April 12, 2022 • 56 mins
Sebastian Garcia is a senior undergraduate at UCF completing a double major in History and Biomedical Sciences. His academic interests are history, writing, and research. Sebastian was selected as a panelist for UCF’s Knights Write Showcase in Spring of 2021 with his article “Is the Advanced Placement (AP) Program Really ‘Advanced”? A Critical Textual Analysis of an AP United States History Textbook” and was also published in the Spring 2022 issue of Stylus: A Journal of First Year Writing.
His future goals include attending grad school and becoming a university professor in history, so he may continue working in his area of interest.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:07):
Greetings and welcome to DWR discussions on Writing and Rhetoric, a space for informal conversations around research and practice in the field.
At the university level, a place inclusive for curious novices, blossoming scholars, and seasoned academics to consider and share their inquiries, experiences, and passions surrounding writing and rhetoric.
(00:29):
We are your hosts, professors Meeghan Faulconer and Nikolas Gardiakos, with the University of Central Florida.
Thank you for joining us.
Now let's get this conversation started.
(00:51):
Today we are joined by Sebastian Garcia.
Sebastian is a senior undergraduate at UCF working on a double major in Biomedical Sciences and History.
His academic interests are history, for UCF's Nightwright Showcase in spring of 2021.
writing and research.
(01:13):
With his article.
Is the advanced placement program really advanced? A critical textual analysis of an AP United States history textbook.
It was published in Stylists, a journal of first year writing.
His future goals include becoming a university professor in History, so he may continue researching all of his areas of interest.
(01:35):
Thank you so much for joining us today, Sebastian.
Thank you for having me.
I'm excited.
We're excited to have you here.
So for the viewers at home, or the listeners at home, I should say night's Right is a day at UCF where we celebrate the work of our first year composition students in both ENC eleven one and eleven two.
(01:58):
We asked you in that class, we collectively as a department, to come up with something that interests you and to do some research on it and write a paper.
So what led you to this ambitious undertaking of analyzing an AP History textbook? And I don't want to spoil anything else I'm not going to say anymore.
(02:18):
So what led you to this line of inquiry and where did it go from there? It originally started when I took Intro to Philosophy in my first semester here at UCF.
So that was back in summer of 2019.
And in that class, it just opened up a lot of conversations that I didn't know about before, specifically about political philosophy, the power of power.
(02:46):
So how there are certain different ways in which the power keepers want to maintain their power and a way in which not a lot of people notice that it's in telling history.
I've always been interested in history, specifically United States history, ever since, like, middle school.
(03:10):
And when I finally got the opportunity to do a research project in Professor Guardiaco's 2019 fall class, I was like super excited and no hesitation on what I wanted to do.
I'll be honest, I didn't know I wanted to do the full textbook.
But my motivation and desire to do a true research project just kind of took over.
(03:35):
I want to chime in here and just say that I did try and persuade you to not do the whole textbook in an effort to not have you have a huge undertaking for the class.
But what was it about that motivation? You can then continue your story about the project as well.
(03:57):
The motivation just stemmed from me genuinely loving history and liking to learn.
So I already had to read that textbook for Advanced placement us.
History, which I took my junior year of high school.
So I was basically rereading it.
And I don't mind rereading history.
I'm that type of person that could watch a movie 20 times and still enjoy it and listen to the same song with things that I genuinely love.
(04:23):
It's no different.
So, yeah, that's where that motivation stem from, just that passion for history and then wanting to truly know if I can answer the research question I proposed, was there a particular philosophical approach? And I'm so sorry to put you on the spot because I know that that class was a long time ago, but I'm not a philosophy student myself.
(04:45):
So is there a particular philosopher's approach to looking at it in terms of let me view this textbook through the eyes of forgive me if I'm wrong.
Is this written by the victor? Is this written unbiased in an unbiased way? Is this written considering all the viewpoints? Is that what you were going for with this? Yeah, I was dipping my toes in the water with what was out there in the literature.
(05:20):
I just knew that originally I wanted to do something with history.
So then how I got from history of textbooks was that was mainly the literature that was out there about textbook and bias.
And bias was mentioned in that philosophy class.
So once I just kept reading all those articles that were in the literature, I was like, okay, I want to do textbook and bias.
(05:44):
And then what led me to specifically an AP textbook was not only the fact that I read one myself and I was part of that experience, but also the literature didn't have any Advanced Placement textbooks.
It was either high school textbooks, middle school textbooks, elementary school textbooks, maybe some college textbooks, but none of them were about the Advanced Placement program.
(06:07):
And I wanted to not only fill in that gap just to fill the gap, but I think it's imperative to fill that gap because Advanced Placement is a program that just keeps increasing in its numbers.
And I wrote about this in my paper.
Since the 1990s, it's been increasing in its numbers throughout the country.
So I think it's really imperative to analyze textbooks that are used for that program.
(06:32):
You think about the AP student, it is a very particular audience if you're making rhetorical decisions in the way that you're explaining, which should be fact driven data.
Right.
We think about a textbook as being basically pages of facts, right? Exactly.
The telling of history should be a story of facts, of events that took place over a period of time with the consideration of a particular audience of AP students, being that these are students that should have a somewhat different understanding of nuance and perhaps different from a typical high school student not quite to where a college student is, but almost where a college student is.
(07:13):
So that is a very interesting consideration.
And I do have one quick question for you.
You have referenced the literature.
You're saying the literature talked about textbooks in high school, the literature talk about textbooks and college.
What literature are you mentioning? Are you mentioning other researchers that are doing studies on the way that textbooks are giving their messages? Or what do you mean by literature? Other researchers doing similar studies of textbook and bias or just like analyzing history textbooks in general? Okay, yeah, and I thought it was interesting too.
(07:43):
I remember from your proposal for this en C 11,002 research project that you were doing, you mentioned part of the motivation there being that in the AP class, like, a lot of the materials were focused on the AP exam.
So things that would be on the AP exam, what students should prepare for, for the AP exam, which again, is completely understandable as a premise for goal of an AP course.
(08:10):
But can you talk a little bit about what you noticed that sort of made you want to ask these sort of deeper questions about what you were learning in AP history? Well, like you guys mentioned before, we see textbooks as a factual piece of information.
It's like the most factual reliable source out there.
(08:31):
So that alone just made me want to investigate if that was true and the fact that it's an AP textbook, like how you mentioned, it's a very particular audience, a student that is supposed to be higher level than the average.
So I really wanted to see whether what they were putting out there, as in the College Board, was that higher level content.
(08:55):
So that's really what motivated me to ask those deeper questions about bias and in general, if the information was relevant and accurate.
Can you talk a little bit about I know you came by this semester and talked to my eleven two students, which was really great.
Yeah, it was great of you to spend that time and to give that time and to talk to students in my classes as their en c eleven two students in the process of when you spoke to them, designing things like their methodology and their questions.
(09:27):
Can you speak a little bit about, in your particular research project, the design of your methodology and what that process was like and how you decided to actually analyze the text in doing your rhetorical analysis of the text about issues of representation, can you walk us through that process a little bit? For sure.
(09:49):
So, honestly, I've been blessed to have certain teachers throughout my life, whether it's in college or in high school.
So it's probably like a little shadow, but Dr.
Hass and Miss Rosa were my two research teachers back in high school.
(10:11):
I took AP Capstone, and there is where I really learned the fundamentals of research.
So not reading articles, but analyzing the literature, how to develop an accurate and appropriate methodology, how to analyze your own results, and how to formulate and put all those pieces together to write a research paper.
(10:31):
And then when I got to college and I took your class, Professor Guardiacos, you taught me how to analyze it in a rhetorical medium, which that I've never done before, because the two research projects that I did before your class in high school was there were quantitative studies, so just purely numbers.
(10:52):
But your class was the first time I attempted to do a qualitative study, and I ended up doing both.
So that was different.
So just throughout that journey of learning from all these different people and teachers and professors really enabled me to do this undertaking because you could have all the motivation in the world, which that certainly helps, but if you don't have the tools to actually do it, then it probably won't be feasible.
(11:21):
So I'm really curious.
I'm sitting here probably looking like I'm staring off into space because I'm thinking about so many elements to this type of approach to an analysis of a textbook, because I'm really curious as to what it might tell us.
So you decided to do this rhetorical analysis of this textbook in its entirety to look at potential biases that were evident.
(11:48):
And is this the type of thing that you just went chapter by chapter? Were you also considering, as Nick mention, the test questions and test prep? Because I'm curious to think about what is the textbook also directing us to consider as in terms of the important things that we take away from those chapters that were then being tested on to make sure that we remember.
(12:16):
So talk to us a little bit about that consideration.
I know that you asked about methodology, but I'm really wanting to know the nuts and bolts of how you approach this analysis.
So in terms of test questions that I didn't end up looking at, because there was just so much already that I was looking at.
(12:36):
However, in my discussion in the paper, I do mention which kind of talks to that test questions because these questions are developed by the College Board.
So what I argued in the discussion, part of my paper was that this is not only analysis of this AP textbook, but this is also a reflection of what the College Board deems necessary and valuable to learn as, like, a test.
(12:58):
So that's where I kind of talk about it.
Even though I didn't analyze the test questions myself, the fact that I analyzed the whole textbook, I kind of made sure it was a reflection of what the College Board wants deems necessary for their students to learn for their exams.
Well, like, at the end of each chapter, are there questions? Yes.
(13:19):
Okay, so that's what I was kind of getting at.
I would assume that those chapter questions are to prepare you for what you should be concentrating towards for the actual test.
And that's my argument, that I use what they deem necessary, if it's true, if it's valid or not.
And in terms of how I did it, which was a question that I got a lot when I talk to your class, I did do chapter by chapter.
(13:46):
So I would sit down and I would read the page first without making any notes, and then I would reread it and then take notes of it.
And then like how I showed in nights Right, in my Nights Right presentation back in spring 2021.
And when I talked to your class a couple of weeks ago was that I had a notebook, and I color coded.
(14:09):
So purple was quantitative data.
So my quantitative data was just the bias called underrepresentation.
So this was simply looking at how many lines or paragraphs and in pages were stored in marginalized groups, reference in comparison to the total amount of pages, paragraphs in that chapter.
(14:35):
So that's what's under representation, specifically in chapters, that these marginalized groups do have an important role in history, yet in the textbook, they're not referenced enough.
So that was the quantitative aspect.
And then qualitatively would be I would write in blue, and those would just be notes of the biases that I found in the literature, in the literature and the other research studies that I analyzed.
(15:04):
So these were gender bias, racial bias, and then ideological bias is basically a Eurocentric attitude in writing history.
And the perfect example I have for that was in the first chapter, there was a whole page dedicated to the Portuguese exploration in Africa, which has nothing to do with the chapter one, which was basically about Native Americans before the European came to America.
(15:42):
Sorry.
And so I use that example always when I talk about ideological bias, because that clearly shows the Eurocentric attitude in writing.
It's something that was completely irrelevant.
It showed in chapter one.
So, yeah, I went chapter by chapter.
I regret it like twice, three times to make sure I got everything, because I know what I was doing.
(16:06):
I know how, quote unquote, controversial this could be.
So I really wanted to make sure that I didn't perpetrate biases of my own.
So how can I call out one for bias and then repeat it? So that's why I consistently double, triple check myself.
And so the amount of pages I read was 400 and 2323 pages to my enemy students listening at home.
(16:34):
Please don't think that this is a requirement of the class.
This is what we call above and beyond.
Yes.
And it took me roughly a week.
So I would just discipline myself to read.
So in total there was 31 chapters, and each chapter had ten plus pages, sometimes even like 20.
(17:00):
So I would try to try to do at least four chapters every day, maybe five, six, because as I mentioned when I was presenting to the class was that this was my doing.
No one told me to be dis ambitious.
It's just coming from within.
But at the end of the day, I still had a due date to comply with.
So it didn't matter that this project was super ambitious.
(17:23):
I still had a due date for Professor Guardiacko's class.
This is also, though, why it's so important for the research that you do in eleven two to be something that you're passionate about.
Exactly.
Because if we were to assign something like this to you, not only would there probably be a lot of calls to counseling services through the course of the project, a lot of tears, a lot of bad rate my professors.
(17:50):
No, but there's something really oh, gosh, how can I say this without sounding really academically nerdy? There's something very empowering about the first time you get to really engage in research that is driven by your own desire to know.
(18:10):
And getting a taste for that early in your academic career is unusual.
It's not so you're usually much later in your senior year or even as a grad student, that you actually have some control over what it is that you're researching.
So I think it's really exciting that as a freshman or freshmanish Era, you get to have a chance to say, okay, I'm going all in on this.
(18:35):
Because also, if it had been something we assigned, I'm sure you would have given up, like throwing your hands up halfway through and been like, okay, I'm good with just doing the first two chapters.
A whole textbook was way too ambitious.
I'm not doing all of this.
And so I love that about our course, and I love that about hearing you say that dedication to this project.
Like, no, I need to know I have this watch to know the answer.
(18:57):
Exactly.
And I do have my own reputation at stake.
I know this is controversial.
I know that what I'm looking at is something that could be questionable.
Right.
So I'm going to go all in and really do the deep dive.
Yeah.
I always tell students that are embarking in research to do something they're passionate about.
It doesn't have to be crazy passionate like me.
(19:19):
I'm just a weirdo like that.
We all are.
You're in good company, but something that you genuinely do care about.
Because, like my high school teacher told me, dr.
Hass, this is going to be something you're married to for a couple of months, and in that case a whole year, because it was high school, but for the semesters, four or five months.
(19:39):
So you really want to be invested in it, because if not, it's just going to show in the writing and the quality of work that you didn't care and that you truly weren't interested in what you were doing.
Yeah.
So I'm curious.
You mentioned and that was the number one piece of advice you gave when you spoke to my classes about finding something that you're passionate in.
(20:05):
Do you have any other advice for students or when you think about way back in the before times of fall 2019, it seems like forever ago.
It does seem like forever ago.
Thinking about it from the perspective you have now, what advice do you have for either other students or things that you might do differently? So the advice I would give to students, besides to pick something that you're truly passionate about is to genuinely read the literature.
(20:39):
I'm not going to lie.
That is a part of research that for me personally is the most difficult because it could be a lot of sources to go through and to really make sure if it's relevant and valuable to your own research.
And also it could be frustrating because I know there's times where I'm in EBSCO or Google Scholar or just in these online databases and it feels like I'm doing the perfect searches, the perfect keywords, but I don't get the quality of articles that I want.
(21:13):
So I know that could be really frustrating.
But that is so crucial in your own project because I look at the literature review research synthesis as the first step, because it is the first step.
It's like the building blocks.
I feel like if you don't have a good literature review, you won't have a good project because that's where your project stems from.
(21:37):
You know, if I didn't get the quality of sources that I got for my AP textbook analysis, I feel like my research project wouldn't be that good because I knew about biases.
But I'll be honest with you, until that point, even in that philosophy class, this isn't something that they teach you.
(21:59):
I wasn't taught about bias in high school or my introductory college courses.
This is something that I learned by doing the project itself, by reading the literature.
So the fact that I was able to get great quality sources really set me up for a great paper down the road.
(22:21):
A lot of vigorous head nodding by me because I know that I tried to preach that to my student.
Well, preach sounds terrible.
I try to explain that to my students as well because it's from my own experiences as a researcher that it's very time consuming and it can be very deflating.
It can when you feel like you have this great idea and you're trying to find the sources to position it amongst, and when you can't find them and then it kind of takes the wind out of your sales because you're like, well, does it mean that I don't have this great idea? Or it's not really going anywhere.
(22:55):
I wanted to ask you about the experience of presenting at Nights right now.
Was that the virtual year? That was the year, unfortunately, yeah.
We weren't in person in that spring of 2021.
Oh, yeah, right.
Spring of 2021.
(23:16):
Yeah.
We had virtual panels where students presented, and then we had Q and A N and things like that.
It wasn't the same as the live event, but yeah, it's one thing to write in your room and submit a document to your professor and then on to Stylist.
(23:40):
It's very different to read it even into a computer screen where there are people listening.
What was that like? That was a great experience.
I had previous experience similar to Nights.
Right back in my senior year of high school, I presented at a research symposium at FIU, and what I was presenting there was the research project I did a year prior, which was about sports nutrition knowledge in high school athletes, so I knew what was it about and what was expected.
(24:17):
Nonetheless, I was still really excited because this is a project that I invested so much time in, and it was no one's fault that it was virtual, obviously, but I really do wish it was in person.
But nonetheless, it was still great.
And that whole experience, I really wanted to because, like you said, it's different from writing to presenting.
(24:40):
It could be two totally different studies depending on how you present it.
So I really wanted to make sure that what I wrote is what is going to be presented.
So I had to reread my paper, which was a lot, but that's fine, and make sure that the main points that I made on my paper were going to be translated into the presentation, especially since my paper was so long and I only had eight minutes, I think, to present.
(25:07):
So I really had to make sure that the biggest punches were going to be made in that presentation.
And when I presented, it was, again, virtual.
So I just saw a bunch of comments popping up, and I couldn't get distracted by them.
I was just in the back of my head.
I was hoping they were great comments and not like, people roasting me or telling me, this project sucks, get out.
(25:31):
Luckily, there were good comments.
When I finished, I read them back, and it was great.
In preparation, did you read your paper out loud to yourself to see where it was hitting or where you felt like it was falling flat, or did you just read it silently? I read it silently, but now, looking back, I think reading out loud would have been better because it just sounds different.
(25:51):
And a lot of the things that maybe you could miss by reading it in your head, you cannot miss when you're reading it out loud, because it's out loud.
But, yeah, I just read it silently to myself, and I mainly focused on the results and the discussion because, well, Professor Guardiola also gave me good advice for the presentation.
(26:12):
He told me to just focus on your own research for this.
It's not like a 30 minutes presentation.
If it was, then you could talk about the literature, your methodology, but since you are very limited on time, he said, just go for the biggest bunches in your paper, just tell them what you found and that's what's going to really captivate the audience.
And it sure did.
(26:34):
Yeah, it was great to see the reaction and comments while you were presenting via zoom in the virtual presentation.
And it is something that's really interesting to work with students to do, which is to distill a long term project into a very short presentation of that research project.
(26:57):
But I think it is interesting to get people engaged in the idea of the research and the question itself, when you think back on that experience of presenting your paper and doing nights right? And now that there's been more kind of time and perspective that has passed, I'm curious, like, what does that experience mean to you when you look back on an hour? Think about it in terms of your educational, career or life goals or however it's impacted you.
(27:32):
It means a lot.
It really does because I see those type of presentations and events as recognition for the work you put in.
And I really did put a lot of work into this paper.
So it really does mean a lot when I look back, when I do look back, because it's not like when I have already looked back at it.
(27:55):
It just makes me extremely grateful and happy that my work was able to be recognized.
But at the same time, it also motivates me to keep going and knowing that I could keep producing this type of work and then some.
So what are your plans now that you're in your last year here at UCF? So my plans is to graduate and then after graduation, just because of the nature of how I finished, we'll be taking a gap year.
(28:29):
It's not like voluntarily, I mean, it kind of is, but it's kind of not.
So then in that gap year, just keep building up my resume and probably doing more research, internships and start applying to history, graduate schools, graduate programs, Ma, PhD, and then go from there.
(28:52):
So that's the plan.
So writing will play a part in your post graduation plans? Most definitely.
So not to put you on the spot about what your research questions might be, but what are your research interests at this point now that you've had a lot of these kind of impactful research experiences in your career, when you imagine the things you might look at are the questions you might ask, what are some of those things for you? That's a really good question.
(29:27):
I don't limit myself to a specific I don't want to say discipline because that's really broad still, but a specific question or realm of questions.
So anything with history I am totally up for to research.
And since I do have this science background I mean, I don't want to sound dramatic here, but one of my biggest regrets in undergrad was I was never able to follow up my research from high school, the sports nutrition one, because that was really my first ever research project I did.
(30:12):
It was the full thing, the literature, methodology, results, discussion, conclusion.
And I did my own research.
I surveyed 177 high school athletes from my high school.
And I know that there was this opportunity to follow up that study in college.
(30:33):
I had to just shoot a bunch of cold emails to any of the dietitians, registered dietitians here at UCF, but too busy.
Then covet came and then next thing you know, I'm about to leave and I feel like it's a little too late.
But that just shows you that I'm open to that side, that discipline as well.
(30:53):
But history is the main where I'm going to stay at and do most of my research questions.
And not just history, but like writing in general, how writing about writing, those are kind of like I don't want to say big three, but the main areas I'll be at.
Well, I feel like I've succeeded for a semester.
(31:16):
If I can get my students to consider that they can begin to question acts of communication in the world around them, that they're more than just what they appear to be on the surface, and if they can understand that, then it's a win.
It doesn't matter if it's a TV show watching, if it's memes, if it's gifts, if it's Instagram, TikTok, whatever.
(31:39):
You can start to look at any of those things and begin to look at the bigger picture, bigger implications, what's happening rhetorically, what are we seeing that's both stated and unstated? And then if you start to go, well, that's really interesting, what's happening here? And that, I think, is more to the point that it's exposing.
(31:59):
Oh gosh, I need to be really careful of my word choices.
Not exposing because that sounds terrible.
Giving students the agency, an opportunity to begin to question things for themselves once they have a toolkit of things that they can examine them with, like rhetoric or audience consideration or exigency or any of those things.
(32:22):
Like looking at the way communication happens in sports amongst players, amongst the players, to their fans, the players to other players, the players to the agencies, the way that players speak to football players speak to the NFL, the way that baseball players right now are speaking to the MLB, the way that maybe different sports players speak to each other a lot.
(32:50):
That's happening right now with soccer, with what's happening with these Oligarchs that are being forced to sell their team.
We talk off Mike, believe it or not, we'll be.
Watching TV and I'm like, succession is like the best show I've ever watched.
I want to write a paper on succession.
I don't know what I want to write, but I want to do something.
(33:10):
So I think it's just an example that once you begin to question, you can start to see where it can go anywhere.
And you're not limited to I want to study history, therefore I can only question and research history.
Right, yeah.
No, I 100% agree with you.
Like how you're saying TikTok memes, whatever it could be, if you have a critical eye for it, you could get some valuable information out of it and it's not even forcing that information, it's there.
(33:39):
It's just you have to ask the appropriate questions, have an appropriate methodology and you can get it.
It's not even like a stretch because I know maybe that's how it sounds, but it's definitely not it.
So 100% agree.
So that's why I'm very broad with my future research endeavors because like you said, it could be literally anything and there could be valuable stuff in that.
(34:03):
Yeah.
And I think the writing about writing approach that we have in the composition class really does create a space for that kind of questioning of everything and just looking at the world around us because everything is kind of mediated and done through communication, whatever kind of form it takes.
And I think when I talk to students about the example of your paper in my eleven two classes, that's one thing that I really like about your question.
(34:35):
Not only is it well designed methodology and highly motivated and well executed beyond belief.
But I also think what I point out to students is that here's a student that was willing to and curious about turning his critical eye to his own textbooks that he was sort of being given and it's sort of even something that we sort of as students put up on a pedestal like a textbook.
(35:08):
Right, exactly.
It's the be all and end all.
Exactly where knowledge exists in writing form.
Exactly.
When we're students approach it as these kind of untouchable things.
Right.
So what I like to point out is, no, this student questioned his own textbook and you can do that with the things in this class and everything you kind of interact with.
(35:30):
Yeah, for sure.
And that was like the biggest motivation again for my project was we kind of put it in the standard of untouchable, like you said, the end all be all of knowledge.
That's not certainly true for all other things that are end all be all.
(35:50):
And yes, to talk more about my results of my paper, it does surpass in the textbooks of old, like from the 20th century by a lot.
But that doesn't mean that there aren't biases present in this textbook which was written in 2018.
(36:10):
Yeah.
And I think it just goes along with everything that we think about in terms of our communication, but also, like, our values.
There's no point at which, especially now that we can say, hey, we're good, we made it, and high five each other.
About our progress, I think what your study points out is that, yes, better, but still room to improve and room to develop a little further, which is why it's a great question or discussion.
(36:44):
I think you should give a quick shout out to your high school and to those teachers again.
Yeah.
Because obviously they had a big impact on you, and I'm sure they do with other students.
So where did you go to school? I went to Southwest Miami Senior High School.
And what were those who were those teachers again? Doctor Hass, she was my 10th grade English, but also 10th grade AP Capstone seminar teacher and then my 11th grade research teacher, because it was called research when you went to 11th grade was Miss Rosa.
(37:13):
So, yeah, shout out.
Yeah.
I mean, those sound like really kind of impactful experiences, especially for high school.
I've been lucky enough where they've invited me back to speak with the 10th graders and the 11th graders, and I've had other teachers in high school that were extremely influential to me, that weren't necessarily my research teachers, but they still played a big role in my development and maturity in high school.
(37:43):
But when I go back and I present to those classes, seminar research classes, I tell them that this is the most important advanced placement class you're going to take in high school.
This is where you are going to be doing this in college.
I can guarantee you that.
I can't guarantee you if you'll do BBQ FRQS and all those things that they test you on certain other AP exams, but you will write research papers no matter what discipline you're in.
(38:10):
And that's coming from me, who I'm both sides of the ball.
I'm in BioMed Sciences and history.
And let me tell you, in both of those degrees, both of those majors, I've had to write research papers.
So I always tell those kids that, really, if you're going to care about one class, you got to care about this one, this seminar AP seminar AP research class, because the skills really do translate.
(38:35):
And if you really do appreciate the opportunity you're given to take those classes, you could do incredible work when you're in college.
I've been lucky to have those two teachers, and in my experiences with them, it's been great.
You spoke a little bit about they gave you your foundation and qualitative research, and then eleven two is professor Guardiacas gave you quantitative.
(38:57):
Did I get that right? No, the opposite.
Opposite? Yeah.
Okay, reverse.
Well, I won't say it again because you just did.
How have you seen that play out into your other coursework after you took that class? Have you seen it where you've used it in your advanced class? Your coursework here at UCF after Professor Guardiola's class.
(39:20):
Yeah, I mean, that was really the first class that I utilized those skills I learned in high school and then from there on out, it was almost every semester I had at least one class where I had to write a research paper.
Whether that was a biography of a historical figure, that assignment comes up to mind because I never written a biography before, like a research biography.
(39:48):
However, it still followed that same structure of kind of like a literature review.
Not really a literature review, more of like early life introduction, but it's still setting that foundation for the rest of the paper and how to intertwine your own voice with sources, which is another really difficult thing to do.
And honestly, with practice it comes you just have to write papers and papers to really get that skill down packed.
(40:15):
I mean, I don't have a downpack at all, but I could say I've gotten better at it.
This might be a little tangent, but I'll come back that I feel like that is what separates a good writer from a great writer.
If you could distinguish your own voice, especially with papers that are so source heavy.
I don't want to read just a summary of the readings you read.
(40:37):
I want you to tell me.
But also I want to hear your own arguments and takes on it and kind of make it like a story.
Intertwine the sources that align with each other that don't align with each other.
And it will be a really enjoyable piece from there on out.
Yeah, I think I love that explanation because it sounds like something I said a few days ago in ENC eleven two.
(41:00):
Now, we're talking about the creative use of research resources right.
And how part of what we're trying to do in that course is to get students to think about themselves differently.
Not just students that report on a thing, but students that have thoughts and arguments and claims to make about the research that they're reading and the things that they're analyzing and talking about.
(41:25):
So it's great that you had that experience or kind of realize that that's a big part of it.
Yeah, it's a big transition because when you're up until high school, you view secondary sources as just like textbooks up on a pedestal.
These people are experts.
I am just a novice.
(41:46):
I can only regurgitate what they have to say.
Exactly.
Once you're in college, though, you are in the arena that is shared with them.
But it's still a really big shift.
And I have a very unpleasant experience a few semesters ago of trying to give the example of it's.
Like, you're the host of a talk show.
It's your talk show.
(42:06):
You decide the topic.
The secondary sources are guests.
And I say it was an unpleasant example because my class said, what is a talk show? And I realized wow.
I realized, yes, I had a moment.
(42:27):
It's a big shift as a writer, and I agree that it is a struggle, that it takes a lot of practice, and it's something that I think all writers struggle with because in particular, when you're broaching into areas that you may not feel like you're an expert yet.
Right.
I'm just sticking my toe in the pool of being an expert on this topic, and these people have been writing about forever.
(42:50):
Like, what could I possibly have to say that's as important or well thought as them? But it is, and that is a big shift.
I think an important thing to piggyback for what you just said is that I feel like really analyzing, trying to find the gap in the literature can make you be that quote unquote established voice, because it's hard, like you said, to distinguish yourself from these researchers that have been doing this for years.
(43:21):
I mean, their life's work.
But if you could take what they've done and again, not stretch it, but genuinely find with the critical eye a gap in what they said, that alone separates you.
You don't have to be necessarily repeating what they're saying, but in fact, you're just using what they researched and then doing it to your own with the gap you found.
(43:46):
Like, for example, with mine.
I'll give you two examples for the sports nutrition paper that I did back in high school.
That was the quicker one, the easier one to explain when I was reading the literature.
And again, I haven't taken a sports nutrition class.
I'm not an expert on sports nutrition.
I mean, I was an athlete myself in high school, so I obviously knew not to eat McDonald's right after practice, but to say I knew the specific composition of proteins and carbohydrates and fats.
(44:23):
No, I did not know that as a high schooler.
I barely knew that now even.
But when I was reading the literature and reading those articles from those researchers that have been doing this again for their entire life, I was able to not only learn from them, but I also, with my critical, I realized none of them have done high school athletes.
(44:44):
Like, none of them.
And I always try to avoid using absolute terms, but out of all the sources that I at least read, none of them research high school athletes.
It was only college athletes, collegiate athletes.
So that's where I found my gap.
So now that puts me in a position where I don't have to piggyback what they did.
(45:06):
This is my own creative research.
Yes, I'm using their sources not only to inform myself, but to back up where I'm coming from.
But this is an entirely new research project that hopefully could play into the broader conversation.
And so the same thing with the AP textbook.
None of them analyzed.
Advanced Placement textbooks.
(45:27):
So I wanted to do an analysis on an advanced placement textbook, which already sets me apart from what they did before.
So I feel like finding that gap and then establishing your own voice could really set you apart from the others.
Yeah, that's a great piece of advice for any researcher, really, at any level.
(45:51):
I want to circle back to something that you mentioned before, which is kind of another aspect of encounter.
And our writing about writing composition approach in our department is thinking about things that students can learn and do in our classes that help them recognize and transfer to other genres that they might write.
(46:15):
So.
Like you mentioned the historical biography that you wrote and how you kind of took one of the things about at least that I've read about transfer theory is that a lot of times to learn to do something we haven't done before.
We always draw upon what we know how to do.
(46:36):
What those experiences are.
And then using those to figure out something that we haven't done before.
So it's interesting to hear you talk about, okay, here's what I've done.
What can I recognize in that, in doing something new or something I haven't done before? Yeah, exactly what you said.
(46:58):
All the skills that I've learned from your class in fall 2019, from that AP textbook research project, came from what I learned in high school.
So it's like a kind of like domino effect.
And I have used those skills every semester onward after your class, whether it's the history biography or other research projects that I've done.
(47:23):
In fact, the latest one that I just finished was it's a research project about analyzing the Olympics.
Not the Winter Olympics, the Tokyo Olympics this summer, this past summer, and seeing how it is representative of our current global pandemic culture.
(47:44):
And luckily, I was accepted to present at the UCF Research Symposium this month, March 30.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
I'm excited.
I say luckily because I've never applied to these research symposiums.
Like, it's always been just off invites.
(48:04):
So I was just a little scared that mine was probably not going to make it, but it did.
And it was a tough research project to do because it wasn't as structured as the process wasn't as structured as I have experienced before with your class or back in high school.
So, yeah, it was kind of out of my comfort zone, but it was still really interesting research project.
(48:30):
And the motivation just came from the pandemic itself, how within these three years, a whole different world has been created.
And I feel like if you go back in history because this was for a history class, so the origin of the project had to be somewhere historical.
So if you go back in history, the Olympics have always been a medium of that time to show the current political climate.
(48:58):
So you go back to the 1936 Games in Berlin, and Hitler used that to promote his Nazi propaganda, and agenda if you go to the 1968 Games in Mexico City, the US.
Athletes on the podium with the black power fist representing the times here in the United States during the Civil Rights movement.
(49:20):
So I felt like this Olympics in 2021 in Tokyo was no different.
And how I did that project was I surveyed people.
I tried to survey most of my demographics, of course, was college students, but I tried to survey also older adults because I wanted to also see the generational differences.
And luckily, I say luckily because obviously you have these certain hypothesis going in your own mind.
(49:47):
And a lot of people, what they remembered most about these Games was Simone BIOS and mental health.
And mental health is a big thing during the pandemic.
And I wrote about it in my paper saying that even 20 years ago in the 2000 Games in Sydney, no one was talking about mental health.
And now we're talking about mental health because of what she was able, able to use that platform, that international platform.
(50:15):
And also I felt like a lot of people were able to relate with it because of the pandemic, because of the three year, two years of loneliness, quarantine and all that.
So it was a really cool research project and I'm glad I'm able to present it again.
You are definitely too young to remember Nancy Kerrigan and Tanya Harding other than the dramatic recreations recently, but what a very different response to mental health issues amongst athletes in Olympic stories within 20 years of one another.
(50:45):
But yeah.
So we're closing in on our time for this episode.
I want to thank you so much for being here and taking the time.
But I want to ask in terms of you've talked about grad school, but just kind of looking forward to things that you're excited about or things that are on the horizon for you.
(51:07):
What's on your mind when you think about, you know, you've talked a lot about the impactfulness of all the experiences that you've gone through and been lucky enough to have as a student.
So now, looking forward, what do you imagine? What are you excited about? I'm really excited about just grad school.
I honestly don't know what to expect.
(51:29):
I've talked to some of the professors that I've been lucky enough to be close with throughout my time here at UCF, and they give me broad advice, which is fine, but the fact that I don't know, honestly, is what makes me feel excited, not knowing.
It's scary, I'm not going to lie, but it's also exciting.
So just grad school and I know in grad school, it's also very research heavy.
(51:54):
And to get that PhD is also very research heavy.
And I'm all for it because the past five years I've been really invested in research and I will continue to do so.
(52:18):
gratitude.
I'm grateful for it.
But also huge motivation to keep going because that was unlike a presentation or symposium, which is really important also.
But getting published in a journal, an established journal here at the university, honestly, it meant a lot to me to be able to get recognized at that level.
(52:44):
All these experiences, I'll never forget them and I'll continue to use them in my future endeavors because like you said with the transfer theory, just tweak the skills a little bit to adjust it to the medium that I'm doing it in.
But at the end of the day, these are all fundamental skills that could be applicable to anything.
And I've seen it.
It's not even just me talking like I've used it in other disciplines.
(53:08):
Yeah, that is something I did forget to ask about, was the Stylist experience.
And just as you know, because we've talked about it before, that sort of a little more sort of competitive or selective process that Stylist goes through with the readers and the editors and the things like that.
(53:33):
And just the fact that there isn't as much space to celebrate and feature, like all the projects, all the great projects that students do nights is a little bit bigger and capable of recognizing a lot more kinds of work.
I know we talked about submitting the paper to Stylists and things like that, so congratulations on it, on it getting published.
(53:59):
That was really great.
And I know that really did mean a lot to you to want to also include that next step or that other step in recognition for your work.
Yeah, I mean, you know, more than anyone, that was the main goal since fall 2019.
(54:21):
I wasn't doing it for a grade, I wasn't doing it for points.
I envisioned myself making it into the journal one way or another.
And it was, like I said, just extremely grateful and that I was able to get that accomplished.
For someone who values published medium, as a researcher, to see yourself in a published medium, it's pretty exciting.
(54:50):
It is pretty exciting.
I kind of made it because I've been looking at all these sources and these established journals and whatnot.
This is a really established journal here at the university.
So beyond grateful for the opportunity, because like you said, it's very selective.
I knew my paper was good enough, but I was still, like, I wasn't 100% sure that I was going to get selected because throughout our talks you were telling me how selective and competitive this is.
(55:24):
And this isn't like just the space, there's not enough space for all these other projects to be recognized, but that just makes getting accepted all much sweeter indeed.
Well, thank you again so much for taking the time to speak with us today.
It was wonderful chatting with you about your experiences both in eleven two and outside of eleven two and all the best on your future endeavors.
(55:52):
And we hope to see many more publications with your name on them in the academic arena, in history and sports and anything else that whatever suits your fancy.
Thank you.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you for having me on the podcast.
It was great.
Yeah.
Thanks for being here.
And thanks for listening, everybody.
Greetings and welcome to DWR discussions on Writing and Rhetoric, a space for informal conversations around research and practice in the field.
At the university level, a place inclusive for curious novices, blossoming scholars, and seasoned academics to consider and share their inquiries, experiences, and passions surrounding writing and rhetoric.
(00:29):
We are your hosts, professors Meeghan Faulconer and Nikolas Gardiakos, with the University of Central Florida.
Thank you for joining us.
Now let's get this conversation started.
(00:51):
Today we are joined by Sebastian Garcia.
Sebastian is a senior undergraduate at UCF working on a double major in Biomedical Sciences and History.
His academic interests are history, for UCF's Nightwright Showcase in spring of 2021.
writing and research.
(01:13):
With his article.
Is the advanced placement program really advanced? A critical textual analysis of an AP United States history textbook.
It was published in Stylists, a journal of first year writing.
His future goals include becoming a university professor in History, so he may continue researching all of his areas of interest.
(01:35):
Thank you so much for joining us today, Sebastian.
Thank you for having me.
I'm excited.
We're excited to have you here.
So for the viewers at home, or the listeners at home, I should say night's Right is a day at UCF where we celebrate the work of our first year composition students in both ENC eleven one and eleven two.
(01:58):
We asked you in that class, we collectively as a department, to come up with something that interests you and to do some research on it and write a paper.
So what led you to this ambitious undertaking of analyzing an AP History textbook? And I don't want to spoil anything else I'm not going to say anymore.
(02:18):
So what led you to this line of inquiry and where did it go from there? It originally started when I took Intro to Philosophy in my first semester here at UCF.
So that was back in summer of 2019.
And in that class, it just opened up a lot of conversations that I didn't know about before, specifically about political philosophy, the power of power.
(02:46):
So how there are certain different ways in which the power keepers want to maintain their power and a way in which not a lot of people notice that it's in telling history.
I've always been interested in history, specifically United States history, ever since, like, middle school.
(03:10):
And when I finally got the opportunity to do a research project in Professor Guardiaco's 2019 fall class, I was like super excited and no hesitation on what I wanted to do.
I'll be honest, I didn't know I wanted to do the full textbook.
But my motivation and desire to do a true research project just kind of took over.
(03:35):
I want to chime in here and just say that I did try and persuade you to not do the whole textbook in an effort to not have you have a huge undertaking for the class.
But what was it about that motivation? You can then continue your story about the project as well.
(03:57):
The motivation just stemmed from me genuinely loving history and liking to learn.
So I already had to read that textbook for Advanced placement us.
History, which I took my junior year of high school.
So I was basically rereading it.
And I don't mind rereading history.
I'm that type of person that could watch a movie 20 times and still enjoy it and listen to the same song with things that I genuinely love.
(04:23):
It's no different.
So, yeah, that's where that motivation stem from, just that passion for history and then wanting to truly know if I can answer the research question I proposed, was there a particular philosophical approach? And I'm so sorry to put you on the spot because I know that that class was a long time ago, but I'm not a philosophy student myself.
(04:45):
So is there a particular philosopher's approach to looking at it in terms of let me view this textbook through the eyes of forgive me if I'm wrong.
Is this written by the victor? Is this written unbiased in an unbiased way? Is this written considering all the viewpoints? Is that what you were going for with this? Yeah, I was dipping my toes in the water with what was out there in the literature.
(05:20):
I just knew that originally I wanted to do something with history.
So then how I got from history of textbooks was that was mainly the literature that was out there about textbook and bias.
And bias was mentioned in that philosophy class.
So once I just kept reading all those articles that were in the literature, I was like, okay, I want to do textbook and bias.
(05:44):
And then what led me to specifically an AP textbook was not only the fact that I read one myself and I was part of that experience, but also the literature didn't have any Advanced Placement textbooks.
It was either high school textbooks, middle school textbooks, elementary school textbooks, maybe some college textbooks, but none of them were about the Advanced Placement program.
(06:07):
And I wanted to not only fill in that gap just to fill the gap, but I think it's imperative to fill that gap because Advanced Placement is a program that just keeps increasing in its numbers.
And I wrote about this in my paper.
Since the 1990s, it's been increasing in its numbers throughout the country.
So I think it's really imperative to analyze textbooks that are used for that program.
(06:32):
You think about the AP student, it is a very particular audience if you're making rhetorical decisions in the way that you're explaining, which should be fact driven data.
Right.
We think about a textbook as being basically pages of facts, right? Exactly.
The telling of history should be a story of facts, of events that took place over a period of time with the consideration of a particular audience of AP students, being that these are students that should have a somewhat different understanding of nuance and perhaps different from a typical high school student not quite to where a college student is, but almost where a college student is.
(07:13):
So that is a very interesting consideration.
And I do have one quick question for you.
You have referenced the literature.
You're saying the literature talked about textbooks in high school, the literature talk about textbooks and college.
What literature are you mentioning? Are you mentioning other researchers that are doing studies on the way that textbooks are giving their messages? Or what do you mean by literature? Other researchers doing similar studies of textbook and bias or just like analyzing history textbooks in general? Okay, yeah, and I thought it was interesting too.
(07:43):
I remember from your proposal for this en C 11,002 research project that you were doing, you mentioned part of the motivation there being that in the AP class, like, a lot of the materials were focused on the AP exam.
So things that would be on the AP exam, what students should prepare for, for the AP exam, which again, is completely understandable as a premise for goal of an AP course.
(08:10):
But can you talk a little bit about what you noticed that sort of made you want to ask these sort of deeper questions about what you were learning in AP history? Well, like you guys mentioned before, we see textbooks as a factual piece of information.
It's like the most factual reliable source out there.
(08:31):
So that alone just made me want to investigate if that was true and the fact that it's an AP textbook, like how you mentioned, it's a very particular audience, a student that is supposed to be higher level than the average.
So I really wanted to see whether what they were putting out there, as in the College Board, was that higher level content.
(08:55):
So that's really what motivated me to ask those deeper questions about bias and in general, if the information was relevant and accurate.
Can you talk a little bit about I know you came by this semester and talked to my eleven two students, which was really great.
Yeah, it was great of you to spend that time and to give that time and to talk to students in my classes as their en c eleven two students in the process of when you spoke to them, designing things like their methodology and their questions.
(09:27):
Can you speak a little bit about, in your particular research project, the design of your methodology and what that process was like and how you decided to actually analyze the text in doing your rhetorical analysis of the text about issues of representation, can you walk us through that process a little bit? For sure.
(09:49):
So, honestly, I've been blessed to have certain teachers throughout my life, whether it's in college or in high school.
So it's probably like a little shadow, but Dr.
Hass and Miss Rosa were my two research teachers back in high school.
(10:11):
I took AP Capstone, and there is where I really learned the fundamentals of research.
So not reading articles, but analyzing the literature, how to develop an accurate and appropriate methodology, how to analyze your own results, and how to formulate and put all those pieces together to write a research paper.
(10:31):
And then when I got to college and I took your class, Professor Guardiacos, you taught me how to analyze it in a rhetorical medium, which that I've never done before, because the two research projects that I did before your class in high school was there were quantitative studies, so just purely numbers.
(10:52):
But your class was the first time I attempted to do a qualitative study, and I ended up doing both.
So that was different.
So just throughout that journey of learning from all these different people and teachers and professors really enabled me to do this undertaking because you could have all the motivation in the world, which that certainly helps, but if you don't have the tools to actually do it, then it probably won't be feasible.
(11:21):
So I'm really curious.
I'm sitting here probably looking like I'm staring off into space because I'm thinking about so many elements to this type of approach to an analysis of a textbook, because I'm really curious as to what it might tell us.
So you decided to do this rhetorical analysis of this textbook in its entirety to look at potential biases that were evident.
(11:48):
And is this the type of thing that you just went chapter by chapter? Were you also considering, as Nick mention, the test questions and test prep? Because I'm curious to think about what is the textbook also directing us to consider as in terms of the important things that we take away from those chapters that were then being tested on to make sure that we remember.
(12:16):
So talk to us a little bit about that consideration.
I know that you asked about methodology, but I'm really wanting to know the nuts and bolts of how you approach this analysis.
So in terms of test questions that I didn't end up looking at, because there was just so much already that I was looking at.
(12:36):
However, in my discussion in the paper, I do mention which kind of talks to that test questions because these questions are developed by the College Board.
So what I argued in the discussion, part of my paper was that this is not only analysis of this AP textbook, but this is also a reflection of what the College Board deems necessary and valuable to learn as, like, a test.
(12:58):
So that's where I kind of talk about it.
Even though I didn't analyze the test questions myself, the fact that I analyzed the whole textbook, I kind of made sure it was a reflection of what the College Board wants deems necessary for their students to learn for their exams.
Well, like, at the end of each chapter, are there questions? Yes.
(13:19):
Okay, so that's what I was kind of getting at.
I would assume that those chapter questions are to prepare you for what you should be concentrating towards for the actual test.
And that's my argument, that I use what they deem necessary, if it's true, if it's valid or not.
And in terms of how I did it, which was a question that I got a lot when I talk to your class, I did do chapter by chapter.
(13:46):
So I would sit down and I would read the page first without making any notes, and then I would reread it and then take notes of it.
And then like how I showed in nights Right, in my Nights Right presentation back in spring 2021.
And when I talked to your class a couple of weeks ago was that I had a notebook, and I color coded.
(14:09):
So purple was quantitative data.
So my quantitative data was just the bias called underrepresentation.
So this was simply looking at how many lines or paragraphs and in pages were stored in marginalized groups, reference in comparison to the total amount of pages, paragraphs in that chapter.
(14:35):
So that's what's under representation, specifically in chapters, that these marginalized groups do have an important role in history, yet in the textbook, they're not referenced enough.
So that was the quantitative aspect.
And then qualitatively would be I would write in blue, and those would just be notes of the biases that I found in the literature, in the literature and the other research studies that I analyzed.
(15:04):
So these were gender bias, racial bias, and then ideological bias is basically a Eurocentric attitude in writing history.
And the perfect example I have for that was in the first chapter, there was a whole page dedicated to the Portuguese exploration in Africa, which has nothing to do with the chapter one, which was basically about Native Americans before the European came to America.
(15:42):
Sorry.
And so I use that example always when I talk about ideological bias, because that clearly shows the Eurocentric attitude in writing.
It's something that was completely irrelevant.
It showed in chapter one.
So, yeah, I went chapter by chapter.
I regret it like twice, three times to make sure I got everything, because I know what I was doing.
(16:06):
I know how, quote unquote, controversial this could be.
So I really wanted to make sure that I didn't perpetrate biases of my own.
So how can I call out one for bias and then repeat it? So that's why I consistently double, triple check myself.
And so the amount of pages I read was 400 and 2323 pages to my enemy students listening at home.
(16:34):
Please don't think that this is a requirement of the class.
This is what we call above and beyond.
Yes.
And it took me roughly a week.
So I would just discipline myself to read.
So in total there was 31 chapters, and each chapter had ten plus pages, sometimes even like 20.
(17:00):
So I would try to try to do at least four chapters every day, maybe five, six, because as I mentioned when I was presenting to the class was that this was my doing.
No one told me to be dis ambitious.
It's just coming from within.
But at the end of the day, I still had a due date to comply with.
So it didn't matter that this project was super ambitious.
(17:23):
I still had a due date for Professor Guardiacko's class.
This is also, though, why it's so important for the research that you do in eleven two to be something that you're passionate about.
Exactly.
Because if we were to assign something like this to you, not only would there probably be a lot of calls to counseling services through the course of the project, a lot of tears, a lot of bad rate my professors.
(17:50):
No, but there's something really oh, gosh, how can I say this without sounding really academically nerdy? There's something very empowering about the first time you get to really engage in research that is driven by your own desire to know.
(18:10):
And getting a taste for that early in your academic career is unusual.
It's not so you're usually much later in your senior year or even as a grad student, that you actually have some control over what it is that you're researching.
So I think it's really exciting that as a freshman or freshmanish Era, you get to have a chance to say, okay, I'm going all in on this.
(18:35):
Because also, if it had been something we assigned, I'm sure you would have given up, like throwing your hands up halfway through and been like, okay, I'm good with just doing the first two chapters.
A whole textbook was way too ambitious.
I'm not doing all of this.
And so I love that about our course, and I love that about hearing you say that dedication to this project.
Like, no, I need to know I have this watch to know the answer.
(18:57):
Exactly.
And I do have my own reputation at stake.
I know this is controversial.
I know that what I'm looking at is something that could be questionable.
Right.
So I'm going to go all in and really do the deep dive.
Yeah.
I always tell students that are embarking in research to do something they're passionate about.
It doesn't have to be crazy passionate like me.
(19:19):
I'm just a weirdo like that.
We all are.
You're in good company, but something that you genuinely do care about.
Because, like my high school teacher told me, dr.
Hass, this is going to be something you're married to for a couple of months, and in that case a whole year, because it was high school, but for the semesters, four or five months.
(19:39):
So you really want to be invested in it, because if not, it's just going to show in the writing and the quality of work that you didn't care and that you truly weren't interested in what you were doing.
Yeah.
So I'm curious.
You mentioned and that was the number one piece of advice you gave when you spoke to my classes about finding something that you're passionate in.
(20:05):
Do you have any other advice for students or when you think about way back in the before times of fall 2019, it seems like forever ago.
It does seem like forever ago.
Thinking about it from the perspective you have now, what advice do you have for either other students or things that you might do differently? So the advice I would give to students, besides to pick something that you're truly passionate about is to genuinely read the literature.
(20:39):
I'm not going to lie.
That is a part of research that for me personally is the most difficult because it could be a lot of sources to go through and to really make sure if it's relevant and valuable to your own research.
And also it could be frustrating because I know there's times where I'm in EBSCO or Google Scholar or just in these online databases and it feels like I'm doing the perfect searches, the perfect keywords, but I don't get the quality of articles that I want.
(21:13):
So I know that could be really frustrating.
But that is so crucial in your own project because I look at the literature review research synthesis as the first step, because it is the first step.
It's like the building blocks.
I feel like if you don't have a good literature review, you won't have a good project because that's where your project stems from.
(21:37):
You know, if I didn't get the quality of sources that I got for my AP textbook analysis, I feel like my research project wouldn't be that good because I knew about biases.
But I'll be honest with you, until that point, even in that philosophy class, this isn't something that they teach you.
(21:59):
I wasn't taught about bias in high school or my introductory college courses.
This is something that I learned by doing the project itself, by reading the literature.
So the fact that I was able to get great quality sources really set me up for a great paper down the road.
(22:21):
A lot of vigorous head nodding by me because I know that I tried to preach that to my student.
Well, preach sounds terrible.
I try to explain that to my students as well because it's from my own experiences as a researcher that it's very time consuming and it can be very deflating.
It can when you feel like you have this great idea and you're trying to find the sources to position it amongst, and when you can't find them and then it kind of takes the wind out of your sales because you're like, well, does it mean that I don't have this great idea? Or it's not really going anywhere.
(22:55):
I wanted to ask you about the experience of presenting at Nights right now.
Was that the virtual year? That was the year, unfortunately, yeah.
We weren't in person in that spring of 2021.
Oh, yeah, right.
Spring of 2021.
(23:16):
Yeah.
We had virtual panels where students presented, and then we had Q and A N and things like that.
It wasn't the same as the live event, but yeah, it's one thing to write in your room and submit a document to your professor and then on to Stylist.
(23:40):
It's very different to read it even into a computer screen where there are people listening.
What was that like? That was a great experience.
I had previous experience similar to Nights.
Right back in my senior year of high school, I presented at a research symposium at FIU, and what I was presenting there was the research project I did a year prior, which was about sports nutrition knowledge in high school athletes, so I knew what was it about and what was expected.
(24:17):
Nonetheless, I was still really excited because this is a project that I invested so much time in, and it was no one's fault that it was virtual, obviously, but I really do wish it was in person.
But nonetheless, it was still great.
And that whole experience, I really wanted to because, like you said, it's different from writing to presenting.
(24:40):
It could be two totally different studies depending on how you present it.
So I really wanted to make sure that what I wrote is what is going to be presented.
So I had to reread my paper, which was a lot, but that's fine, and make sure that the main points that I made on my paper were going to be translated into the presentation, especially since my paper was so long and I only had eight minutes, I think, to present.
(25:07):
So I really had to make sure that the biggest punches were going to be made in that presentation.
And when I presented, it was, again, virtual.
So I just saw a bunch of comments popping up, and I couldn't get distracted by them.
I was just in the back of my head.
I was hoping they were great comments and not like, people roasting me or telling me, this project sucks, get out.
(25:31):
Luckily, there were good comments.
When I finished, I read them back, and it was great.
In preparation, did you read your paper out loud to yourself to see where it was hitting or where you felt like it was falling flat, or did you just read it silently? I read it silently, but now, looking back, I think reading out loud would have been better because it just sounds different.
(25:51):
And a lot of the things that maybe you could miss by reading it in your head, you cannot miss when you're reading it out loud, because it's out loud.
But, yeah, I just read it silently to myself, and I mainly focused on the results and the discussion because, well, Professor Guardiola also gave me good advice for the presentation.
(26:12):
He told me to just focus on your own research for this.
It's not like a 30 minutes presentation.
If it was, then you could talk about the literature, your methodology, but since you are very limited on time, he said, just go for the biggest bunches in your paper, just tell them what you found and that's what's going to really captivate the audience.
And it sure did.
(26:34):
Yeah, it was great to see the reaction and comments while you were presenting via zoom in the virtual presentation.
And it is something that's really interesting to work with students to do, which is to distill a long term project into a very short presentation of that research project.
(26:57):
But I think it is interesting to get people engaged in the idea of the research and the question itself, when you think back on that experience of presenting your paper and doing nights right? And now that there's been more kind of time and perspective that has passed, I'm curious, like, what does that experience mean to you when you look back on an hour? Think about it in terms of your educational, career or life goals or however it's impacted you.
(27:32):
It means a lot.
It really does because I see those type of presentations and events as recognition for the work you put in.
And I really did put a lot of work into this paper.
So it really does mean a lot when I look back, when I do look back, because it's not like when I have already looked back at it.
(27:55):
It just makes me extremely grateful and happy that my work was able to be recognized.
But at the same time, it also motivates me to keep going and knowing that I could keep producing this type of work and then some.
So what are your plans now that you're in your last year here at UCF? So my plans is to graduate and then after graduation, just because of the nature of how I finished, we'll be taking a gap year.
(28:29):
It's not like voluntarily, I mean, it kind of is, but it's kind of not.
So then in that gap year, just keep building up my resume and probably doing more research, internships and start applying to history, graduate schools, graduate programs, Ma, PhD, and then go from there.
(28:52):
So that's the plan.
So writing will play a part in your post graduation plans? Most definitely.
So not to put you on the spot about what your research questions might be, but what are your research interests at this point now that you've had a lot of these kind of impactful research experiences in your career, when you imagine the things you might look at are the questions you might ask, what are some of those things for you? That's a really good question.
(29:27):
I don't limit myself to a specific I don't want to say discipline because that's really broad still, but a specific question or realm of questions.
So anything with history I am totally up for to research.
And since I do have this science background I mean, I don't want to sound dramatic here, but one of my biggest regrets in undergrad was I was never able to follow up my research from high school, the sports nutrition one, because that was really my first ever research project I did.
(30:12):
It was the full thing, the literature, methodology, results, discussion, conclusion.
And I did my own research.
I surveyed 177 high school athletes from my high school.
And I know that there was this opportunity to follow up that study in college.
(30:33):
I had to just shoot a bunch of cold emails to any of the dietitians, registered dietitians here at UCF, but too busy.
Then covet came and then next thing you know, I'm about to leave and I feel like it's a little too late.
But that just shows you that I'm open to that side, that discipline as well.
(30:53):
But history is the main where I'm going to stay at and do most of my research questions.
And not just history, but like writing in general, how writing about writing, those are kind of like I don't want to say big three, but the main areas I'll be at.
Well, I feel like I've succeeded for a semester.
(31:16):
If I can get my students to consider that they can begin to question acts of communication in the world around them, that they're more than just what they appear to be on the surface, and if they can understand that, then it's a win.
It doesn't matter if it's a TV show watching, if it's memes, if it's gifts, if it's Instagram, TikTok, whatever.
(31:39):
You can start to look at any of those things and begin to look at the bigger picture, bigger implications, what's happening rhetorically, what are we seeing that's both stated and unstated? And then if you start to go, well, that's really interesting, what's happening here? And that, I think, is more to the point that it's exposing.
(31:59):
Oh gosh, I need to be really careful of my word choices.
Not exposing because that sounds terrible.
Giving students the agency, an opportunity to begin to question things for themselves once they have a toolkit of things that they can examine them with, like rhetoric or audience consideration or exigency or any of those things.
(32:22):
Like looking at the way communication happens in sports amongst players, amongst the players, to their fans, the players to other players, the players to the agencies, the way that players speak to football players speak to the NFL, the way that baseball players right now are speaking to the MLB, the way that maybe different sports players speak to each other a lot.
(32:50):
That's happening right now with soccer, with what's happening with these Oligarchs that are being forced to sell their team.
We talk off Mike, believe it or not, we'll be.
Watching TV and I'm like, succession is like the best show I've ever watched.
I want to write a paper on succession.
I don't know what I want to write, but I want to do something.
(33:10):
So I think it's just an example that once you begin to question, you can start to see where it can go anywhere.
And you're not limited to I want to study history, therefore I can only question and research history.
Right, yeah.
No, I 100% agree with you.
Like how you're saying TikTok memes, whatever it could be, if you have a critical eye for it, you could get some valuable information out of it and it's not even forcing that information, it's there.
(33:39):
It's just you have to ask the appropriate questions, have an appropriate methodology and you can get it.
It's not even like a stretch because I know maybe that's how it sounds, but it's definitely not it.
So 100% agree.
So that's why I'm very broad with my future research endeavors because like you said, it could be literally anything and there could be valuable stuff in that.
(34:03):
Yeah.
And I think the writing about writing approach that we have in the composition class really does create a space for that kind of questioning of everything and just looking at the world around us because everything is kind of mediated and done through communication, whatever kind of form it takes.
And I think when I talk to students about the example of your paper in my eleven two classes, that's one thing that I really like about your question.
(34:35):
Not only is it well designed methodology and highly motivated and well executed beyond belief.
But I also think what I point out to students is that here's a student that was willing to and curious about turning his critical eye to his own textbooks that he was sort of being given and it's sort of even something that we sort of as students put up on a pedestal like a textbook.
(35:08):
Right, exactly.
It's the be all and end all.
Exactly where knowledge exists in writing form.
Exactly.
When we're students approach it as these kind of untouchable things.
Right.
So what I like to point out is, no, this student questioned his own textbook and you can do that with the things in this class and everything you kind of interact with.
(35:30):
Yeah, for sure.
And that was like the biggest motivation again for my project was we kind of put it in the standard of untouchable, like you said, the end all be all of knowledge.
That's not certainly true for all other things that are end all be all.
(35:50):
And yes, to talk more about my results of my paper, it does surpass in the textbooks of old, like from the 20th century by a lot.
But that doesn't mean that there aren't biases present in this textbook which was written in 2018.
(36:10):
Yeah.
And I think it just goes along with everything that we think about in terms of our communication, but also, like, our values.
There's no point at which, especially now that we can say, hey, we're good, we made it, and high five each other.
About our progress, I think what your study points out is that, yes, better, but still room to improve and room to develop a little further, which is why it's a great question or discussion.
(36:44):
I think you should give a quick shout out to your high school and to those teachers again.
Yeah.
Because obviously they had a big impact on you, and I'm sure they do with other students.
So where did you go to school? I went to Southwest Miami Senior High School.
And what were those who were those teachers again? Doctor Hass, she was my 10th grade English, but also 10th grade AP Capstone seminar teacher and then my 11th grade research teacher, because it was called research when you went to 11th grade was Miss Rosa.
(37:13):
So, yeah, shout out.
Yeah.
I mean, those sound like really kind of impactful experiences, especially for high school.
I've been lucky enough where they've invited me back to speak with the 10th graders and the 11th graders, and I've had other teachers in high school that were extremely influential to me, that weren't necessarily my research teachers, but they still played a big role in my development and maturity in high school.
(37:43):
But when I go back and I present to those classes, seminar research classes, I tell them that this is the most important advanced placement class you're going to take in high school.
This is where you are going to be doing this in college.
I can guarantee you that.
I can't guarantee you if you'll do BBQ FRQS and all those things that they test you on certain other AP exams, but you will write research papers no matter what discipline you're in.
(38:10):
And that's coming from me, who I'm both sides of the ball.
I'm in BioMed Sciences and history.
And let me tell you, in both of those degrees, both of those majors, I've had to write research papers.
So I always tell those kids that, really, if you're going to care about one class, you got to care about this one, this seminar AP seminar AP research class, because the skills really do translate.
(38:35):
And if you really do appreciate the opportunity you're given to take those classes, you could do incredible work when you're in college.
I've been lucky to have those two teachers, and in my experiences with them, it's been great.
You spoke a little bit about they gave you your foundation and qualitative research, and then eleven two is professor Guardiacas gave you quantitative.
(38:57):
Did I get that right? No, the opposite.
Opposite? Yeah.
Okay, reverse.
Well, I won't say it again because you just did.
How have you seen that play out into your other coursework after you took that class? Have you seen it where you've used it in your advanced class? Your coursework here at UCF after Professor Guardiola's class.
(39:20):
Yeah, I mean, that was really the first class that I utilized those skills I learned in high school and then from there on out, it was almost every semester I had at least one class where I had to write a research paper.
Whether that was a biography of a historical figure, that assignment comes up to mind because I never written a biography before, like a research biography.
(39:48):
However, it still followed that same structure of kind of like a literature review.
Not really a literature review, more of like early life introduction, but it's still setting that foundation for the rest of the paper and how to intertwine your own voice with sources, which is another really difficult thing to do.
And honestly, with practice it comes you just have to write papers and papers to really get that skill down packed.
(40:15):
I mean, I don't have a downpack at all, but I could say I've gotten better at it.
This might be a little tangent, but I'll come back that I feel like that is what separates a good writer from a great writer.
If you could distinguish your own voice, especially with papers that are so source heavy.
I don't want to read just a summary of the readings you read.
(40:37):
I want you to tell me.
But also I want to hear your own arguments and takes on it and kind of make it like a story.
Intertwine the sources that align with each other that don't align with each other.
And it will be a really enjoyable piece from there on out.
Yeah, I think I love that explanation because it sounds like something I said a few days ago in ENC eleven two.
(41:00):
Now, we're talking about the creative use of research resources right.
And how part of what we're trying to do in that course is to get students to think about themselves differently.
Not just students that report on a thing, but students that have thoughts and arguments and claims to make about the research that they're reading and the things that they're analyzing and talking about.
(41:25):
So it's great that you had that experience or kind of realize that that's a big part of it.
Yeah, it's a big transition because when you're up until high school, you view secondary sources as just like textbooks up on a pedestal.
These people are experts.
I am just a novice.
(41:46):
I can only regurgitate what they have to say.
Exactly.
Once you're in college, though, you are in the arena that is shared with them.
But it's still a really big shift.
And I have a very unpleasant experience a few semesters ago of trying to give the example of it's.
Like, you're the host of a talk show.
It's your talk show.
(42:06):
You decide the topic.
The secondary sources are guests.
And I say it was an unpleasant example because my class said, what is a talk show? And I realized wow.
I realized, yes, I had a moment.
(42:27):
It's a big shift as a writer, and I agree that it is a struggle, that it takes a lot of practice, and it's something that I think all writers struggle with because in particular, when you're broaching into areas that you may not feel like you're an expert yet.
Right.
I'm just sticking my toe in the pool of being an expert on this topic, and these people have been writing about forever.
(42:50):
Like, what could I possibly have to say that's as important or well thought as them? But it is, and that is a big shift.
I think an important thing to piggyback for what you just said is that I feel like really analyzing, trying to find the gap in the literature can make you be that quote unquote established voice, because it's hard, like you said, to distinguish yourself from these researchers that have been doing this for years.
(43:21):
I mean, their life's work.
But if you could take what they've done and again, not stretch it, but genuinely find with the critical eye a gap in what they said, that alone separates you.
You don't have to be necessarily repeating what they're saying, but in fact, you're just using what they researched and then doing it to your own with the gap you found.
(43:46):
Like, for example, with mine.
I'll give you two examples for the sports nutrition paper that I did back in high school.
That was the quicker one, the easier one to explain when I was reading the literature.
And again, I haven't taken a sports nutrition class.
I'm not an expert on sports nutrition.
I mean, I was an athlete myself in high school, so I obviously knew not to eat McDonald's right after practice, but to say I knew the specific composition of proteins and carbohydrates and fats.
(44:23):
No, I did not know that as a high schooler.
I barely knew that now even.
But when I was reading the literature and reading those articles from those researchers that have been doing this again for their entire life, I was able to not only learn from them, but I also, with my critical, I realized none of them have done high school athletes.
(44:44):
Like, none of them.
And I always try to avoid using absolute terms, but out of all the sources that I at least read, none of them research high school athletes.
It was only college athletes, collegiate athletes.
So that's where I found my gap.
So now that puts me in a position where I don't have to piggyback what they did.
(45:06):
This is my own creative research.
Yes, I'm using their sources not only to inform myself, but to back up where I'm coming from.
But this is an entirely new research project that hopefully could play into the broader conversation.
And so the same thing with the AP textbook.
None of them analyzed.
Advanced Placement textbooks.
(45:27):
So I wanted to do an analysis on an advanced placement textbook, which already sets me apart from what they did before.
So I feel like finding that gap and then establishing your own voice could really set you apart from the others.
Yeah, that's a great piece of advice for any researcher, really, at any level.
(45:51):
I want to circle back to something that you mentioned before, which is kind of another aspect of encounter.
And our writing about writing composition approach in our department is thinking about things that students can learn and do in our classes that help them recognize and transfer to other genres that they might write.
(46:15):
So.
Like you mentioned the historical biography that you wrote and how you kind of took one of the things about at least that I've read about transfer theory is that a lot of times to learn to do something we haven't done before.
We always draw upon what we know how to do.
(46:36):
What those experiences are.
And then using those to figure out something that we haven't done before.
So it's interesting to hear you talk about, okay, here's what I've done.
What can I recognize in that, in doing something new or something I haven't done before? Yeah, exactly what you said.
(46:58):
All the skills that I've learned from your class in fall 2019, from that AP textbook research project, came from what I learned in high school.
So it's like a kind of like domino effect.
And I have used those skills every semester onward after your class, whether it's the history biography or other research projects that I've done.
(47:23):
In fact, the latest one that I just finished was it's a research project about analyzing the Olympics.
Not the Winter Olympics, the Tokyo Olympics this summer, this past summer, and seeing how it is representative of our current global pandemic culture.
(47:44):
And luckily, I was accepted to present at the UCF Research Symposium this month, March 30.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
I'm excited.
I say luckily because I've never applied to these research symposiums.
Like, it's always been just off invites.
(48:04):
So I was just a little scared that mine was probably not going to make it, but it did.
And it was a tough research project to do because it wasn't as structured as the process wasn't as structured as I have experienced before with your class or back in high school.
So, yeah, it was kind of out of my comfort zone, but it was still really interesting research project.
(48:30):
And the motivation just came from the pandemic itself, how within these three years, a whole different world has been created.
And I feel like if you go back in history because this was for a history class, so the origin of the project had to be somewhere historical.
So if you go back in history, the Olympics have always been a medium of that time to show the current political climate.
(48:58):
So you go back to the 1936 Games in Berlin, and Hitler used that to promote his Nazi propaganda, and agenda if you go to the 1968 Games in Mexico City, the US.
Athletes on the podium with the black power fist representing the times here in the United States during the Civil Rights movement.
(49:20):
So I felt like this Olympics in 2021 in Tokyo was no different.
And how I did that project was I surveyed people.
I tried to survey most of my demographics, of course, was college students, but I tried to survey also older adults because I wanted to also see the generational differences.
And luckily, I say luckily because obviously you have these certain hypothesis going in your own mind.
(49:47):
And a lot of people, what they remembered most about these Games was Simone BIOS and mental health.
And mental health is a big thing during the pandemic.
And I wrote about it in my paper saying that even 20 years ago in the 2000 Games in Sydney, no one was talking about mental health.
And now we're talking about mental health because of what she was able, able to use that platform, that international platform.
(50:15):
And also I felt like a lot of people were able to relate with it because of the pandemic, because of the three year, two years of loneliness, quarantine and all that.
So it was a really cool research project and I'm glad I'm able to present it again.
You are definitely too young to remember Nancy Kerrigan and Tanya Harding other than the dramatic recreations recently, but what a very different response to mental health issues amongst athletes in Olympic stories within 20 years of one another.
(50:45):
But yeah.
So we're closing in on our time for this episode.
I want to thank you so much for being here and taking the time.
But I want to ask in terms of you've talked about grad school, but just kind of looking forward to things that you're excited about or things that are on the horizon for you.
(51:07):
What's on your mind when you think about, you know, you've talked a lot about the impactfulness of all the experiences that you've gone through and been lucky enough to have as a student.
So now, looking forward, what do you imagine? What are you excited about? I'm really excited about just grad school.
I honestly don't know what to expect.
(51:29):
I've talked to some of the professors that I've been lucky enough to be close with throughout my time here at UCF, and they give me broad advice, which is fine, but the fact that I don't know, honestly, is what makes me feel excited, not knowing.
It's scary, I'm not going to lie, but it's also exciting.
So just grad school and I know in grad school, it's also very research heavy.
(51:54):
And to get that PhD is also very research heavy.
And I'm all for it because the past five years I've been really invested in research and I will continue to do so.
(52:18):
gratitude.
I'm grateful for it.
But also huge motivation to keep going because that was unlike a presentation or symposium, which is really important also.
But getting published in a journal, an established journal here at the university, honestly, it meant a lot to me to be able to get recognized at that level.
(52:44):
All these experiences, I'll never forget them and I'll continue to use them in my future endeavors because like you said with the transfer theory, just tweak the skills a little bit to adjust it to the medium that I'm doing it in.
But at the end of the day, these are all fundamental skills that could be applicable to anything.
And I've seen it.
It's not even just me talking like I've used it in other disciplines.
(53:08):
Yeah, that is something I did forget to ask about, was the Stylist experience.
And just as you know, because we've talked about it before, that sort of a little more sort of competitive or selective process that Stylist goes through with the readers and the editors and the things like that.
(53:33):
And just the fact that there isn't as much space to celebrate and feature, like all the projects, all the great projects that students do nights is a little bit bigger and capable of recognizing a lot more kinds of work.
I know we talked about submitting the paper to Stylists and things like that, so congratulations on it, on it getting published.
(53:59):
That was really great.
And I know that really did mean a lot to you to want to also include that next step or that other step in recognition for your work.
Yeah, I mean, you know, more than anyone, that was the main goal since fall 2019.
(54:21):
I wasn't doing it for a grade, I wasn't doing it for points.
I envisioned myself making it into the journal one way or another.
And it was, like I said, just extremely grateful and that I was able to get that accomplished.
For someone who values published medium, as a researcher, to see yourself in a published medium, it's pretty exciting.
(54:50):
It is pretty exciting.
I kind of made it because I've been looking at all these sources and these established journals and whatnot.
This is a really established journal here at the university.
So beyond grateful for the opportunity, because like you said, it's very selective.
I knew my paper was good enough, but I was still, like, I wasn't 100% sure that I was going to get selected because throughout our talks you were telling me how selective and competitive this is.
(55:24):
And this isn't like just the space, there's not enough space for all these other projects to be recognized, but that just makes getting accepted all much sweeter indeed.
Well, thank you again so much for taking the time to speak with us today.
It was wonderful chatting with you about your experiences both in eleven two and outside of eleven two and all the best on your future endeavors.
(55:52):
And we hope to see many more publications with your name on them in the academic arena, in history and sports and anything else that whatever suits your fancy.
Thank you.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you for having me on the podcast.
It was great.
Yeah.
Thanks for being here.
And thanks for listening, everybody.
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com