2014 interview

1.  Who did you interview and what house are they in? I interviewed North house's Regina Ongowarsito.
2.  What ideas do you have for your senior project and why? Regina has no ideas what she wants to do with her senior project because she expressed that she is not interested in anything and won't commit to something that she is not passionate about. 
3.  What do you plan to do for your summer 10 hour mentorship experience? For 10 hour mentorship experience, Regina has no idea what she is going to do either. She explained she has the motivation to do something, but is waiting for the right moment and opportunity to do anything with it. 
4.  What do you hope to see or expect to see in watching the 2013 2-hour presentations? Regina doesn't expect anything for the two hour presentations which is her take on most things. She mentioned how she didn't even know that presentations were coming up, and from what she has heard from previous classes and other juniors, they all sound so different thus hard to expect anything. 
5A.  What questions do you have that I can answer about senior year or senior project (or what additional information did you tell them about senior year or senior project)? 
5B. How hard is senior year? At first, I explained to her that every year at iPoly is hard, just in different ways obviously. And, so for senior year, you're pretty much on your own in a lot of ways, while at the same time able to be there for others for their projects. I gave her a brief summary of each and every component, first explaining model assembly and the difficulties of making a bill and working with a group (a thing that I had the most difficulty with this year). I told her that a lot of the difficulty that people have for senior year is procrastination and missing deadlines, and in reality, sometimes even the senior topic itself. But, if you have a passion for it, then doing research checks, independent components, and mentorship will be an enjoyable experience. Overall, to finish my answer, I said "Senior year is what you make it, if you want it to be hard, then you make it hard on yourself and nothing else." 
5C. What should I do for my project? This one was the hardest question to answer because I genuinely wanted to help Regina since I was in the same position as she was last year. So, instead of answering, I asked her a question back: Even if you say you have no passion, what do you enjoy doing anyway? We all like something. I brought up how she's a good singer, since she is in my music class, and gave her ideas off of that. After we discussed taking a path in music, she confessed that music probably wouldn't be something she would like doing for a whole year and, if she did, it would have to have a psychological spin to it. Changing the topic then, I gave her examples of corky senior projects since I knew she would like something outside of the box. The final point I made about the selection of her project was to decide on a project you can get mentorship in, since that was a huge weak area in my project. 
5D. What exactly is mentorship? To answer this question, I gave her a short, but to the point, definition of mentorship. I explained to her that mentorship is a type of job shadowing that is required by the project that brings life to your answers and a deeper understanding of whatever topic you select. I also brought up the point on how essential it is for a project, that if it does not go good for you, you only have your research to rely on. I shared with her my difficulty of finding mentorship, and urged her to find her contacts as soon as she could before it was too late since 50 hours is required for the project.
5E. Can you talk to Cris Hernandez for me? While I talked about senior projects that my class is doing this year, Regina was immediately interested in Cris Hernandez's topic involving video games. Because Regina plays a lot of video games, she would be interested in pursuing a topic about her favorite way to spend her free time. At first, she didn't know that a topic could be about video games, so if I could get her and Cris talking, then she may get started early with her project and produce something great. 

Blog 3: Interview Preparation

Who do you plan to interview? Why? 

For my first interview I plan on interviewing CalPoly's Ethnics & Woman's Studies lecturer Professor Brian Foster because of his background and expertise of ethnic studies. I was his student during my spring quarter at CalPoly and discovered my profound interests in activism and civil movements we discussed throughout the course. Not only was his teachings inspirational to me, his feedback on my topic will be valuable because of his own passion of activism and knowledge on the ethical side of censorship.

If I cannot interview Professor Foster for my first interview due to his schedule, I have arranged an interview via email with Mr. Sean Hamilton, the ownder of Censorship in America and an Anonymous (activist group) affiliate. I plan to interview him because I consider him a censorship expert because of his collection of articles that are constantly updating, understanding of censorship based off his webpage, as well as being an affiliate of Anonymous. After looking at his public profile, I discovered he is an activist as well so he himself will have great perspective of the area of work I want to go into.

Contact Information 

Professor Brian Foster (no response yet)
bgfoster@csupomona.edu
PH: 909 869 3593

Mr. Sean Hamilton (agreed to email due to location)
seanhamilton@censorshipinamerica.com

What additional open-ended questions do you plan to ask?

• What about censorship is important to you? 
• How did you become interested in civil liberties?
• Tell me about your experiences dealing with censorship
• What primary issues can I focus on to capture the essential purpose of censorship?
• What role has social media played in recent events in history?
• How would you define censorship?