Blog #5

For some reason, my mind tends to explore the unknown. I always like to think in terms of what other people wouldn’t typically think about. I feel like the way my mind works impacts the way I research things, and the way I view the outside world.

For example, when I was young, every time I’d watch a cartoon or a TV show, I tend to lose my focus on the main plot and concentrate towards the specific details in the scene. I always ask myself things like “I wonder where that doorway in the background leads to.” My innate curiosity on viewing things has helped me learn how some things work as well. For example, when playing games, sometimes I would explore certain parts of a level that aren’t meant to be explored, or I would cause glitches in the game to help me understand how the game was built.

Because of the way I view things, I often think of every possible scenario when conducting research. I can relate this to programming, in a sense. As a programmer, you have to think of every possible scenario to make sure that your program works without error. Many times, you have to assume that the user of the program will try to break it at times (like I did as a kid) and you have to account for each and every single input that the user could possibly do.

I find myself searching into things to such a large extent that it often distracts me from the main focus of the research. Like I stated previously, I concentrated on the background details watching TV shows as a kid that I often missed the main plot, and the same happens to me when I research. I overanalyze and over-engineer, and even though in some cases it could be useful, the specifics often distract me from the main focus of said research. 

Blog #5 - William McKenna

Prior to this year whenever id have downtime at home after school and had nothing to do I'd usually find myself researching and looking into either topics about the world's oceans or topics about the universe and solar system. When I would do this it was just me skimming the internet looking for interesting articles when I was bored at home so it definitely was not very formal. Some questions I'd ask were, "How many species of fish have been discovered' & "How big is our universe" for example. As for books, I did not often read ones based on the ocean and universe for some reason. Instead, I mostly enjoyed reading mystery and action books.  When I had time to watch TV it was always something comedy related. If there was nothing funny on the TV I would just end up turning it off. The one question I would always find myself asking about the world is, "Why do awful things happen to good people". Many family members and friends of mine have passed away throughout my life and thinking about this question often upsets me because there's really no answer. When I think back to research I've done in my past I remember having to do one serious research paper in High School were I based it off whether or not college athletes should be paid.  That topic does not really interest me anymore though because as I've grown older my opinions have gone one sided on the issue.

Blog #5 Josh Warner

Prior to this year, I took a special interest in current events.  I took a class my senior year of high school called I.P.L.E.  This stood for the institution of political and legal education.  This class consisted strictly of current events that were going on in the world.  Why there was such a fancy title for a class with such a simple curriculum was beyond me.  Basically in this class the teacher would have a list of about 6-8 current events that were no more than a week old and we would have free discussions to talk about anything that had to do with these current events.  I didn't start watching the news until about my sophomore year of high school.  My dad is very worldly, and constantly knows what is going on in the world.  By me taking a special interest in current events, it allowed me to have educated conversations with my dad.  I would go to school, go to IPLE, and then come home and discuss with my dad what we talked about in class.  He would love when I came home from school and actually had something to tell him that I learned today.  I would watch the CNN news channel, and read articles on CNN.  CNN was a major source of my knowledge about current events.  My teacher also got a good amount of his video clips and articles off of CNN. I think the fact that my teacher was an awesome guy and made the class fun, as well as adding humor to it, really grew my interest in current events.  Today, I still try to keep up with the current events, but being in college with my workload and pledging a fraternity I rarely have time to watch any tv.

Blog #5

When I was younger, I always loved the idea of adventure. Now that I think about it I’m sure I got that love from the books I read. I remember being big into many different series of books. I loved the feeling of finishing a really good book and knowing there are so many more books continuing from the same idea. One of these series is the Magic Tree House series. These books were about two kids who (believe it or not) have a magic tree house. A sorceress sends them on missions through time in order to save her from a spell. The children also want to become master librarians. The children went on so many adventures and I absolutely loved reading about them. I think all of their adventures and traveling helped to develop the wanderlust I have today. 

Now that I think about it, the idea of adventure has always been attractive to me. In my favorite show, Supernatural, the main characters are always on some type of adventure. They travel across the country saving people (and the world) from supernatural beings. Whenever I watch the show, I get a thrill of the idea of the adventures in the show.

I have honestly never thought about researching as the way the author described it in the reading. I always thought about research as scrolling through “.edu or .org” websites (because “.com” are clearly evil when researching) trying to find some relevant information for a research paper that I typically do not care about. I now find it very interesting how some of the choices we make—as children or now, as college students—can shape us as unique individuals.

Blog #5

My senior year I wrote a paper on the processing of memory in the human brain. An incredible complex topic which required a lot more time and research than i had time do to for a high school course. However it was an interesting topic to me, i took the bulk of what i talked about from my psychology class. That class, was in fact the reason I chose the topic in the first place, Psychology was my favorite subject and I loved the class and loved learning about the different concepts so doing a research project on something I had already had some basic knowledge of seemed like a good idea. I utilized mostly internet sources- like i feel like most students do today. I used a few textbooks and psychology articles in my research as well. For the research I did there was a lot more information I could have gathered if i knew more so what i was looking for. As i researched I tried to stay away from things that just caught my interest and to go more for the basics of memory and its processing in the human brain instead of diving into too much detail. While that kept me on topic it also hindered the amount of information my paper actually contained. The length requirement also made it hard because with a  topic like the human brain there is so much to cover and i just could not address everything in the span of a 20 page paper

As someone who loves learning new information I constantly find myself looking up stuff online.when there's something highly publicized in the media and i have no idea what it is i normally take a minute to ask someone or to look it up from a few different sources and make my own opinions. It may be something simple and i may just get the basic idea versus an complete understanding from start to finish but regardless its research.

Blog #5

I am and have always been one to enjoy science.  The analytical, and logical way of thinking always was easiest for me.  I am interested in mostly things that have to do with science.  For example animal planet, the science channel, and other science sources with various amounts of facts and concepts offered to the public.  My friend is the same way but he happens to be religions.  There is nothing wrong with that i just have trouble finding a logical explanation for why he thinks god exists. There is no "scientific" way to prove it or disprove it.  We would often spend long hours debating about the various biblical texts constantly trying to convert each other to our own way of thinking.  We knew we never would because in the end to be religious in my opinion is to have faith.  There does not have to be any science involved, just the a belief that there is something more powerful looking over us.  It was fun for both of us.  It was an intellectual challenge to see whether or not one of us could stump each other on a particular topic.  After those long hours debating we came to the conclusion that I was not religious and he was.  Strangely enough we would always arrive at these debates when we talked knowing we would have the same result.  In a way that goes against all I said at the beginning about being logical.

Blog #5- Serena Cecere

Prior to this year, I'm not sure if I was really curious about anything.  I didn't watch the news, I never asked questions. Nothing really inspired me to wonder. That was until English my Senior Year of High School, I had the most amazing teacher: Mary Dakin. She taught us less about grammar and essay structure and more about life and society and the way its evolving. She taught us about freedom and creativity and why there's never a wrong answer.  She was a little woman from New York, probably the most intelligent, woman I've ever met; she had this range of extensive knowledge about every thing you could ever imagine, and she held a very loud opinion, in which she would use rhetorical questions and public embarrassment to encourage us to speak ours.  There was one speech that she gave in class I remember distinctively.  She gave us an assignment to look about the Drudge Report and highlight articles that we found interesting just by their titles. I had never once in my life, as sad as that is to say, looked at any sort of news prior to. From there she went on to speak about how there was this six year old boy, somewhere in Europe-I don't remember the exacts- that wanted a sex change. Six years old! And his parents literally let him change himself into a female! At the age of six, they let their kid, make a life changing decision, like he was knowledgeable enough to do so! She then went on to explain how there are people everywhere now in our society that are pushing for Co-ed bathrooms because single sexed bathrooms are "hurting the feelings" of the transgendered. I will never forget this day, because this is the first time I really questioned our society. I was in shock as to how that's even up for debate right now. Therefore ever since this class, I pay more attention to societal issues, I don't check up on Drudge Report--or even read the news everyday like I probably should, but these kinds of things evoke a sense of curiosity from me. It makes me ask around, do some informal research by talking to mostly my dad, about these things before moving on to go do some investigating research of my own.  

There are also shows like Criminal Minds and Scandal that will forever evoke curiosity in me. Make me question people. Make me scared to live on my own. Make me seriously question our government and the basis on which that's operated. But those things I never look into. Not because I'm not interested, but honestly, I think I'm too scared to know the truth.