Departments
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2 July 1999 |
Vol. III, No. 1 |
Feature Article
Hold that jargon
New Alumni Award showcases student writing
By David J. Craig
Brenda Berasi (CAS'99) never thought that writing was her strength. A "science person from a science family," Berasi set modest goals when assigned a term paper in a marine biology course in 1997: she strived to turn a complicated set of data regarding feeding patterns of baleen whales into a plain-speaking research paper that avoided the "intentionally difficult" language she believes hampers much science writing.
Berasi now realizes that her simple vision -- achieved after countless hours spent paring down her sentences and clarifying her points -- was remarkable. Not only did she ace the course for which she wrote the paper, entitled "A Comparison of the Diet and Feeding Behaviors of Four Baleen Whales: Eubalaena glacialis, Magaptera novaengliae, Balaenoptera borealis, and Balaenoptera acutorostrata," but last month the paper earned a College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Alumni Association Award for Writing Excellence.
"This paper was probably the first I wrote that I actually liked because I really enjoyed what I was writing about," explains Berasi, who says she has "been in love with" the mammals she researched since eighth grade. "I spent a lot of time revising too, which you don't usually do in college."
The new CAS/GRS Alumni Association Award, meant to highlight the College of Arts and Sciences increased emphasis on student writing, was given for the first time May 20 to one undergraduate student each working in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Also presented with an award were Samuel Frederick (CAS'99) and Maria Rabinovich (CAS'99).
The $500 award is funded partially by a recent $15,000 endowment to the CAS Alumni Association by Jerry Charm (CAS'68) through a memorial fund in memory of his late brother, journalist Robert Charm. Any 10- to 25-page expository writing, analytical, or research paper previously completed for a BU course is eligible to be submitted by a professor on behalf of a student.
"The committee of faculty members that judged the papers looked for the usual hallmarks of good writing," explains CAS Senior Associate Dean Susan Jackson, "including clarity of exposition and engaging prose. And that's what they got."
According to Berasi, Frederick, and Rabinovich, producing the award-winning papers was a challenge, but required no acts of genius. The key: know what you want to say and keep your points concise and your language simple.
Berasi, a biology major who admits that she got little practice writing lengthy term papers at BU because few of her science courses required it, says that her initial assignment was merely to write a paper that adhered to the structure of a scientific journal article. But the more articles Berasi read in her literature review of baleen whales, she says, the clearer the vision of how she wanted her own paper to read.
"I tried to write clearly and get facts across so someone reading could understand exactly what I was saying," Berasi explains. "That was hard. What's in scientific journals is often difficult to read because the authors make it difficult."
Berasi's paper is anything but, even when describing the complex relationships between the diet and feeding behaviors of the right, humpback, sei, and minke whales, including specific strategies each species uses to secure precious natural resources when in the vicinity of the others.
"After we wrote our papers, we got to spend a week on an island in the West Indies to make our own field observations," Berasi says. "What I found matched up with information in the research paper."
Shakespeare on love
Similarly, Frederick's goal was to make an
intricate analysis of themes of love, war, and death in
Shakespeare into a palatable and compelling narrative in his
paper "Sexuality and the Impulse for Destruction in
Shakespeare's Othello."
He succeeded by demonstrating how Shakespeare's verse makes subtle and often hilarious references to the way that Othello's love of war is conflated with his latent sexuality until, Frederick writes, love and destruction become so "closely intertwined, they strangle each other in a cataclysmic dissonance."
Frederick, an English major who intends to one day teach comparative literature, claims that his thesis is "nothing revolutionary" and that his aim was to demonstrate the connection between love and death in Othello in creative ways.
"Too often academic writing is full of jargon and is too cold," he explains. "But there's no reason why criticism shouldn't be as entertaining to read as literature itself. I wanted to catch the reader, so I tried to mix the creative writing and the academic writing as much as possible."
Those prone to procrastination will be pleased to know that not all the winners of the CAS/GRS Alumni Association Award slaved over multiple drafts of their papers.
Rabinovich says her winning paper, "The Social Construction of the Judgmental Dope: The Disease and the Remedy," was written much like any other she turned in this year.
"I did it the night before it was due on some sort of inspirational wave," says Rabinovich, a sociology major from Taganrog, Russia. "That's not to say I didn't think a lot about what I wrote. I walked around for about two weeks thinking the paper out in my head."
The proper study of mankind
Her paper is a passionate appeal for sociology to
develop a more comprehensive intersubjective approach for
studying human behavior. It compares the paradigmatic work
in the sociology of knowledge, UNI Professor Peter L.
Berger's and Thomas Luckman's The Social Construction of
Knowledge, which Rabinovich argues offers a too
deterministic theory for studying human behavior, to the
more humanistic work of Harold Garfinkel.
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Anne Studabaker (left), wife of late Boston writer Robert Charm, talks to those gathered at the CAS/GRS Alumni Association Award for Writing Excellence ceremony on May 20. The award was made possible by a gift from the Robert E. Charm Memorial Fund. Seated (from left) are award recipients Brenda Berasi (CAS'99), Samuel Frederick (CAS'99), and Maria Rabinovich (CAS'99). Photo by Albert L'Etoile |
Rabinovich's often fiery paper ends with a justification of her argument: "The ethical aspect of sociology remains my guidance in selecting the elements of theories to be analyzed."
"It should be admitted that whichever way you turn when doing sociology, you cannot get away from the personal values, at least when selecting the topic," Rabinovich explains.
Each of this year's award-winning writers is still working out plans to attend graduate school after taking a year off from school. And, according to Jackson, the college is looking for more donations to fund a larger endowment and extend the award to six students next year. The award, she says, is part of an initiative that should result in curriculum changes, including required writing seminars for all CAS students and the creation of a writing center by the fall of 2000.
CAS Alumni Association Board President John Connery (CAS'69), who works as a development consultant in Melrose, Mass., says the Award for Writing Excellence is particularly important to the association because, unlike many initiatives the group takes on, it resulted in face-to-face interaction with students at the May 20 award ceremony, held at The Castle.
"We don't always see where our money goes," says Connery, adding that at the ceremony he was able to tell students about the important role writing plays in his job. "But with all the interaction between the alumni and the current students, this turned into a spectacular event. It really made us feel fulfilled."