4/12 Update
1. Round 2 Paragraphs
2. Lit HW
3. Chemistry Revision
4. USNCO 1
5. USNCO 2
6. Physics Prep / Math Prep
Thoughts:
While I have nothing in particular in mind for today's post, I do want to start a discussion on awards - in particular, awards that schools / people give. While I may not be the most qualified to talk about all types of awards, I want to put a special highlight on certain types of awards, namely those of the "popularity contest" variety. These types of awards, at least personally, seem like more of a cop-out and less "award-like" than others, as they rely on people knowing all that others do, a fact which is not always true.
Now, what do I mean by such awards? What are the characteristics of such awards? Well, to be specific, "popularity contest" awards specify a certain type of award which relies on some sort of voting process to elect someone getting an award. Now, the following is not meant to apply in all cases, for certain awards have traits like this that I can admire, but I will return to that point in a bit. For now, I want to highlight some of the challenges that accompany the awards process of such an award.
"Popularity contests", which I will refer to as PCAs from now on, have some unique challenges. Primarily, they all focus on a key assumption - that all parties involved know why all candidates deserve such an award. While this might seem reasonable in the first place, such a policy can remove potential candidates who are qualified but lack the marketing skill or social presence to have their knowledge and motivations known. For an example of this, look no further than the sort of "paper plate awards" of my high-school. In such a situation there are many people who were never even mentioned in a certain award, as the person, in particular, does not feel motivated enough to talk to the "correct" people about their work. As a result, they are unable to even demonstrate their skill to show why such an award needs to be given to them, resulting in awards that may not end up going to the correct people, ending up as simple "popularity contests". What makes this assumption even more dangerous, however, is that such a lack of recognition can lead to people believing that their lack of recognition corresponds to some lack of potential. While I do not want to protect those that are unqualified from realizing their lack of qualifications, I do want to ensure that everyone who believes that they deserve an award can, at the least, be given some way to fight for it that does NOT involve social media or other social constructs.
Besides the primary issue, however, PCAs can also fail due to the personal nature of the awards given. If awards do not have a strong personal significance or seem to come without any lack of effort on the people involved, they tend to lack any sense of motivation and, in fact, can hinder a person's perception of their talents. Personally, this happened to me through the PCA paper plate awards. The award I got, in a nutshell, just happened to align with my interests and my qualifications yet, unfortunately, lacked any real competition. While there were others who could have gotten this award, they ended up getting cut from the pool of considered candidates relatively early, leaving me with candidates that simply lacked any real qualifications and, unfortunately, got in due to sheer popularity or name-recognition. This award, personally, became a source of frustration for me as it felt that the award was designed for me, rather than someone fitting my personality to an award. Especially given the point of these awards, which were to recognize members of the senior class and to add to some senior bonding, I feel that better categories were in order. While some might extend this to indicate that there needs to be some level of debate as to who could win a certain award for it to really mean something, I do not think that is necessarily the case. In another type of award ceremony, like that of the annual music banquet, awards that are personalized to the individual work incredibly well. These sorts of awards, where the award-giver heavily personalizes it yet does not work solely off of popularity but off of what will make for a fun night, ended up giving me an award that I really enjoyed and, quite honestly, made me happy about coming there ( although my parents will never be able to see it for obvious reasons ). Thus, I am not saying that personalization does not work to create fun awards. However, I think that such "personalized" awards need to have a few other factors in play for them to be effective. For one, due to their nature, they simply do not play well with PCAs. As a result, they should remain secretive, to keep some surprise, and rely on some private joke / personality trait to be effective, so the people awarded feel like, well, people - not just the object of some weird categorization. Secondly, these awards need to also have some motivation played into it. Without reasoning why it becomes really hard for the awards to become something more than "oh. cool.". After all, without a strong personal reason to keep it, who would keep a simple paper plate for long? Lastly, these awards need to be made by someone who has close ties to the people awarded. This is simply because, without a strong connection, it will be impossible to accurately ensure that the person is treated like a person and not as someone who does not matter. This also helps circumvent problem number one with PCAs in general, as it ensures no one feels alienated or falsely labeled due to some award.
Lastly, the third problem that I want to discuss with PCAs is a lack of regulation when people get multiple awards. Especially when such awards are numerous yet not numerous enough to cover everyone, it makes only common sense to ensure that there are not certain groups that end up getting multiple awards for each of its members. However, in the same paper plate awards, such an act happened with multiple members of a particular social group. This sort of award placement, honestly, could be a contributing factor as to why people make PCAs out to be, well, "popularity contests" for it simply makes no sense to have only a certain number of people as candidates when there are a) more qualified candidates who did not get specific opportunities to get awards and b) when the purpose is not for some academic/ scholarly purpose. Without these exceptions, I simply cannot fathom why this was allowed to happen at all, and really should have been better done in hindsight to ensure that no one feels complete social isolation / personal injustice for not being considered for an award, let alone being given it - especially when others seem to have gotten awards for purely arbitrary reasons like school placement.
Altogether, through this essay, I hope that some of the problems of PCAs are starting to manifest in a clear and meaningful form. While this was not meant to be a clear criticism of certain PCAs, I apologise for the intense scrutiny laid on the "paper plate awards", as I only use it as a teaching example to show some of the problems why PCAs may not be the best use of an awards ceremony dedicated for fun and not academic merit. I simply hope this inspires next years to use this information and help make an informed choice as to how to improve the quality of the awards for all, and hopefully help people understand some of my emotions when I started understanding the course of the matter.
2. Lit HW
3. Chemistry Revision
4. USNCO 1
5. USNCO 2
6. Physics Prep / Math Prep
Thoughts:
While I have nothing in particular in mind for today's post, I do want to start a discussion on awards - in particular, awards that schools / people give. While I may not be the most qualified to talk about all types of awards, I want to put a special highlight on certain types of awards, namely those of the "popularity contest" variety. These types of awards, at least personally, seem like more of a cop-out and less "award-like" than others, as they rely on people knowing all that others do, a fact which is not always true.
Now, what do I mean by such awards? What are the characteristics of such awards? Well, to be specific, "popularity contest" awards specify a certain type of award which relies on some sort of voting process to elect someone getting an award. Now, the following is not meant to apply in all cases, for certain awards have traits like this that I can admire, but I will return to that point in a bit. For now, I want to highlight some of the challenges that accompany the awards process of such an award.
"Popularity contests", which I will refer to as PCAs from now on, have some unique challenges. Primarily, they all focus on a key assumption - that all parties involved know why all candidates deserve such an award. While this might seem reasonable in the first place, such a policy can remove potential candidates who are qualified but lack the marketing skill or social presence to have their knowledge and motivations known. For an example of this, look no further than the sort of "paper plate awards" of my high-school. In such a situation there are many people who were never even mentioned in a certain award, as the person, in particular, does not feel motivated enough to talk to the "correct" people about their work. As a result, they are unable to even demonstrate their skill to show why such an award needs to be given to them, resulting in awards that may not end up going to the correct people, ending up as simple "popularity contests". What makes this assumption even more dangerous, however, is that such a lack of recognition can lead to people believing that their lack of recognition corresponds to some lack of potential. While I do not want to protect those that are unqualified from realizing their lack of qualifications, I do want to ensure that everyone who believes that they deserve an award can, at the least, be given some way to fight for it that does NOT involve social media or other social constructs.
Besides the primary issue, however, PCAs can also fail due to the personal nature of the awards given. If awards do not have a strong personal significance or seem to come without any lack of effort on the people involved, they tend to lack any sense of motivation and, in fact, can hinder a person's perception of their talents. Personally, this happened to me through the PCA paper plate awards. The award I got, in a nutshell, just happened to align with my interests and my qualifications yet, unfortunately, lacked any real competition. While there were others who could have gotten this award, they ended up getting cut from the pool of considered candidates relatively early, leaving me with candidates that simply lacked any real qualifications and, unfortunately, got in due to sheer popularity or name-recognition. This award, personally, became a source of frustration for me as it felt that the award was designed for me, rather than someone fitting my personality to an award. Especially given the point of these awards, which were to recognize members of the senior class and to add to some senior bonding, I feel that better categories were in order. While some might extend this to indicate that there needs to be some level of debate as to who could win a certain award for it to really mean something, I do not think that is necessarily the case. In another type of award ceremony, like that of the annual music banquet, awards that are personalized to the individual work incredibly well. These sorts of awards, where the award-giver heavily personalizes it yet does not work solely off of popularity but off of what will make for a fun night, ended up giving me an award that I really enjoyed and, quite honestly, made me happy about coming there ( although my parents will never be able to see it for obvious reasons ). Thus, I am not saying that personalization does not work to create fun awards. However, I think that such "personalized" awards need to have a few other factors in play for them to be effective. For one, due to their nature, they simply do not play well with PCAs. As a result, they should remain secretive, to keep some surprise, and rely on some private joke / personality trait to be effective, so the people awarded feel like, well, people - not just the object of some weird categorization. Secondly, these awards need to also have some motivation played into it. Without reasoning why it becomes really hard for the awards to become something more than "oh. cool.". After all, without a strong personal reason to keep it, who would keep a simple paper plate for long? Lastly, these awards need to be made by someone who has close ties to the people awarded. This is simply because, without a strong connection, it will be impossible to accurately ensure that the person is treated like a person and not as someone who does not matter. This also helps circumvent problem number one with PCAs in general, as it ensures no one feels alienated or falsely labeled due to some award.
Lastly, the third problem that I want to discuss with PCAs is a lack of regulation when people get multiple awards. Especially when such awards are numerous yet not numerous enough to cover everyone, it makes only common sense to ensure that there are not certain groups that end up getting multiple awards for each of its members. However, in the same paper plate awards, such an act happened with multiple members of a particular social group. This sort of award placement, honestly, could be a contributing factor as to why people make PCAs out to be, well, "popularity contests" for it simply makes no sense to have only a certain number of people as candidates when there are a) more qualified candidates who did not get specific opportunities to get awards and b) when the purpose is not for some academic/ scholarly purpose. Without these exceptions, I simply cannot fathom why this was allowed to happen at all, and really should have been better done in hindsight to ensure that no one feels complete social isolation / personal injustice for not being considered for an award, let alone being given it - especially when others seem to have gotten awards for purely arbitrary reasons like school placement.
Altogether, through this essay, I hope that some of the problems of PCAs are starting to manifest in a clear and meaningful form. While this was not meant to be a clear criticism of certain PCAs, I apologise for the intense scrutiny laid on the "paper plate awards", as I only use it as a teaching example to show some of the problems why PCAs may not be the best use of an awards ceremony dedicated for fun and not academic merit. I simply hope this inspires next years to use this information and help make an informed choice as to how to improve the quality of the awards for all, and hopefully help people understand some of my emotions when I started understanding the course of the matter.
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