Elitist Articles, Academic People-watching, and Reflections on LOTB

Greetings! Today is Tuesday, March 24th, which means it’s that special time of the week again! It’s time for me to add an update to this blog! Therefore, I will share some of my thoughts on the latest and greatest things that have been going on in ENGL1410.

Last class we started off by discussing the reading from Mike Rose’s Lives on the Boundary, the book we’ve been reading for the last two weeks. I wish I could remember the individual conversations that we had in greater detail, but I do remember a few general topics that we touched upon. These topics included education as an equalizer, the role of education in assimilation, and discourse communities. Furthermore, each student chose a particular character, passage, or quote to share with the class along with their own personal thoughts on the excerpt. I chose to reflect ton the quote “I was looking for a methodical way to get my students to think about thinking.” Rose made this comment while reflecting on a time that he was planning the curriculum of a certain writing class at UCLA that was geared towards teaching veterans basic writing skills. The quote stood out to me because I agree with it in the sense that writing takes more than simply basic knowledge of grammar, but also a lot of thought about the way words fit together. I also liked the way Rose phrased his thoughts. After sharing our thoughts on the reading, the class looked closely at an article referenced in the book entitled “Why Jonny Can’t Write”.

“Why Jonny Can’t Write” was one of the more confusing articles I’ve ever read. Maybe some of my confusion could be attributed to the fact that it was written almost 50 years ago, but I still think that the article had some fundamentals flaws in its logic and in its argument. First of all, I found the premise of the article to be silly. It was in essence arguing that the entirety of the baby-boomer generation had inferior writing skills compared to the generations of students that came before it. In order to prove its point, the author of the article cited statistics from organizations that I’d never heard of, unnamed heads and executives of various schools and companies, and example quotes from the work of unnamed youths. Needless-to-say, I didn’t find the article’s evidence to be very convincing. And even looking past the article’s doom-and-gloom and shaky evidence, one of the articles most infuriating traits was that the author felt the need to use incredibly complicated vocabulary in it. It was perhaps ironic that an article about the average young American’s deficiency in reading was itself intentionally difficult to read. Another annoying aspect of “Why Jonny Can’t Write” was that it blamed the supposed decline in literacy in the US to the rise of television as a form of entertainment. I would keep ranting, but I feel that this paragraph is long enough already.

And finally, we submitted our IRB proposals for our ethnography projects last Thursday. If you are reading this and don’t know what ethnography means, do not be alarmed. It is essentially the act of immersing yourself in a space in order to make observations about the environment of the space and the people who inhabit it. I’m planning on conducting such a study on one of the common rooms in my dorm building. I’m still a little anxious about the idea of silently observing people and taking notes on their behavior, but I should really try to set a date for the observation over the next few days.

And that’s all I have to say for now. See you next Tuesday!

An Update / Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

So, unfortunately, I was absent last Friday, will be absent today, and may be absent this Friday. So I haven’t been in a good ENGL1410 group discussion for awhile now, so I don’t have too much to reflect on. I could write about my thoughts on the Mike Rose book that we’ve been reading, but I also feel like I want to bounce my ideas about the book off people and hear some other views before I write anything public about it on this blog. Even though I know that this is only a place for personal reflection, I’d still like some time to gather my thoughts a bit before I discuss them.

What I would like to talk about is the Institutional Review Board. We will be learning about that today in class, but I was sent the notes because I’ll be missing class and I scanned them over ahead of time. The Institutional Review Board, or IRB for short, is the establishment on Northeastern’s campus that makes sure that all research activities being performed on human subjects are safe, follow federal regulations, and have informed consent from the participants themselves. Their job is incredibly important not only because they ensure the safety of research participants, but it’s also important for the university from a funding standpoint to make sure that federal research regulations are being followed.  Furthermore, the powerpoint highlighted examples of times when such regulations were not followed and the repercussions from those events. In one instance, researchers at MIT fed radioactive materials to children in the 40s and 50s. In the other instance, interviews taken with citizens of Northern Ireland during the troubles by researchers at BC caused a major diplomatic stir between the States and Ireland. In the first case, MIT was forced to pay a considerable sum of money, and in the second BC had to jump through multiple hoops to make sure that their research participants could remain anonymous.

This thing that surprised me most while reading about the IRB was that I had never heard of it before! It makes sense for it to exist, but I suppose it isn’t an subject that would come up often in conversation, especially among college freshmen. Therefore, it was nice to learn about an aspect of the university, one extremely important to the research activities that happen here, that I hadn’t heard of before. We are going to have to complete an abbreviated IRB protocol for our ethnography project, which should be a fascinating process.

And on an unrelated note, Happy Saint Patrick’s Day! Personally, I don’t really need any snakes forced out of Boston, but if Saint Patrick could chase this cold rainy weather away, I for one would be very happy. For some reason, however, I don’t think we’ll be seeing the end of this weather anytime soon. So in the meantime, let’s have a potato, watch some Irish step dance, and pick some shamrocks while we count the days until summer.

Until next time! Cheers!

Cognitive Research, Literacy Sponsors, and the next paper…

It’s been awhile since I last posted here. Whoops!

So in this post, I’m going to do my best to summarize the things that we’ve gone over in class and to share my thoughts on them. First we read a piece written by Anne Becker on work that various specialists have done in the field of cognitive research in writing studies. The people who do this kind of work are interested in the way people think as they write and the actual process of writing a composition. Early models held the writing process to be incredibly linear. The writer would plan, write, and revise in that order only. New models developed during and after the 1980s particularly those developed by Professor Flower and Professor Hayes at Carnegie Mellon University suggested that writers in fact prefer to edit their work as they write it. Those two professors work together to develop a cognitive model of the average writing process which took the writer’s memory and specific task into account as well as allowing for intermediate review of the writer’s work. Each of those professors went on to individually personalize and augment their collective work, and other researchers have since followed in their footsteps.

I do find this subject interesting and I decided to write my next paper on it. I had a friend of mine write a short story and record herself thinking aloud as she wrote it. Hopefully I will be able to make some neat observations about her writing process.

The second thing we read about and talked about in class was the concept of sponsorship in writing. The piece, written by Deborah Brandt, discusses a number of interview the author had with various research participants and analyzes the ways in which political changes, socioeconomic situations, self-sponsorship and other such factors influenced the subjects literacy habits and abilities. For example she interviewed two residents of a college town in rural Illinois. One of her subject, a Caucasian man, moved to the town from a wealthy part of California. He grew up surrounded by technology and was able to eventually make a place for himself in the town’s tech industry. Another woman moved to the town at the same time as the man, but as the daughter of Mexican immigrants, she wasn’t able to get the same level of education as the man, and ended up working as a cleaning lady in the town.

I really liked the way that this piece was put together, more so than the one about cognitive research. The extended personal stories that Brandt includes in her piece make the article vivid and engaging. Reading honest, albeit shortened and simplified, accounts of people’s lives made reading the article fun in addition to making the Brandt’s points easier to understand and conceptualize. I decided to write my next paper on the cognitive research because I decided that it would be easier for me to write a very objective paper about another person’s writing process than one that is based on interpreting events in another person’s life. Maybe that’s something that sets me apart as an engineering major. Who knows?

So that’s all I have to say for now. I’ll try to keep this blog more up-to-date in the future!

Cheers!

Writing in the Archives – A Look at Northeastern’s Yearbook.

Introduction:

Identity is defined by the Merriam-Webster’s dictionary as “sameness in all that constitutes the objective reality of a thing”. Identity is essentially the way in which an individual or a group of people define himself, herself, or themselves. In the case of a university, identity can refer to the traditions, programs, beliefs, demographics, and sometimes even physical structures or other businesses or organizations on or near the university’s campus. In this case, identity does not only work to define the university in the minds of its students and others, but also serve to distinguish between the university and another university with different customs and practices. While few would argue that the Northeastern University of 2015 has no uniform campus-wide identity, there was a time when NU did lack the traditions and quirks that make it unique in the world of Boston-area colleges and universities today.

Northeastern University is relatively young as far as Boston-area colleges and universities go. Harvard was founded in 1636, BU in 1839, and BC in 1863. In comparison, NU was only incorporated as a college by the Massachusetts Legislature in the year 1916. So NU had to develop as a university while surrounded by other institutions that had a significant head start in developing an identity for themselves. This struggle is palpable within the various publications of the Cauldron, Northeastern’s yearbook. The first Cauldron was published in 1917, then because of World War Two, publication ceased until 1922, when it was published for a second time. Since 1922, a new edition of the Cauldron has been released every year. Though they vary, typically each volume includes a message from the president, a history of Northeastern, and a section dedicated to stories and pictures of the sports, clubs, and Greek groups that exist on campus. They also tend to contain copious amounts of pictures and cartoons. Sometimes they also have a message from the class president or a section dedicated to jokes.

While many aspects of the Cauldron have remained largely the same since 1922, there have been many stylistic trends within the yearbook that have come and gone. In fact, to refer back to the first paragraph of this paper, these stylistic trends in the Cauldron can be matched with four distinct phases in which Northeastern University developed its identity. The first happened between the years 1917 and 1940. In these years the focus of the yearbook was heavily geared towards the formation of customs at Northeastern. The Cauldron focused on sports, rush days, smokers, dances, and the Northeastern mascot and colors. The second phase of identity development occurred between 1940 and 1970. These years were defined by the university’s physical expansion and the construction of Northeastern’s campus. The third of the four phases occurred between 1970 and continued into the 1990s.

Formation 1917-1940:

The first few classes at Northeastern were very interested in defining what it meant to be a Northeastern student. The yearbooks from these years were full of exciting accounts of sports games, dances, smokers, and other class-wide activities. For example, the Cauldron of 1925 notes that “Northeastern University observed the 14^th annual field day celebration at Riverside on June 7, 1924. 1500 undergraduates, alumni, faculty, and guests were present.”(Cauldron, 1925) Another celebration was called Freshmen-Sophomore Rush Day, where the freshmen and sophomores went to the muddy river and competed in relay races, tug-of-war challenges, and other sporting events. On Thursday, May 15 of 1924 the Boston “Pops” held a Northeastern Night for students to go and enjoy the music. The class of 1925 had a senior dance where the draperies were colored the “royal red and black of Northeastern.”(Cauldron, 1925) The Cauldron of 1935 gives an account of the school’s husky going missing, and eventually being retrieved “after a week of broadcasting, searching, and reward-offering.”(Cauldron, 1935) Various Northeastern terminologies were also coined in this part of the school’s history. The 1935 publication recounts, “with the coming of the fall of 1932, the class of 1935 filled out the innumerable registration cards and wondered: ‘what are we going to be called this year? Intermediates? Middlemen? Middlers?’ And Middlers, among other things, they were called.”(Cauldron, 1935) Surely, and somewhat obviously, I suppose, the groundwork to Northeastern’s identity was formed in these first few years.

The Cauldron was first published in 1917. In that year, class president Edgar Curtis said in his message to the class, “the original class is a most appropriate name given us, for many new ideas have been originated in our last year. Other classes may accomplish more, but none will desire more strongly a bright, successful future for our Alma Mater than will the Class of 1917.” (Cauldron, 1917) This quote sums up what really surprised me about the early publications of the Cauldron. I expected them to be almost like history textbooks, overflowing with facts and figures with few illustrations. I was very wrong. Not only were these yearbooks often full of sketches, drawings, and the occasional black and white photographs, but they were also often very humorous and light hearted. They had a section dedicated solely to jokes, funny comic strips, and an “Academic? Calendar”. Even though all the students were commuters and the university only had one building, the students still made a special effort to have fun and make good memories for themselves.

Expansion 1940-1969:

The 1940s, 50s, and 60s in Northeastern’s history were marked by rapidly changing physical and social environments within the university. First and foremost, the Cauldron of 1948 exclaims, “The inevitable has happened! On May 3, 1943, for the first time in the history of Northeastern, women were admitted into the day colleges.”(Cauldron, 1948) The admittance of women marked a big change in the identity of Northeastern which had previously admitted only men. Furthermore, the university was rapidly expanding. The university built many new buildings, including all the buildings in what is now called the “Krentzman Quad”. Not only did the campus grow, enrollment grew as well. Each new class seemed to be bigger than the last. In the 1965 publication, the author of the section dedicated to the class history writes, “We were beginning the year of growth. We were no longer the biggest, smartest, and richest freshmen class, the new freshmen class was, but we did not mind because we were upperclassmen.”(Cauldron, 1965) Amidst all this growth, a new competitive, expansionist attitude grew among the students and faculty at Northeastern. In his message to the class of 1951, President Ell writes, “Your class has seen the end of an era – when Northeastern was striving for a place in the sun.”(Cauldron, 1951) Later in the 1961 Cauldron, the author of the section devoted to the school’s history writes, “Northeastern…an educational giant flexing its muscles and surging ahead into the unknown…a powerhouse of progress that was too big for its cradle at its conception, too predestined to stand still.”(Cauldron, 1961) These years marked Northeastern’s switch from being satisfied with having distinct traditions to desiring a stronger physical presence for itself in Boston.

These yearbooks surprised me for a number of reasons. First, the 50s and 60s are notorious in Boston’s history for being the years when the city partook in extensive “urban renewal” projects, bulldozing entire neighborhoods to the ground. Therefore, I found it surprising that Northeastern was constructing many new buildings rather than tearing buildings down. I was also surprised by the intense sense of competition that existed in Northeastern during these years. The earlier yearbooks hardly mentioned the other colleges in Boston, let alone referred to themselves as “striving for a place in the sun”, as President Ell put it in 1951. Northeastern seemed to develop its own variation of manifest destiny during these years. The students’ take on the introduction of coeds at Northeastern was also fascinating. The class of 1948 seemed almost worried that the women were going to be able to outvote the men in class elections, and maybe even more surprisingly, a woman, Majorie Lundfelt, was elected vice president of the freshmen class in 1943. Certainly the years during and following World War Two led to stark changes in the way that Northeastern students and faculty saw the University.

Perception 1969-1990:

As the counterculture reared its head across the United States, Northeastern, once again, underwent a drastic change. It stopped being concerned primarily about its size and status as a university. In fact, in the 1975 edition of the Cauldron, the author notes “the community was not against fraternities, it just objected to the uncontrolled expansion of Northeastern.”(Cauldron, 1975) This sentiment goes entirely against the expansionist culture of Northeastern in the 1950s. Northeastern in the 1970s was very aware and sensitive about its place in the community, and about how its neighbors saw it. This shift to outward perception of Northeastern’s place in the community and in the country as a whole started in 1969. The yearbook from this year was stylistically different from all its predecessors. Instead of having the usual history of NU and the class, each page of the first half of the book had about five or fewer photographs and a small poem. Further on in the yearbook it does describe certain events from the year, but rather than focus on the growth of the university, it instead focuses on the protests that students attended. For example the 1969 Cauldron recounts “then in April students from Northeastern packed off to Washington to be involved with a protest, THE protest, of the war in Vietnam. Pretty soon, everyone was marching.”(Cauldron, 1969) The 1971 Cauldron was hay-wire. Practically the entire yearbook was made of clippings of articles about protests, sex, race, religion, etc. It had sections dedicated to individual stories. One such story touched on the growing black presence at Northeastern and how the Civil Rights movement had affected it. This style of having the Cauldron covered in news stories continued into the 80s, where news about the Regan administration and other political developments.

Given the social changes happening around the country at this time, it’s not surprising that the culture of Northeastern changed in accordance with the changes in America as a whole. What is surprising, perhaps, is the swiftness with which this change hit Northeastern. The jump from the 1961 to the 1971 editions of the Cauldron is the most dramatic stylistic jump within a decade that the Cauldron has ever seen. In the early 1960s the Cauldron only really talked about fraternities, sports teams, and construction projects. Then by the early 1970s birth control, racism, and politics were the main focuses of the yearbook. This shows a shift in the attitudes of Northeastern’s students. For the first time in the university’s history, finding a place for the university in the nation’s political and social spheres was their chief goal. This added to the growing definition of what it meant to be a Northeastern student. This added to Northeastern’s ever changing identity.

Identity and Pride 1990-2011:

The class of 1990 was the first class where the majority of graduates lived on campus rather than commuting. So I was expecting this to have a significant impact on the way Northeastern portrayed itself in the yearbook. It surprisingly did not. In fact there was still a good section of the yearbook dedicated to depicting the life of a commuting student. I suppose some habits die hard. It wasn’t until 2003 that a change became noticeable. In that year, a student by the name of Jeff Riley started a section in the yearbook entitled “you know you’re from Northeastern when..” This section contained a long list of activities that true Northeastern graduates have taken part in, from Riley’s perspective at least. A few phrases included “you claim to have helped Sean Fanning invent Napster”, “You’ve said ‘Cappy’s or BHOP?’ after a hockey game”, and “you consider anything past the Museum of Fine Arts to be far too outbound”.(Cauldron, 2005) In later editions of the Cauldron, this section was replaced by modifications such as “top 11 ways to know you are a husky” and “top 11 reasons to be a husky”. These sections demonstrate the most recent development in Northeastern’s identity crisis. The students of the 21^st century are no longer primarily concerned with defining what it means to be a Northeastern student, glorifying in the expansion of the university, or reciting news articles and protesting. Rather the primary focus of the modern Northeastern student, according to the yearbook, is to celebrate what Northeastern is. In 2005, President Freeland wrote in his message to the class, “I hope, too, that you will keep a place in your heart for Northeastern. You have earned a permanent place among us.”(Cauldron, 2005) Northeastern has lost many of its old insecurities, and Northeastern students have a more concrete idea of what it means to be a Northeastern student than students here ever have before.

Conclusion:

Before writing this paper, I had never done archival work. When this paper was assigned, I had nowhere to start. I decided to look at the yearbooks, because my grandfather had graduated sometime in the 50s. While I didn’t end up finding his name in any of the yearbooks I looked at, I did find reading through the yearbooks to be a fun and informative undertaking. It was nice to hear what earlier classes had to say about the university when they were students, and it was fun to see what things have changed at the school over the years and what has remained the same.

When Northeastern separated itself from the YMCA, it was in essence a blank slate. The first few classes did what they could to bestow an institutional identity on Northeastern. They named a mascot, school colors, and they established various events and celebrations that they hoped would continue into the future. They established a yearbook. The classes following World War Two saw the size of the university explode. Women were admitted into those classes for the first time in the university’s history. They gained a spot in the sun. Following the 1960s, the school turned its gaze outward. The Northeastern students participated in protests, and wrote about social injustice. They became more engaged with the community than ever before. The year 1990 marked the schools transition from a commuter school to a school with copious amounts of on campus housing. In the 2000s students began to firmly define what it meant to be a husky. All these changes are steps on the ladder that Northeastern has used to create an identity for itself.

Works Cited:

The Cauldron, 1917, Northeastern University Yearbooks, University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections Department, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, Cauldron, (Volume 1917)

The Cauldron, 1922, Northeastern University Yearbooks, University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections Department, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, Cauldron, (Volume 1922)

The Cauldron, 1925, Northeastern University Yearbooks, University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections Department, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, Cauldron, (Volume 1925)

The Cauldron, 1935, Northeastern University Yearbooks, University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections Department, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, Cauldron, (Volume 1935)

The Cauldron, 1948, Northeastern University Yearbooks, University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections Department, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, Cauldron, (Volume 1948)

The Cauldron, 1951, Northeastern University Yearbooks, University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections Department, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, Cauldron, (Volume 1951)

The Cauldron, 1965, Northeastern University Yearbooks, University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections Department, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, Cauldron, (Volume 1965)

The Cauldron, 1969, Northeastern University Yearbooks, University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections Department, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, Cauldron, (Volume 1969)

The Cauldron, 1975, Northeastern University Yearbooks, University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections Department, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, Cauldron, (Volume 1975)

The Cauldron, 1985, Northeastern University Yearbooks, University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections Department, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, Cauldron, (Volume 1985)

The Cauldron, 2005, Northeastern University Yearbooks, University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections Department, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, Cauldron, (Volume 2005)

The Cauldron, 2011, Northeastern University Yearbooks, University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections Department, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, Cauldron, (Volume 2011)

Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 14 Feb. 2015.

“Northeastern University: A Leader in Global Experiential Learning in Boston, MA.”Northeastern University: A Leader in Global Experiential Learning in Boston, MA. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Feb. 2015.

The Making of My Archives Project: Part 1

I’m caught in the typical place right now as far as my archives project is concerned. I have an idea that I really like, one that I think I could probably write a lot about, but I can’t find it in me to narrow my search down so that I can come up with a solid, arguable thesis statement. Eventually, I will have to create one out of sheer necessity, especially if I want to have a good draft ready for peer review this Friday (if that does end up as the day that the peer review is happening now. First I’ll bounce ideas off of friends and family members, and maybe see if I can find some secondary sources online that could give me some supports when designing the structure of this essay. Once I craft a workable thesis statement, then writing the paper shouldn’t be incredibly difficult. It would then become a matter of going to the library with my laptop and a cup of hot and tasty tea so that I could sit and focus my energy on writing. I hopefully will leave myself plenty of time to write it and make edits. Though I’ve always found it helpful to find a lot of quotes from my primary source(s) and secondary sources before I begin writing. If I know what I’m going to discuss before I begin writing, a large part of the paper practically writes itself. This probably won’t be the last update I post about the archives project. In the meantime, wish me luck!

Reflection on “Writing Instruction in School and College English”

Last week we missed one of our two weekly classes because of snowstorm Juno. Therefore, I have less to write about this week then I might have had otherwise. The article we read for Friday was written by James A Berlin and talked about the history of writing instruction in American high schools and colleges throughout the twentieth century. He made a distinct effort to tie shifts in the philosophy behind writing instruction to changes in American political moods and economic states. For example, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there was a debate happening between various institutions of higher education on the importance of teaching writing. In his article, Berlin cites Harvard as being a major proponent of teaching writing to students of all different specialties so that they could become better workers, whereas Yale thought that intense study of writing should be saved for an elite few who showed talent in the field, and that writing itself existed for spiritual and artistic means rather than primarily functional means. This debate seems to continue throughout the twentieth century with creativity being the chief focus in between the world wars, or functionality being the chief focus of writing education during the Reagan administration. High schools, on the other hand were always a mixed bag of philosophies. The article also discusses events such as the onset of standardized testing and the effects of such things as patriotism on the propagation of writing studies in American educational institutions. Berlin’s piece was a fascinating look into a part of American history that, until this semester, I hadn’t studied in great depth before.

Buried Treasure

I had always imagined “archives” to be strange abstract places on the internet that historians search through for obscure primary sources about the subject their studying. In a strange way, part of me didn’t think that they were physical places containing physical objects. Therefore, last Friday’s class was truly an eye opener. The class went under the library to visit Northeastern’s archives. We got to see a manuscript that was written in the eighteenth century, a cookbook written by the wives of Northeastern professors from the middle of the twentieth century, a lock of hair from the mane of one of the earliest presidents of the university’s horse, whose name was Bob, and a massive ivory tusk with intricate carvings that may have taken generations to complete. It was wonderful!

I’ve always been a sucker for old things. In my junior year of high school, while helping my French teacher throw away old textbooks that were, for the most part, falling apart, I happened upon a small very old textbook that was written in 1919 and used by students at my high school during the 1930s! It still had the paper strip on the inside cover of the book where the students would write their name, th day they received the book, and the condition. Furthermore the book, a brief and simplified history of France written in French, only covered historical events until the end of the first World War, after which France had lost Alsace-Lorraine. The book ended with the author talking about how much stronger France’s army was, and how it was much more prepared to take on another attack. It also talked about imperialism with crude drawings of “un negre” and “un arabe” under the section “les conquetes de la france” and drawings of “une locomotive” under the section entitled “les inventions”.

As much as I enjoyed it, seeing the archives for the first time was a little bittersweet. I felt a little bit ashamed that I didn’t know that such a place existed. I also believe that many if not most of the other students at Northeastern, or at least in the Engineering school, might not know that it exists either. And even if most students at the school do know of the archives’ existence, why would a civil engineer ever need to see a 60-year-old cookbook or 100-year-old lock of horse hair? The objects that are held in the archives are infinitely interesting, but for a particular major, there are probably only a few particular objects in the archive that would be relevant.  Maybe I should make a point of going to the archives at least once a year to find something completely random that I would find interesting just to explore the kinds of things they have down there.

And that ivory tusk! I can’t believe that Northeastern has something that cool tucked away in its basement! I remember seeing something similar to it in the Peabody Essex museum. It is such a cool piece, Northeastern should want to show it off to anybody and everybody. Hopefully it won’t stay down there for too long!

An Update!

Here’s an update on my personal battle with the concept of “a blog”!

I was rereading the assignment sheet that describes what we are responsible for on the blog and I came across the line that reads “Your blog should be a place where you feel free to try
out ideas, take risks, and explore without worrying about polishing your prose, as you will in your formal writing for the course.” So I suppose that I’ve maybe been too formal or something when writing my previous posts.

I also saw in this particular document three bolded words saying that I need to comment on both of the weeks readings in the blog. I believe I neglected to write about the second piece we had to read, “Literacy Myths, Legacies, and Legends”, in my previous post. To be honest, however, the article itself somewhat confused me and we didn’t discuss it very much in class. I suppose the purpose of the article and the concept of the “literacy myth” are just saying that literacy doesn’t necessarily make a person wise or just. My interpretation of the article may be wrong, I really only skimmed it. Perhaps, if I can find the time, I will go back and revisit that article and formulate some new ideas about it.

Okay, this is probably going to be my last post for a little while. So ta-ta for now!

Reflections on Week 1 of ENGL1410

I went to class frustrated last Friday afternoon. I had read the required article “A Light in the Forest: Colonial New England” earlier that day, and it had bored me. I was barely able to finish it. At first it interested me, but it also felt as if the authors were making the same point over and over again while their case studies became both more obscure and less interesting. While I had heard of certain figures who they cited at the beginning of the article, such as Cotton Mather, they ended up spending a lot of time discussing the activities of people such as Hannah Adams and John Barnard, people I did not know or care about.

So I went to class that day expecting a lecture that would interest me as much as the article had. Instead, we ended up splitting into groups of two in order to discuss questions that the class had put together. This gave me the opportunity to rant to my classmates about my distaste for the obscurity of the article’s evidence, which led to other fascinating discussions about how historians find evidence and the obstacles that they face in deciding what information to present in their reports. I also ended up discussing other topics related to the article that I hadn’t thought of before such as how religion aided the spread of literacy in early America. I became convinced that if the earliest settlers of New England hadn’t been so strictly religious, the history of literacy in America and perhaps the history of America itself would’ve been entirely different. I also got to hear funny stories about Cotton Mather and his children, one of whom ended up becoming quite the juvenile delinquent despite his father’s religious fervor.

Another interesting development from the first week of class is this: my first time posting on a “blog”. I’m still not exactly sure who my audience is supposed to be or what kinds of things I should be writing here, but hopefully I will be able to figure that out over the course of the next few weeks. I suppose that reading classmates’ blogs will help me sort those questions out.

My First Post

Before I begin, I want to ask you not to set your expectations too high. I am not Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, or Mark Twain. I am a first-year engineering student. In many ways, I decided to take ENGL1410  so that I could improve my writing ability. So hopefully, my posts will grow more engaging, comprehensible, and succinct over the course of the semester. For now I will simply put my thoughts into words as best I can.