I've been doing a lot of thinking about Tuesday's class, and I spent a couple hours last night discussing various issues around rape and sexual assault with a friend (not in the class).  Some of the questions we talked about (along with some of the questions I was left with) are listed below:

How can we talk about rape theory in class when, statistically, rape is so much more than a theory for 25% of college women?

Is the "theorization" of rape okay?  Or does it do violence to rape and sexual assault survivors?

When even GenSex professors and students (myself included) make elementary mistakes when introducing and discussing rape and sexual assault ideas, where is the hope?

Is it fair for Haverford to ask rape and sexual assault survivors to out themselves to their deans in order to receive adequate support in classes (i.e. extensions and/or exemptions from certain assignments)?

Should I have to change who I am to avoid rape and sexual assault?

How can I tell Haverford or my dean that they are NOT doing a good job at helping students who are dealing with rape and sexual assault?

I really liked interviewing for research purposes because I love working with people more than working with readings. But I feel like it's hard to combine all three interviews into one thesis. For me there were a lot of conflicts between each of the interviews. I think it's easier though to shape your paper by interviewing people on what you want to know instead of pulling and stretching the ideas found between the lines of our weekly readings.

I had a much harder time with this paper than I expected.  I believe it was mainly because I went into my interviews with an idea of a research question but discovered that my interviewees didn't answer my questions the way I expected them to.  Developing a research question afterwords was a little more difficult, and I'm not quite sure if I wrote the paper the way I was supposed to.  I also may have read into my interviewee's statments a little differently than they expected.  I basically didn't take them at face value.  Did anyone run into this problem too?

First I really want to say something about my on-campus interview. This is the first time I communicate with people as an interviewer. At first I thought it would be easy, cauz it’s all about ask questions, answer questions and record people’s words. But it turned out that being a great interviewer is really hard. I have to admit that when I designed my questions for my interviewees, I was making assumptions about how they will answer them. Or, in other words, I know what I HOPE them to say in order to gain some useful information to prove my thesis of my essay. But actually when I finished conducting my entire interview, I found that actually almost all my interviewees answered those questions in a way that I didn’t expected them to answer, which means that I had to try change my claim. When I went over my notes trying to come up with a new topic for my essay, I really rethought many questions. I used to believe that I knew answer to these questions, which turned out only my own assumption. For example, one of my questions that I designed for my professor of English workshop is do students from different socioeconomic backgrounds perform differently? I thought her answer would be like “students from higher class families are more confident, whereas students from lower class families are more quiet.” But actually her answer was “there is no distinct difference.” I realized that actually I regarded my own assumptions for many problems as the truth.

The most important task with this paper for me was staying within the confines of my data. Three interviews with BMC student does not offer a broad range of information to make larger claims very strong. Academic writing must be able to be suported by more than conviction, fact, statement, interview, quote, calculation, etc. While you may "know" that there is a larger truth to what you are saying, you must not state something bigger than your concrete data shows.  Additionally resourcing interviews for an essay was a first for me, and it was great to explore research options other than the internet and books.

Despite my initial apprehension and borderline anxiety about the depth of this paper in combination with the new element of interviewing, I really enjoyed this project. I was incredibly surprised by the openness of my interviewees in the subject and was really excited to start working on my paper after I had completed them all. Especially because I had really gotten involved in each of my interviews and the stories they represented, I was positive that this had to be the best paper I've written thus far; however, I feel like because of this attachment to the topic and pressure of very high expectations, I was not very happy with the outcome of the paper. I really wanted to capture the essence of each of the interviews, so that I could strongly prove my point, and when I was talking about that point and about how I planned to prove it, I felt that it was clear. When I got to the writing aspect, however, I feel as though my argument was lost in including too much interview content and not enough explanation. I am definitely going to continue revising this paper because I really want to use the interviews as much as I can, while getting my claim across clearly. I think it's something I'd like to work on because I feel so invested in the topic and in conveying the students' stories as they pertain to my topic.

This paper turned out to be really difficult for me. Conducting the interviews was fun. I had all my data, but i hit a roadblock when it came to turning the data into a 3 page paper. I did not want to repeat myself, since i had already touched on the subject in my two previous papers and my confusion heightened when after my conference, I still had a hazy idea of what line of argument to pursue. Its like having too many options only served to hinder my progress. I managed to put something down, but I do not feel quite satisfied with it, especially with my conclusion. I really felt the pressure to use an extra page.  Any way, it appreciate the challenge of chanelling qualitative information into academic writing. There is always  a first time. Next time i can tap from this experience.

This paper was difficult for me in that I'm not sure I adequately understand what a research paper is supposed to be like. I didn't have a problem using my interview data to support my claim, but was that what we were supposed to be doing? I felt just like I was writing one of our usual papers but using the interviews as texts. Beyond my confusion about the format of the essay, I really enjoyed hearing first hand accounts from my interviews, and using my peers' knowledge to provide data for a topic that I am interested in. Although I didn't end up using one of my interviews in my essay, seeing a different, administrative view of Bryn Mawr was certainly very helpful and enlightening. In the end, I'm not sure I was able to do myself and my efforts justice with this paper. It was difficult for me to present the information in a concise, scientific way when so much of my information was personal to the speakers. However, I did find that my thoughts flowed onto the paper easier this time around. I think this comes from the amount of papers that we've written so far and that my writing is finally growing to reflect/catch up with my expanding thoughts. If I could go back, I think it would have been helpful for me to have seen/ learned about what is meant by a research paper, similiarly or in conjuction with how we learned about interviewing. 

I have been thinking a lot about Tuesday's class. I think the class had a lot of positives and a few negatives. For starters, I think that it is really important to talk about rape and sexual assault. It is important to read texts like Ensler's litany. It is important to have tense, emotionally packed discussions. In doing so, it helps to bring aware to a subject that I feel is often glossed over as something horrible and awful and so we should acknowledge its existance but keep our distance. It also helps to de-stigmatize the survivors. With knowledge comes understanding and a tool box. Of course, I am not naive enough to believe that we can outright prevent rape by talking about it, but we can fix our reactions to it. We can learn to use the right terminology (i.e survivor, not victim), we can learn about resources that exist currently, and we can learn about what we can do for ourselves and for others that we know.

I've just finished my paper and I feel relieved now. Honestly, the assignment is not hard to write since I believe that everyone has a lot of things to say: on-campus workshop, parkway visit, those interviews and writing partners notes. I can feel a sense of responsibility throughout this assignment. I can feel I act as a part of the workshop and I am the active part of those interviews. I can feel that I am responsible to make everything connected and make things around me glittering. I hope that I conduct others opinions honestly and my voice can help making a better community. The change is really subtle and interesting. Previously, I am giving my response to others theories and ideas while those outcomes turn out to be less important when compare to this assignment.