Category: Rock

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.

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.

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.

This week started off as me still not really knowing what my topic is about. I wrote my first draft as generally as I could, kind of just to get it written. Maybe this isn’t the best approach, but if I don’t know what I’m going to write about then it’s better than nothing. My motives aren’t to just sneak by, to get something down on paper to turn in. I am genuinely interested in the topic and writing the paper. I haven’t really stressed about it much since it’s not like I haven’t been trying. I think about the fact that I need a topic idea often but I don’t really know how to find a topic idea. Usually when I’m doing a project, it’s a software project, finding some sort of large program to make. I can think of many ideas for something like that, it’s what I know. This on the other hand, it’s hard for me to find a starting point.

This week I did decide to explore the topic idea of Asian Americans and computer science. I read a few articles and papers about some of the cultural stereotypes in computer science. The writer starts off telling a very believable story, about his upbringing, both of his parents being engineers. How they got him started in programming, giving him books from their graduate years for him to read about operating systems and compilers. The story was, well very believable because he told it from the perspective of someone who actually knows computer science. So after he told this story he breaks us the news that the whole story was a lie, but I could still tell that he was very knowledgable about computer science just by the way he told the story, the details involved. The paper goes on to talk about how he did eventually go to MIT and major in computer science and how he experienced no micro-inequities, because of the way he looked. He was part of the major demographic for computer science, white or Asian males. This paper was actually a really interesting perspective, because normally you hear from the person who experienced the micro-inequities, the person who isn’t part of the major demographic. Instead of facing implicit bias or stereotype threat, he had the privilege of implicit endorsement (Philip Guo, Silent Technical Privilege, slate.com). Basically because he looked the part, people assumed he knew what he was doing, he was able to fake it until he made it. The paper later goes on to talk about some experiences of other people, who were not part of the
major demographic of computer science.

So this week we turned in our first draft. Since we didn’t have to meet the requirements of the full seven page paper, we only needed to have three full pages, it was a little easier to write without having a concrete idea of my topic. I basically just wrote about several ideas of what home could be. I don’t think there really is a concrete way to describe what home is, it’s a different definition for everyone but it refers to the same place. My research included really, nothing for this week aside from writing the paper. When I start reading some of my resources I’ll be able to make some of the connections. The draft itself was fairly unorganized, it was a lot of just discussing the idea of home and it’s possible meanings with the occasional story.

We also did peer reviews of our papers, feels like this is the right place to talk about that since it was directly related to our paper. We got into a group of three and read each others paper then gave feedback. I think for some people they made the paper less personal because other people would be reading it. Which I suppose is the right thing to do, don’t put things into the paper you’re not comfortable with other people reading. But that also kind of takes away how personal it could be, maybe getting in the way of some creativity. Aside from that, the feedback was great. I’ve literally never taken a writing class in college, and in high school, might as well say I didn’t go to high school since I wasn’t there half the time. But it was definitely reassuring. My only complaint was we only had an hour to read three papers and discuss each one. We wanted to discuss them a lot more but time fell short.

Having people give me feedback was really useful to me, but I also really enjoyed reading other peoples papers. Reading the papers gave me some insight on what I could consider writing about, if I was on the right track or completely lost. To be a great writer, you probably would benefit from reading other peoples writings. If I were to speak from experience, to be a great programmer you should be reading other peoples code often. Good or bad, you’re learning things. If you can recognize that the code is bad.

Another benefit from the peer review was I got some help on creating a concrete topic idea. I still don’t have one but I think I have a little more direct. Reading the papers helped with that but the reviewers also gave me some feedback. I need to do a little more research I suppose.

This week was spent working on my annotated bibliography, finding the best resources to aid me in researching my project. I wanted a combination of perspectives on the historical events I’ll be studying, including personal interviews, memoirs, biographies, and narratives. I think it’s important to get the different perspectives, especially in conflicts, it gives you both sides of the story. The resources I decided to use relied heavily on getting personal interviews, I find them really interesting, I think it gets you as close as you can get to these events without actually being there. One of the books, Strangers from a different short, is a collection of all of these perspectives and it covers a wide range of topics, so I’m pretty excited to explore them all.

I’m going to spend this weekend doing some research on my resources. What books, papers, articles, anything related to what I want to write my paper on. Since I don’t have a super concise idea of what I want my paper to be about, I’m going to use this research to 1) find resources, and 2) clarify my topic. I basically want to get more into the details of, I suppose “real history”. Not to say the history I’ve learned wasn’t real, but I want to get different perspective, memoirs, biographies, etc. We’ve been reading some historical fictions and it’s interesting since I get to hear about history from a perspective I’ve never seen, or things I never really thought about, ways people experience their heritage and how much different it is from the way I experience mine. Maybe it’s because I’m so much more disconnected from my heritage, I mean I’m not even really sure what I am. I get told I’m Irish, Canadian, German, Native American, a long list of things. I’ve never really felt any connection to any of those and no one in my family has ever tried to give me a sense of what it means to be whatever it is I am.

I’m still not completely sure what I want to write my final paper on. I don’t have a concrete idea, all I know is I’m interested in getting a better idea of the real history. I suppose in this context I want the real history of Asian Americans and Pacific Islander Americans, in general I’m just more intrigued with history. In high school, history was never an interest of mine, but honestly, I wasn’t interested in any academics.
Most of the research I’ve done is trying to find good resources for this project. I’ve done a few Individual Learning Contracts (ILC) and internships here at TESC and one of the most important tasks when planning these contracts is finding good resources. Finding a good text book for a thread takes a lot of research, researching the author/s, the content of the book, just because it’s a book about networking doesn’t mean it’s in the context I want. There are quite a few good memoirs I’m going to check out since that’s kind of the angle I want to get, I want to get the perspective of people who experienced whatever I’m reading about, first hand.