FINAL Portfolio

http://www.weebly.com/weebly/main.php

'The Mind at Work' Hand and Brain in School

In this Chapter, the author argued about the topic if the student should be vocational educated in their early age. Nowadays in high school, no matter in the US or in China, students should take a certain number of academic courses, regardless you like them or not. Some students may spend lots of time doing the work on specific subjuct, which they are not good at or not intersted in at all. More over, much of the knowledge they learned in high school may not be used in the future or are not related to their future career.
However, if the students choose be vocational educated, the voacational teachers emphasized job-specific skills to the almost complete exclusion of theoretical content. One result was that the intellectual development of vocational students tended to be limited at a relatively early age. What's more, most of the parents will not willing to allow their child to choose the vocational education in their early age, because it involed gender stereotyping. If the children learn specific working skills instead of getting the regular education, many people will think they are not hard working, they are not highly educated and they cannot make lots of money.
After reading this book, I think every career involves lots of intelligent in it. If you want to do it well, you have to spend lots of time on it-- learning the knowledge from the book, observation, practicing and summarizing. The book introduces the back information of some 'blue- collar' career, which I have never thought about before. I think if you want to do a work well, you have to be interested in it and pay lots of time and hard working.
There is an old saying in Chinese"There are 360 kinds of profession, there is a best in each one", which means to judge you are successful or not is not based on which career you choose, but its based on how well do have done in your career.

'The Mind at Work' Rethinking Hand and Brain

In this chapter, the author writes about the work of  sugery, physical therapy and teaching. Sometimes compares these works with the work of a waitress, a plumber as well as a hair stylist. The chapter begins with the interview of the author's uncle, which used to be a railroad worker. He earned little money by hard working of labor.
Then the he writes about the work of the surgery. 'Surgery is parallel to carpentry or plumbing or styling hair. In addition to their typical risks and consequences, they are different on many levels; the knowledge base, the number and complexity of the varibles involved, the amount of training required, both the material compensation and the symbolism that surround them.' Instead of getting all the knowledge from the book, these positions all need 'hands-on experience', in order to not only getting each technical move right, but arranging the moves properly and fluidly. They all need the work of brain and hand, but they are distinguished into levels of the work by the meaning terms of the status and incomes, they may be less definitive than we think and may blind us the commonalisties in the way different kinds of work actually get done at the level of immediate, day-to-day practice.
Less description in this chapter, instead, more interview, quotation and more sets of author's thoughts.

Tent City

When passing by the tents on the grass in front of RCC, I think most of the students in BSU would like me, we all feel curious instead of asking them what is it for. Fortunately, we got the opportunity to do a brief interview of the organizers of this 'Ten City' activity. Frankly, I have never imagine that the goal of the event is to rise public's consciousness of the homeless people around the world.
This is the 5th year of this activity. The organizers slept in the tents for one week, no matter what the weather is like. "Most people will just work by and pay no attention at all,"the interviewee said,"but we dont really care about it. If you are intersted, you can come and we talk; if not, just walk by."
The first year of the "Tent City", they met many chanlleges, such as applying for the space, feww people joined. But as time goes by and the effort they made, this "Tent City" event is being known by more and more people. "Some students from other universities will contact me and try to have the same event in their own university. We believe this 'Tent City' will raise more and more people's attention. And the homeless people will get more and more help."

'The Mind at Work' Book Club5

The most different or outstanding point of Chapter 6 is that the author interviewed 2 workers and writed these 2 interviewees alternately. While readers can easily distinguish which is which because the author separate it into several parts. The other difference of Chapter 6 is the way the author narrate the story. In the previous chapters, the author tells the story by using detailed description. But in Chapter 6, we can obviously feel thses are two interviews.We can see the questions the author asked and the expressions of the interviewees and the answers of them. In the previous chapters, the author acted more like a person who sits and observes the interviewees.
I really like the welder Lisa. I like her passion to her job, her hard working and optimism. She is a black woman, so we can clearly know the hardness for her to have a job as a welder and welders' teacher. She successfully became a teacher of welder was because her hard working and her passion to the work. What's more ,she likes her students, she said"they came back, five ten years later, and they say,'This is my family. This is my son. You helped me get my first job.' That's a joy I can't explain-- not that I would do it for free." I think the most important condition to do your work well and get a good result is to love your job, which will make you feel happy while working and be outstanding among the workers who have the same work with you.

portfolio website

http://carrieyuhuijiao.weebly.com/

'The Mind at Work' Book Club4

In Chapter 3, the author talks about the working technic of the plumber. For them, besides the skills they learned from school, experience plays a very important role in their work. The more varieties of plumbs they have seen, the much experience they can get, the better job they can do. The typical example in this chapter is to install the toilet in an old house. First of all, it needs several complicated movements: removing the old toilet, negotiating tight space, fitting a newer model into the existing confines and fittings... Secondly, the structure of the plumbs are varies from house to house, which add more difficulties for the plumbers to work on. On the other hand, the author can express the importance of experience in their work clearly.
In this chapter, the author interviewed the teachers of the plumber school, and for their observation of the students, the author can get a more comprehensive view of the work of plumber.

"The Mind at Work" Book Club3

Hair stylist is not an easy job to do because different people have different opinions of "beauty". Maybe some  people think that this style is fantastic, while others may think it's just soso, or even ugly. So as the hair stylists, they have to balance the thoughts of common people, as well as the clients. Many elements should be involved in the styling, such as the client's face and her her bone structure, skin tone and eye color.
What's more, in this chapter, the author make many contrasts of different hair cutters, who are response to different jobs in the barber shops. Unlike the restaurants, the jobs in the barvber shops are more complicated. Thus, the interviews of different jobs are very inportant.

'The mind at work' Book Club2

Chapter 2, 'STYLING HAIR' makes me think about the question that I have never thought about before. As a hair cutter, the cutting skill is not the only thing to be required, the skills of communicating is as important as the cutting skills. The consumers always have their own opinions of the hair styles, which might not fit them at all. So the communication between the hair cutter and the consumer is significant at this time.
The difference between the waitress and the  hair cutter is obviously shown in Chapter 1 and 2. Waitress are work to satisfy the consumers so that they can earn more tips. However, for the hair cutters, they are not only to make money, they have to be response to the consumers' beauty.

'The Mind at Work' Book Club1

This book talks about everyday work of different people. It seems that none of them has very high-paied or admirable jobs, but from my reading, I can tell that not everyone can do the jods they do.
As the author said"particular kinds of work can be defined and perceived in ways that mask the range of human abilities that make the work possible."
Each kind of work has different requirements and personalities. In chapter one, the author observed his mother, who used to be a waitress in many restaurants. It has never occured to my mind that the waiters' and waitress' job contains so many 'theories' in it. Being a waitress needs to has a good memory, knowledge of all the staffs in the restaurant, attention, the creation of service, her own personal satisfaction, tolerante and so on.
If one wants to be more efficient and earn more money when working, she has to bring all her sense organs into play. What's more, she has to be more creative and talktive, which can help her get more tips. Just for facing customers, they have to have emotion mangement, the waitress play out with the customers within stereotypic gender scripts. And in order to get more tips, she must try to suggest as many items as she can and always smiling to tolenrate rude behavior and insult.
Though being a waiter or waitress may not need to be highly educated, they can learn many things and rules in the context of the restaurant. They learn from the from occurs, informal social exchange...We can learn many things from any people, so we should show our respect to everyone.
In the book, I think the author is just like an observer to look how they work.And there are many detail descriptions running through the whole essay, which makes the writing vivid and let the readers seem to see the scenes by ourselves.

whom to profile

I decided to profile Dr. To, the history professor of our university.

Questions:
1.What made him decided to leave Hong Kong and being a professor in America?
2.Did he experience some hard times here in America? For him, what is the most difficult thing to get through or give some cultural gap examples.
3.What branch of history does he place extra emphasis on and the reason
4.In his opinion, what's the difference between Chinese students and American students in learning. Can he give some advice for both sides of the students to improve the learning skill.
5.What's his plan for the future

profile

My first idea of the profile is to interview a classmate of mine who really loves making cakes, and she has made cakes for decades since she was a little girl. She learned it from her grandmother. I like cakes and I think she is a expert in that field.

The second idea is to interview a history professor in BSU. He is from Hongkong and has stayed in the United States for more than 20 years. I think during this interview I can dig out many differences between Chinese culture and American culture. What's more, I'm a chinese, which can make it easier to get his points.

The third idea is to interview a kindergarten teacher in the Children's Center in our university. I selected the course named Basics of Early Childhood this semester and I do my Observation Hours there very Thursday. Children's world are much more different than that of adult's, which can be a good topic.