Month: October 2021

1.  Connection to learning outcomes:

After reading through the learning outcomes of my major I see feel it’s more vocational focused, rather than an enriched. For example, learning outcome number two describes “Demonstrate written communication skills expected of a future professional in the field: and then bullets include  – write for specific purposes and situations, and write informatively, persuasively and clearly. Where does this tie into any of Boyer’s three enriched major questions. I don’t see it giving any indications of the history, I cannot see where ethical or moral issues apply, and I cannot make social/economic connections. Although this is okay, because I don’t believe the three questions have to be used in every aspect. This baseline, technical knowledge is very important as well – and then you can build on this. A lot of these learning outcomes, at first glance, portray this sort of vocational feel. This is where we have to expand into looking at course descriptions ect.

2. Connections to a course description: 

The course, “Social Media: Theory and Practice”, even though it isn’t a required course of the major, I feel that is a very good class to take, that encompasses some very enriched ideas. The course description “This course explores the role of media and mediated communication in shaping human interaction and society. Students will engage with social media and mediated communities in a variety of contexts in the process of reflecting on and critiquing the effect of communication technology on everyday life. The course will evaluate a variety of current events and topics of debate in media culture shaped by social, mobile, and digital communication technology.” Being able to take skills learned in communications (such as the media) and apply it to everyday life. Exploring the role of the media and mediated communication in shaping human interaction and society can be used in a variety of ways to solve social issues ect. A variety of current events will be explored which provides a broad understanding and requires skills that are learned in an enriched major. A vocational major will not provide you with the skills necessary to think critically, analyze, or connect anything. What this major does really well is give students the skills necessary to “lift up a job and give it meaning” (Boyer 22). It provides a broad range of opportunities that aren’t as available in a narrowly focused, specialized education. 

1. 
    In this first paragraph I wanted to outline that I feel that there is a weak leg in the subject of social and economic implications being outlined in the communications major. Maybe it is just because I’m struggling to see the clear connections, even though they may be there. When I’m looking through the course descriptions, I can see multiple areas of historical context, and some places where ethical and moral values come into play. Maybe I need to look deeper into this question about social and economic implications and I need to read between the lines more to see where they apply. 

2. History and traditions of the field, outlined in Boyers “enriched major” , is very much present in the communications major here at UNE. When reading through the mission statement, learning outcomes ect – it is hard to find where this comes into play. It’s when you dig into the course descriptions of some of the classes you learn where you will gain this knowledge. In the class “Introduction to Journalism” – part of the description includes “including investigation of the role of the journalist historically and in the present day. In the class “Intro to Communications” some of the course description includes “Topics include the history of communications as an academic discipline.” These are just two examples, but looking through the courses – a lot of them include a historical context. This is a key part of Boyers “Enriched Major.” 

Connection Synthesis Table:

Paragraph-like Units

I believe that through drawing connections from various texts, my major can definitely fit into the definition of Boyers “enriched major.” To start off, I wanted to draw on the liberal arts education preparing students for the career world but also personally as well. The learning outcomes of my major (communications) states that it will…“Prepare students for ethically and socially responsible roles in their chosen professions and society. Help students achieve their personal and career goals. Prepare students for entry-level positions in either the private or public sector and/or to prepare students for coursework at the graduate level. Then adding in another area “..function effectively in the professional world and their personal lives.” A major misperception of the liberal arts education is that it won’t prepare students for a career job. Ungar states “The responsibility of higher education today is to prepare people ‘for jobs that do not yet exist.’ It may be that studying the liberal arts is actually the best form of career education” (Ungar). Boyer uses his reasoning to explain that liberal education should be brought into the curriculum for the reason that it is inevitably used in real life (personal life). Then also adding “Such linkage can be cultivated in all disciplines, and be exemplified in the lives of those who teach them” (Boyer). 

I wanted to touch on the social and economics implications which are key in an enriched major, and how these connect in all three-four texts. Boyer starts off saying.. “Specialists must make judgments that are not only technically correct but also include ethical and social considerations. And the values professionals bring to their work are every bit as crucial as the particularities of the work itself”  This leads into his example of …“Designing high-powered automobiles, fast trains, and supersonic airplanes requires technological skills, but we are far from designing environments and transportation systems that effectively serve human needs” (Boyer). This relates to an area of text in Scheuer …“Using them without obscuring the underlying connections is another hallmark of higher-level thinking. Climate change and biodiversity, for example, cannot be fully understood unless seen as both distinct and related phenomena”. Both of these texts are describing the idea that an enriched major will allow individuals to not only use their traditional technical skills, but put them to work in a social and economic aspect to solve issues etc. Now, how is this seen in the learning outcomes in my major? “In addition to studying the traditional communications disciplines, such as marketing, public relations, global communications, journalism, and business communications, you will develop highly marketable skills in digital media production – so you’ll be prepared to engage 21st century audiences through multiple media platforms.” I really like how there is emphasis on “in addition to the traditional communications disciplines” because this is not the only thing that is important – because it can be pretty narrow. So there isn’t just focus on the mere technical training, but the ability to broaden your horizons into using your skills in different disciplines. 

I believe that my major is preparing me for the real world because we aren’t studying a narrow specialization, but studying multiple arrays of communications, and teaching us how we can use these in other disciplines and to solve everyday problems. An enriched major, such as communications, will open your mind up to different ideas and look at things from different perspectives. As said in Boyer “To keep the undergrad program very general, to look at the larger context, and not get down to the technical aspects of management. We don’t want narrowly trained undergraduates- we think we’re honing minds here. They should see business as a social enterprise.” 

What: FAA- Female Athlete Alliance 

I am a part of the club FAA, which stands for Female Athlete Alliance. This club stands for promoting gender equality in sports, which is done through community outreach, activites, and education. It is a very supportive environment where anyone can express their concerns, thoughts, or any issues they are having. We meet bi-weekly on Thursday nights at 8:00 at the Harold Alfond Forum. 

This past Thursday we had a guest speaker, who spoke about her experience with beating breast cancer, and she is also the Women’s Lacrosse Coach here at UNE. The most important thing I learned from this experience was about bringing awareness to your body, and how you can make sure that you are keeping yourself safe. I think that gender equality in sports is a huge deal and I love everything that this club stands for. I have learned that as a group, we can change the stigma facing women in sports by outreach in our community. The more people that we can get to join, the more we can promote what we stand for and make a difference. 

1. What is a central tension Boyer discusses in his chapter? Support your response with a quote from Boyer and at least 4 sentences of explanation.
   1. A central tension that I picked up on in this chapter is the clear divide between the study of general education and specizlied education at many colleges and institutions. With this, we come back again, to the liberal arts versus the “career education.” The notion that, to create a successful career, students can utulize both, meaning these two areas can work together. “The amount of misunderstanding and hostility crackling between the two cultures is amazing and, considering our liberal arts mission, probably destructive. Each side needs somehow to be convinced that they are working for similar objectives” (Boyer 221). It’s already been proven, earlier in the article and in various other studies, that employers specifically look to hire people with skills obtained from the liberal arts (reasoning, critical thinking, reading/writing ability). They rank more important to employers than the actual technical skills. The tension in this chapter, like I said, is career education versus liberal education. Boyer is clearly pushing for the side of the liberal education, but in the sense that it can be used within technical training and more specziled majors. This is his whole idea of an “enriched major”. 

2. What is Boyer’s “Enriched Major” idea, and how does he imagine it as a response to a key tension? Support your response with a quote and at least 3 sentences of explanation.
   1. Boyers “enriched major” deals with the concept that students should study a field in depth, but at the same time, puting this field of study into perspective – into a larger, deeper, and wider context. Not keeping it so narrow – being able to discuss it and use it in terms of other ares such as in the social aspect. “If a major is so narrow and so technical that it cannot be discussed in terms of its historial and social implications, if the work in the proposed field os tudy cannot be a broadening experience, then the department is offering mere technical training that belongs in a trade school, not on a college campus, where the goal is liberal learning” (Boyer 223). We can connect all that we’ve learned about the liberal arts and how important and crucial they are to study. The exact idea about the “enriched major” is that we can use critical thinking and reasoning skills, problem solving skills, and the ability create connections between, for example, a technical major and social and economic involvement. Boyers “enriched major” wants students to not study so narrowly – pushing schools to keep undergrad programs general rather than honing in on the technical aspects of a certain discipline. 

Annotations:

What: Varsity field hockey team

I play on the varsity field hockey team here at UNE. We are a top team in our conference, which is the Commonwealth Coast Conference.

Being on a team, I feel like I am part of a community that I love. During this time, I am learning so much about leadership and how to work together as a group to get things done. A goal I have is to be a captain by my senior year, so I’m taking in a lot of key leadership skills from my current senior captains. As a team, we participate in community service events around the Maine community and in the school as well. This goes along with what is said in the Core Handbook about reinforcing Core themes and acting as an engaged citizen.

Juggling daily practices and up to two games a week, I have learned how to multitask and balance everything accordingly. Making sure that I utilize any free-time I have to get ahead on homework has been key for me, as well as using my agenda book. Writing down my assignments and aligning them with my field hockey schedule, I can see what I have gotten done and what I still need to do. This has been important when I have a weeknight game where I wouldn’t be home until late hours of the night. I feel that I will take these multitasking and balancing skills with me through the rest of my life and in my professional career. 

1. Quote: “A biographer’s alter ego is usually the subject himself, while a microhistorian’s alter ego may be a figure who plays the role of detective or judge in relation to the subject” (140). 
2. Comment: I think this can relate back to the main question in this essay -whether microhistorians have more or less sympathy for their subjects than do biographers. A biographer having an alter ego of the “subject himself” is getting so close to the subject, because affection is almost essential in biographies. Ann Douglas even mentions a page later that a successful biography has to be like a marriage, a love affair, between the biographer and the subject. They need to almost live their lives through them to understand their whole life story in order to write about it. Where a microhisorians alter ego being a detective or judge in relation to the subject, makes more sense because microhistory is less focused on the whole life of an individual or subject, but more about key events – and going into depth about what it really means. In microhistory you need to dig, because to understand the subject, the information might not all be on the surface.
   1. Question: I would say that microhistorians have less sympathy or the subject due the the lesser sense of closeness they have. But my question is, where does betrayal come into place (in biography)? If a biographer can get so close to the subject, to just end up betraying them, that shows no sympathy. So now I question my first thought about microhistorians having less sympathy.

2. Quote: “If biography is largely founded on a belief in the singularity and significance of an individual’s life and his contributions to history, microhistory is founded upon almost the opposite assumption: however singular a person’s life may be, the value of examining it lies not in it’s uniqueness, but in its exemplariness, in how that individual’s life serves as an allegory for broader issues affecting the culture as a whole” (133). 
   1. Comment: I really struggled with the concept of this essay and understanding what the author was trying to convey to us. I had to re-read multiple sections to try and get a hold on the concept of the difference between microhistorians and biographers. From what I can understand from this quote, microhistory deals with writing about someone who had done something in particular that is exemplary, and bringing this attention to a regular person.  Someone who doesn’t get this recognition in history, and bringing it back now. And a biographer more focuses on an individual’s life as a whole (someone important) and what they have contributed to history.
      1.  Question: What is the difference between the word uniqueness and exemplariness in this quote?

1. Quote: “Edmund Burke observed that people like to look at images of suffering. ‘I am convinced we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others’” (Sontag 97). 
   1. Comment: I do not agree with this statement from Burke. I can get behind the notion that some people feel curiosity from looking at gruesome and horrifying images, but not necessarily images related to human suffrage and the “pain of others.” I just think you have to be crazy to get enjoyment out of watching people suffer, and maybe that is just a personal opinion. I want to add a related quote found a few sentences later “love of mischief, love of cruelty, is as natural to human beings as is sympathy” (Sontag 98). This notion of cruelty and mischief is a little different from human suffering and pain mentioned in the previous quote. I can agree with this more, because there is possibly a small twinge of satisfaction and again, curisotiy, and the inability to look away from these sorts of gruesome photos. These two things are not one in the same. 
      1. Question: Do people actually get delight out of watching people suffer, and the pain of others? When does this go too far? 

2. Quote: “The first idea is that public attention is steered by the attention of the media – which means, most decisively, images. When there are photographs, a war becomes “real” (Sontag 104). 
   1. Comment: This whole concept about “seeing is believing” and how the images show that something may need to be done is so hugely overlooked. Wars have the ability to be forgotten without images, media, and news sources – because when we aren’t seeing it – we are just going about our everyday lives. This is a sad, yet true statement. This is why war photography and media presence is such a key detail in wartime to bring awareness to what is going on in the world. We as human beings, are going to be more attentive and interested when we actually see images rather than reading a news article. I think this statement is even more relevant now in the present day with social media.
      1. Question: What would our life be like without images and media about wars? 

1. Quote: “We want a photographer to be a spy in the house of love and of death, and those being photographed to be unaware of the camera, “off guard.” No sophisticated sense of what photography is or can be will ever weaken the satisfactions of a picture of an unexpected event seized in mid-action by an alert photographer” (Sontag 55). 
   1. Comment: During the past few pages leading up to this quote, Sontag talks about the rearrangement that photographers do in war photography to make a picture look better. For example the Brady team had rearranged a dead confederate soldier to a more photogenic site for the picture. This is true for any photography – the photographers move elements around to try and get the best shot, which is seen to be true with even immobilized people. I feel as though this is not how it should be with war photography, because you’re now taking away from the realness and authenticity of the scene. Learning about this “staging” leads to this sense of disappointment almost. I like in the quote above where it says “We want a photographer to be a spy in the house of love and death” because that is where the real authenticity lies – in the realness of the scene rather than the staging of it. Growing up with social media, we understand the capturing of “candid” photos, and staging things that aren’t real -because they will look more aesthetically pleasing. I guess we had to expect that some war photos were going to be staged in order to look more pleasing to the public.
      1. Question: How many of the most memorable and well-known war pictures we’ve seen were staged? 

2. Quote: “Admiration is mixed with disapproval of the pictures for the pain they might give the female relatives of the dead. The camera brings the viewer close, too close; supplemented by a magnifying glass – for this is a double lens story- the “terrible distinctness” of the pictures gives unnecessary, indecent information” (Sontag 63). 
   1. Comment: This whole concept of “censorship” is talked about throughout this whole chapter (4). What should be shown to the public, and what should be kept private for the sake of the families and even just to prevent the shock and gruesomeness to the regular public. There were even bans put into place about certain press photography of war, and which military photographers were allowed to go near the fighting. I personally think this is smart, because there are some things that should be kept private, for the sake and dignity of the person in the picture and the families. I know that I do not like seeing the faces of the dead in war pictures, and this is why I liked that they started to stop this. Especially, imagine how it felt to be a family member of someone in a gruesome war photo depicting the pain in their eyes.
      1. Question: When did they come to this realization that some pictures should be kept private? How did they choose which military photographers were allowed to capture images of the fighting?