15. Short Analysis Project

The Summary Exposed

            While giving an interview, one should always try and stay calm, or at least appear as if they are calm.  While S, the interviewer, knew C, the subject, very well it starts off as what seems to be a regular conversation and then S immediately jumps into the questioning, which didn’t exactly give off the calm vibe, but they just kept going with it but with her jumping right in it shows that S wants to immediately start the interview.  C is not reluctant to answer anything and answers the questions completely and to the best of her knowledge. 

            The interview questions are based off of the knowledge of summaries and if one understands the difference between the different types of summaries when asked to present one to a professor or audience.  As S asks C to give her interpretation of what a summary is:

S:   So do you know what a summary is?

C:  Yes.

S:  Could you define a summary?

C:  A summary is a snapshot of an entire plot where you don’t need to exactly read every  

     word but the summary gives you the descriptive details that you do need, they    

     basically give you the gist of the story, like the character, the plot, maybe the conflict

     where they may at least attempt to give you the conflict in some type of way but not

     unreal the whole entire thing for you but a summary is just usually maybe a couple of

     sentences just to maybe give you an idea of the topic, or a story, or a subject or

     anything like that.

            S had asked C to be her subject because C is a Communications major, which besides English majors they do a lot of writing and write a lot of papers. 

S:  How often would you say that you’ve used summaries in your major?

C:  For Comm, um, I think a lot, a lot of the times with your research projects and when

      I’m trying to gather sources for a paper I’ll ya know read the paper and try to give the

      summary of the source that I’m using so I won’t have to read the whole paper.  When   

      I’m ready to use the source I can write down maybe a couple sentences about the

      summary that I read and it will help me narrow it down with the sources that I need to

      use

            Clearly C is aware of what a summary is and her explanation of what a summary is isn’t wrong.  As S increasingly asks questions to get more in depth about the subject, C becomes a little confused as to why she is being asked these questions, but she is not uncomfortable in any way.  While S explains that there are different types of summaries and that the one C described the process of is a plot summary.  But S then goes on to explain that when a professor asks you for a summary, a lot of times it is for an interpretation summary, which is what you took from the story itself.  C was not so surprised when S had explained it to her but she felt that she needed to explain her experience with summaries and why she automatically would have thought to submit a plot summary and not an interpretation summary, or think to even ask the professor what they would specifically want in the summary.

            C explains that since kindergarten we are basically taught and have had it embedded in our minds to make sure that we understand that a summary is an explanation of what the piece of writing was about and although she clearly understood when S was explaining that that isn’t the only form of a summary, we automatically think to go to the plot summary.  Any normal person would think to go about with describing the plot, because that is what our culture is made to believe that we are suppose to follow instead of asking exactly what the professor would want. 

            Another thing that our culture is made to believe is that summaries are supposed to be short and sweet without giving away too much.  Many believe that the summaries should only be no more than two paragraphs, when in all actuality they should be answered completely and can be as long as you desire them to be.  We have been taught wrong as a culture and because of this a lot of college students, including English majors, are not aware of the different types of summaries that can be represented. 

            As C comes back to the interview and realizes what S has presented to her it is easy to see that she understands what was presented to her, but feels that she has been unaware of how to do assignments correctly.  C knows that both are important to know, but the expression she has almost questions how many assignments for English and Communications she had done wrong during her college career.         

S then asks C what she believes would be more important, to know a interpretation summary or a plot summary?  C answers with interpretation.     

S:  Why do you say that?

C:  Because I mean, anybody could write verbatim, ya know, of a summary like finding a  

      new way to rewrite a story without writing it the same exact way but interpretative

      makes it so much more about you and how you look at it and how you angle it so it

      makes you think more and think about it on your own versus kind of rewording what

      they have already written as a basic summary format.

S:  Yeah, would you say it’s important to know and learn the basic concepts of a

     summary? 

C:  Um yeah I think it would help to have it not retaught to us but maybe mentioned to us    

    again while we are in college because ya know some stuff you don’t always remember   

    from college so to have a refresher I think that’s a good idea.     

The main point for S’s interview was so that it was known that interpretations need to seen as an effective summary.  S got her point across to C, and C agreed that there should be a refresher course and maybe even a course where developing interpretations is the main focus.  With a successful interview and showing calmness and professionalism, S had allowed for C to take control of the interview but while still holding the reins.   With the short transcript being of only 931 words, S had only displayed 239 words, allowing the majority of the conversation to be done by C with 652 words. 

C did not overstate anything really essential, such a phrase like “I did this…” or “It was hard…”.  It wasn’t like that in the conversation with S, but once S had made sure C was done and if she had anything else to contribute about her experiences with summaries in any way, whether they were positive for grades or negative, and she felt she expressed everything to as best her knowledge as possible. 

Experiences with summaries are not just part of the English curriculum and the reasons behind why S asked C to be her subject is because of the differences between the English and Communications majors.  Many majors require major writing and details in their writing and learning about others experiences with it is why the subject was chosen outside of the English major.