#1 Ideas for My Final Paper
Hi everyone! I am most interested in the following topics:
- The Advantages and Disadvantages of Joining Greek Life
- I am in a sorority and even though I love it, I wonder if joining it made me lost focus. In one of the articles we read, they said sororities and socializing usually go in conjunction with easier majors, and recently I have had to switch out of the pharmacy program in pursuit of something easier so I can balance my time better. I feel like I get caught up in the life of the sorority I'm in even when it's not healthy.
- Multicultural Greek Life
- I'm in an Asian interest sorority, and I would love to explore something related to MGC.
- Hazing and Pledge Processes in Greek Life
- It would be really cool to research and learn about hazing and different pledge processes and how they affect students.
- Asian Parents and Getting into College
- Some sort of spin-off on tiger parenting would be pretty interesting as well. I think a lot of my Asian American friends don't see eye to eye with their parents because their parents see them as lazy while the circumstances that their children have grown up in are completely different.
- Maybe something related to trying to stand out as an Asian American on college applications. I know I had a friend who literally changed her last name just so she wouldn't sound Asian on applications. I think that's crazy and unnecessary but who knows?
The "Asian Parents and Getting into College" section is really interesting.
ReplyDeleteAs you well know, Tiger parenting is very real -- and, as Armstrong and Hamilton show, parents who are supportive of their children can definitely make a huge difference in their success (even though the parents' own ideas about "success" may not match those of their children). And Amy Chua's books and articles on the strategy have definitely helped to spread it to others, as it fits completely with the ongoing "parental arms race" that is partly driven by the increased cost and competition surrounding college. This would make for an interesting topic.
A related topic is the college application issue. I am among those who actually believe that Asian students HAVE been discriminated against in elite college admissions, and some of the evidence that was unearthed in the Harvard admissions lawsuit was rather compelling and led to lots of interesting discussion, even though Harvard eventually won the case. I see a real parallel with the discrimination against Jewish students that is so well documented by Jerome Karabel in his excellent book The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. If you are interested, I can loan you the book (it is huge), and I am sure the Rutgers libraries has it also.
I think these topics are rather related to each other, as the hyper-competition around college admissions among Asian American students is driving some of the odd distortions you describe---which are driven by the desire for competitive advantage in a hyper-competitive context. This could be very interesting as a topic.
The Greek life topic is also very viable, and it is very interesting to think about the Asian American student angle, or a "multicultural" angle.
ReplyDeleteIf you pursue the Greek Life topic, you might start by looking at the chapters from Paying for the Party related to "The Party Pathway" and sororities. I have posted at least one on our Canvas site, but The Rutgers libraries have an electronic copy of the entire book for you to look at:
https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rutgers-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3301285
You need to log-in to the Rutgers libraries with your NetID for the link to work.
A good place to get some sense of the variety of academic approaches to Greek life is the book The Influence of Fraternity and Sorority Involvement : A Critical Analysis of Research (1996-2013) by Biddix et al. which surveys a wide range of literature up to 2013 on the topic, in various categories. This is a useful guide to the literature that will give you a sense of different approaches to the topic. Biddix followed up with another survey titled "Moving Beyond Alcohol" in 2016 that offered an update.
And I think there have been nearly 20 students over the years writing about Greek issues, most of whom belonged to fraternities or sororities themselves and therefore preferred to find a positive angle on the topic. You can find them all in the right sidebar of our class blog. Some that seem relevant for you are:
http://fp148.blogspot.com/ on social integration and sororities
http://nitishmogilisetty.blogspot.com/ on social integration and identity formation
http://franksblogbodega.blogspot.com/ minority Greek organizations
http://markpastoral.blogspot.com/ LGBT Greeks
http://successbound94.blogspot.com/ Greek diversity
A couple have taken on the hazing issue (typically following a bad incident on campus), which is a complex topic for analysis. These students had great ideas but fell a little short in execution:
http://melissadottavio.blogspot.com/
http://vishwa201college.blogspot.com/
So there are a lot of angles to explore. Typically, students begin with the idea of defending sororities or fraternities from "the bad rap" they get in the press (as in The Dark Power of Fraternities from The Atlantic). But students quickly realize that is not a viable topic in itself, and so most find a topic about the positive value of Greek life in helping to build "soft skills," expand your social capital through networking, or help teach you self-efficacy and leadership. (You can find blogs on those topics in our blog list). Based on Armstrong and Hamilton, it does seem that sorority life might be incompatible with pursuing a very challenging professional pathway like Pharmacy. But perhaps so long as you avoid taking on a leadership role, it might not be too distracting. And I would be most curious about the multicultural angle -- and what sort of cognitive dissonance is experienced by Asian American students in the typical sorority environment. I am sure there is some interesting research out there.
Pick a topic and let's get researching !