This movie we watched covered the struggle of a young Vietnamese man, a Bui Doi as many called him. He was born from an American father, a GI. He started off being treated very differently than everyone else in his village, many people did not like him because it reminded them of past events. Eventually he decides he wants to go find his parents, he goes into the big city and finds his mother, she tells him about his father, how they were married. She said one day he was there, the next he was gone. Eventually he has to flee from Vietnam, going on a…Not even really sure how to describe the journey, it was horrific. He was in some sort of prison camp for awhile, then stuck in the hull of a ship where his baby brother eventually got sick and died. Once he finally got to America, he wasn’t really treated any better than while he was in Vietnam. He was forced to work until he realized that he was actually an American, he was told that since his father was an American GI he could have gotten a free flight to America and that rightfully enraged him. He lost his baby brother during that trip, he endured a lot, much more than most. He eventually finds his father, who is blind, and pretty much discovers why his father had to leave Vietnam. I really liked the movie, as hard as it was to watch at certain times, it was a moving story.
Project Update
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.
Scissor thoughts
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.
Debut
We watched the movie Debut. About Ruben, basically wanting to go to an art institution instead of UCLA for med school. His father, who was really strict didn’t want that. He considered it a hobby, pass time, not a skill. He didn’t think it would be something worth spending all his money on to go to school for. Ruben was stuck trying to decide which party to go to, his sisters 18th birthday or his friends high school party. Some of the discussion after the movie suggested it had something to do with him deciding between his heritage. He seemed to want to go to his sisters party because it’s the right thing to do, but he wanted to go to the other party because a girl he liked was going, which isn’t strictly wrong, but to go to that party over the huge party being thrown for your sister is probably at least slightly wrong. He ends up going to the high school party for a little bit, while he is there he basically gets treated like shit by some drunk white girl who eventually starts yakin all over herself. After that he realized that he didn’t want to be there, his friends took him back to his sisters party and more drama ensued.
I think one thing I want to note is, when we discussed the movie afterwards, people made a lot of comments and good notes about why his father started to be more accepting of his decision to go to art school. Before, he was just mad at his dad, he didn’t care that his dad wanted him to go to UCLA to be a doctor, he wasn’t interested in why his father wanted that. During the party I think one of the important scenes was Bens dad and grandfather arguing, everyone could hear them, but Ben got his fathers perspective of why he wants Ben to do what he wants him to do, such as go to UCLA. Everything his dad had to go through, being an immigrant and just the life he had to live, he wants better for Ben. I think when Ben made that connection he was more willing to sort of open up and show him why he wants to go to art school. Not to be defiant but because it’s a passion not a hobby, but a skill I suppose?
First draft this week
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.
Opinions of the week
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.
Fresh off the blog
We read the book Forgotten Country, a pretty emotional book. About a family who has had a lot of difficult times, the book, being told from Janies perspective, talks about her grandparents and what they experienced in Korea, with the Japanese occupation, how her grandmas mother had a baby during the occupation, she got caught, they took her away, killed her, gave the baby back, the baby died shortly after, talking about the curse of the family, how the family always loses a sister. How Janies mother had a sister, she went off to college, then was kidnapped by North Koreans and taken north, not knowing if she was alive or not, no way to look for her so they had to “kill her” to protect themselves. Then Janies sister disappears, they all feared the worst, that she was dead, turns out she wasn’t and she was actually just fine. Overall the book explored the lives of this family, going back a few generations, exploring all the way back to Janies great grandparents. Seeing how the experiences of Janies family were so traumatic that they directl
y impacted Janie, generations later. It was a really good book to read.
We also watched a video about a Korean American girl named Sam who was adopted. She posted some videos and was in a movie and basically someone discovered that she looked exactly like Sam, they got in touch and found out they were identical twins. They ended up meeting up getting a test and proving they were actually identical twins. They discovered how different their lives were growing up but they were really similar. It was a really intense story, the entire time they were waiting for the results of the DNA test, I could feel the anxiety, how positive they were that they were twins, but at the same time the tiny possibility that they weren’t, just waiting for however long it took to finally get the results. It was really exciting when they got the results saying they were in fact twins. There was a cliffhanger in the video though, they never get in touch during the video, it ends with them writing a letter to her, hopefully they do get in touch and maybe that will be another video.
Project Update
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.
Scissor Update
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.
Notes and Observations of the week
When we read the paper “Accidental Asian” it was very interesting since I’ve never thought about the word Asian American and what it means. Reading this book gave me the perspective of how the term came to be used and what it might really mean, how a lot of people felt/feel about the term. It makes me think about not just Asian Americans but all terms that group people together. We discussed in class if that should even be an offensive thing, if it’s a necessity or if it’s a simplicity. Quite a few people seemed to think it was necessary for white people but didn’t really give any arguments for that or examples but I was curious, there were arguments against it though. Either way, the paper was interesting to me, gave me insight on what that term might mean to other people and how general it really is. It also made me realize that there are a lot of very general terms such as white, Caucasian, Hispanic etc. I don’t think you can really give a definitive answer to if these terms are for simplicity or necessity, I’m not even sure what is meant by it being a necessity? When I think of the word necessity I think of something that is required, or indispensable, how does that apply? I’m not sure.