Deirdre Dagar’s Task 1 discusses the items in her personal pockets rather than in a bag. She notes that she does not carry a bag in the winter, but she could have chosen to analyze a bag that she would have carried in the summer, or make a hypothetical bag to analyze as the task suggests. Immediately I think that this person is a creative individual who is apt at shaping her own learning experience and ensuring that the experience is meaningful. I do not know her academic background, but I wonder if it is in the arts. Coming from a science program where experiments, though offering a certain degree of flexibility, obey a set of rigid rules, I followed Task 1’s instructions to the tee and never considered to think about pockets.
The layout of Deirdre’s analysis tells me that she is a holistic, big picture thinker. She makes a claim and then uses the items in her pockets as supporting evidence. For her, the central ideas are more important than each individual item as she does not go into detail for each item separately. I wonder if her way of thinking was shaped by her academic experience and her being a mother. I imagine that if I had a young child, my thinking would become less rigid and focus more on the whole as every parent wants to nurture a well-rounded child.
Lera Boroditsky argues that language shapes the way we think, and I agree completely. Being bilingual myself, I related to the scenarios that she described in her lecture, particularly on the section on math. After finishing the video, I questioned, what shapes our own personal language? I think the answer is academic experience. Language shapes thinking and academics shape language. The vocabulary that we have and prefer to use (why someone might use one word while someone else might use a synonym of that same word in describing the same thing) and the syntax that we prefer to employ come from what we read most frequently and which styles are preferred in our discipline. Deirdre’s writing is personal, is predominantly written in active voice, and refers to the reader as “you”. My writing, though containing active voice here and there because Task 1 is reflective in nature, drifts to passive voice. I write like a science textbook, wherein the ideas are the focus and the person who has those ideas is irrelevant. My written voice is more distance and analytical than Deirdre’s. In my entire Task, I only directly address the audience as “you” once.
The layout of our post can be attributed to our academic preparations as well. Though I begin my Task with paragraphs detailing my identify, I start to organize my analysis by object, using the objects as headings. I think I did this because my thoughts usually occur in a very organized way, and reading something that is organized, in turn, helps me learn. In science, there is a great tendency to categorize everything. Everything has structure! DNA is made of two strands, which are made of nucleotides; which are made of a phosphate group, a base, and a nitrogenous base; which are made of atoms; which are made of protons, neutrons, and electrons; which are made of… and the list goes on.
Finally, in comparing the analysis of text, Deirdre focused on the modern definition while I went all over the place, from the definition in ancient Greece, to the Latin period, and to the modern age. I think this comes from my academic background as well because in science, every detail is scrutinize (passive voice, ha!).
My whole analysis here is based on the assumption that Deirdre and I come from different academic backgrounds. Wouldn’t it be terrible if it turns out that she is also a science teacher?