just blind to issues but I guess they’ve just never been presented to me in this way. I know that’s not exactly what this class is about, it has taught me a lot of how some cultures have evolved into what they are today. I can’t exactly put it into words but I’m a lot closer.

Weekly Update

We watched Mississippi Masala this week, labeled as a romantic drama but it seemed to be much more than that. It was a relationship between African American and Indian Americans and the impacts this relationship had on their communities and families. It had a pretty dramatic impact, when their relationship was discovered, there was a fight, and it basically had a domino effect of Demetrius losing his funds from the bank, Mina almost having to go back to Uganda, people almost getting sued, it was a mess. Eventually Demetrius and Mina moved away together, probably lived happily ever after. Overall I enjoyed the movie at face value. I think it had a lot of valuable issues to learn about, issues that did and still do exist.

I felt really bad for Demetrius when he basically lost everything he had in one night. At first he blamed Mina, I imagine it was hard not to blame her, I mean it all kind of revolved around her. Even though she didn’t really do anything wrong, aside from breaking the “rules”, but to them that seemed to be worth it, considering they ran off together.

Project Update

I wrote my second draft this week. The research I did was somewhat lacking because I just decided on a concrete topic and the resources are scarce, or more generic. The resources usually have to do with stereotypes in the computer science industry. Concepts like technical privilege, same idea as any other types of privileges but for computer science, or technology in general. The idea of technical privilege might sound pretty self explanatory, according to this paper, is being assumed to be knowledgable about technology. In programming, problem solving, just technology in general. The author tells a few stories from his perspective of some people who didn’t have this technical privilege. Examples of this could be people being put in positions they’re maybe not completely qualified for, being able to learn what they need on the job, fake it until they make it, because of the way they look, because they’re part of the major demographic for computer science. On the tail end of this, people not being put in positions that they ARE qualified for because they’re not part of this major demographic.

I plan on finding many more papers, and even saw some NPR talks about the topic which should be interesting. The most challenging part for me is tying this to home, this really
doesn’t hit any notes on home. I have some very rough ideas, but I’m not sure how well it will work.

Weekly Update

Never really sure what to put here honestly. Usually everything I’m thinking about goes in the other topics. Not a lot went on this week, we didn’t have most of our classes aside from the movie we watched and Friday. Read some good papers about computer science and Asian Americans, or cultural stereotypes in computer science. Think I might have a possible topic. Only problem is it doesn’t seem to really touch on the idea of home. It’s an interesting topic though and one I can relate to in ways. Had my conference with our professor, was constructive I’d say. Liked the videos we watched, some were really moving.