Student interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Communicology, clip 3 of 13

Abstract

Brief excerpt from interview: The writing style, the whole APA format, that was very new to me. Coming from my high school that I did, I know we didn't learn much about that. We learned about general formats, but nothing to the college level... The format of my paper at first, that's the hard part, and then connecting your ideas to concepts or theories and elaborating. It's a little difficult, but once you talk it over with Jessica and she helps you understand and puts it into perspective for you, it's a lot easier to the flow of your paper. I think I would get road-blocked...I would stop because... this is the concept I want to relate it to. I'm not quite sure how to mesh it together, and so she can further elaborate and clear the roadblock... [For example], the local people of Kauaʻi, how do we form our culture together? [The professor] says 'can you think of a specific time where you all came together in agreement on something and made something happen?' That's what makes us a culture... We can take our collective ideas, over one person's, and make something happen, and make our voices heard, and that's what I wrote about. I can't call myself Hawaiian. I'm not part of the indigenous, native people. When I was a kid, I actually told myself that I was Hawaiian. I believed I was born in the islands, so I must be Hawaiian. On Kauaʻi, we're so small, but we still have this little spark in us, that says if we don't want something to happen, we're not gonna let this happen, and that's what we did, and that's what really made me proud to call myself a part of that island. When I learned my ancestry... I'd never been to the Philippines, I've never been to Puerto Rico, I've never been to Spain, I've never been all these ethnicities that I have. But, I am from this island. This is where I grew up. This is my home. I may be all these other things, but this is home to me. That's what really ties me in... and that's what makes me write about all the stuff that I write about. My mom actually grew up doing a lot of things that comes from Native Hawaiian teaching, so she does lomi massages...we go and work in the loʻi and my uncles hunt and they teach us respect for the land. They teach us respect for the ocean, and how the land can provide for you, and there's so much things that we do that harm it, and we have to make sure we don't.