Category: 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.

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.

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.

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.

I know this is from last week but it’s something I forgot to comment on. The idea of a shitty first draft. We talked about it during the writing seminar. The idea is to basically write all of your thoughts down on paper, just get it on down, no consideration of grammar, structure, order, anything. Once you have it all down you can go through and start to refine it, organize it in some logical/appropriate way. Once you have that, you can start to go through and create your final product. This felt very familiar to me because it’s a way to problem solve. Any kind of critical problem solving, this process is very helpful. Put all of the context of the problem down on paper, all your variables, clues, everything. Organize it in some logical way, then start to solve it.

We’re already into week four, my impression of this class is pretty positive, I came into it not really sure what to expect. I’ve been taking nothing but science classes for the last four years, and we’ve never had seminar. Well we had seminars, but they were nothing like the seminars we’ve had here. I’ve always been aware that the seminars in my other classes were different than most evergreen seminars. I hear it’s changed this year, for CS classes at least.

I’ll admit, a lot of the topics and issues we’ve conversed about are out of my knowledge base. I suppose I’ve been aware of the issues but never made an effort to educate myself on them. For reasons such as wanting to focus on myself? Being selfish? I guess I’ve just been so focused on other things, just life in general, working a lot while being a full time student, paying bills, but that’s really no excuse, there are plenty of people who similar work loads if not much more. I’ve always just made up the excuse that I don’t have time for anything else, so I think it’s important to make time. I really appreciate listening and getting the perspectives of people who are well versed in these topics, very thought provoking and after enough thought, it helps me form a more educated opinion for myself.

What is APA it stands for Asian Pacific American which is an overbroad generalization then APA is a soulless distillation of an overbroad generalization. I thought that was an interesting thought in the paper. We discussed some of these ideas in class and had some interesting and thought provoking talks. We also read a book about a Chinese American b
oy coming of age. This was a really fun book to read for me, I liked following the boy as he came to learn about his heritage. Starting off, really hating himself in a lot of ways, his name, his heritage, how his dad was trying to get him to understand his heritage.

Reading When the Emperor was Divine was pretty fun. It was a short read and gave me a new perspective on interment camps in the US. I remember learning about these when I was in middle school and high school but it was from our US history text books perspective. Even though it was fictional it was still very thought provoking.
I also read the optional paper about pop culture and it was pretty interesting, I enjoyed it because I’ve always had a hard time describing to myself what pop culture means. The conversation, at least in my social groups, have never really veered into that direction, never asked the question about what pop culture means, but it’s something I’ve questioned many times.