One thing I was asked to do was to just write about the things I enjoy and whatever else comes to mind. What are some things that I might enjoy researching? Let's find out.
The one thing that I always thought I wanted to study was race. This probably came to me after I came to Ohio Northern. Seems strange, right? Well when I came here, it was sort of a reverse culture shock (if that exists). I am from Middletown, Ohio. Very different from Ada. In Middletown, there are roughly 55,000 people. In Ada, there are about 5,000. In Middletown, there are people from all race and social statuses. In Ada and at Ohio Northern, most of the people are cut from the same breed. I joke around with my friends a lot of the time that there are too many white people here from me. It usually generates some chuckles. Anyways, the lack of culture here made me want to share my experiences from Middletown to the people here who had never experienced it. With that happening, I also wanted to learn more about race myself.
Another thing I am very intrigued by is figuring out the question, "Why do people do the things they do?" This would deal with psychological factors mostly. What previous experiences hve made a person make that decision now? Why would they fold in this situation? Why would they excel in another situation? Why would they treat this type of person in a particular way? Why does this person interact this way in this situation as opposed to another situation? All of these questions (and many more) are very interesting to me.
Since I've een at ONU, I've been around a lot of great sports teams, including playing on some myself. I was a part of a national championship team and was the captain for that team. I've also seen some other talented teams do not so well in the NCAA Tournament. On the other hand, I've seen other over matched teams make deep runs in the tournament. This begs the question, what makes one team more successful than another team if the talent level is nearly equal? How much do team dynamics matter? How much does coaching technique matter? What is the most important ingredient to team success? Does it all start with strictly recruiting? Do coaches have the most impact on the outcome? Or do the players decide all contests?
These are just a few of the thoughts that I've had today and over the years. Maybe one of my biggest issues is that I really enjoy a wide variety of things. This is an issue when narrowing down an area of research to just one topic, and it is still the issue. Hopefully I will think of something really soon.
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I wanted to comment on the first issue that you mentioned--about race. Obviously I grew up in a much different era than you, but I could really relate to what you said about Ada, only I came from a town that was not all that different from what you described. North Canton, OH was where I grew up, and during that time the population went from about 7,000 to maybe 14,000. The population was totally white, 95% Protestant, and the other 5% consisted of Catholics and maybe 1 or 2 Jewish families. Not exactly like diversity as we think of it today.
ReplyDeleteWhen I went to college, it was during the Civil Rights movement, and I did a lot of reading about issues of race, since they were coming to the forefront at that time. I remember writing a paper when I was an undergrad about "Growing up in a white ghetto." I still have that paper and I think it really marks my early understandings about race. All that is to say that I could definitely relate to your observations about the differences between Ada and Middletown. If you wanted to do a research project that somehow related to race, I would definitely be fine with that.
One idea that you could incorporate into what we talked about last time would be how schools understand "diversity" or being "inclusive." I don't know if ONU has a mission statement that addresses that, but it would be interesting to know how a school such as ONU might go about becoming more diverse.