My name is Jacob Harvey and I am a 9th grade student at Regis Jesuit High School. My English class is underway with a project regarding The Catcher in the Rye. For this project, I am required to incorporate credible research into each task; additionally, I am required to contact the author of the article to further assist me in understanding your article, to assist in furthering my own research, and to also, most importantly, encourage me to think about what I’ve read.

The overall assignment is designed to (a) help me understand the learning process, (b) further develop my researching and critical thinking skills, and (c) to help guide me through the process of self reflection; thus I’d appreciate any response you may have to the following questions:

1.You explain these knowledge/experience multipliers and how some utilize them and others don’t. Can you elaborate on how one might utilize either one of those?

2.You say that both of these can potentially lead to an unwanted outcome, and why would you want to pick from two lesser evils, but in a sense don’t you have to choose one of them?

3.Going back to the interview solution, don’t you think that someone is hired solely on their experiences or their knowledge that they have?

4.If you are interviewing someone or being interviewed isn’t one side always going to out weigh the other one in some aspect, because usually someone doesn’t have both completely on the same level?

In case you are wondering, here are the 5 tasks for the assignment:

Task #1 (group): How is your group’s theme a prevalent issue with high school students? What about your group’s theme needs to be discussed at Regis? How can we benefite the Regis community from your research? Presentation (Prezi or Youtube). How does your group’s theme relate to Catcher in the Rye?

Task #2 (individual): You vs. Holden. How do you relate to Holden? How is Holden’s world like or unlike yours? Reflective piece. (seeking help from Theology dept. to understand reflective requirements). You must include: At least one source (please follow the rubric for everything else except for collaboration)

Task #3 (individual group): Interview a senior at Regis. Each group member must record the interview and upload it to their weds.com tab. The questions should be derived from your three researched articles. Each recording needs to be accompanied by a summary (or concluding thoughts by interviewer). Then, each recording needs to be cut and combined for a “highlight reel” recording that showcases the best answers. Topic: How Catcher in the Rye and Holden have affected his life.

Task #4 (individual): Write a two-page letter (standard format) to the administration. They’re considering removing Catcher in the Rye from the freshmen curriculum. Should they or shouldn’t they? All Grammatical rules apply (includes active voice)

OR

Write a literary analysis for Catcher in the Rye (see me for details).

Task #5 (individual): Reflection. What did I learn? What do I need to work on? Peer review (using parts of rubric). What was good about this assignment? Pair up with someone from another group. Read what they did and give an evaluation. Talk about how that person did something better than you did. What did you do better than that person? Include a link to that person’s webs.com account.

Additionally. Create a photostory account. Create a 1-2 minute show that reveals “how you spilled the water” during your 9th grade year. Use music that symbolically represents your journey. For a little extra, with what would you like to refill your glass?

Most education will not give you ambition, nerves or moral, it will not make you a fighter. However it gives you knowledge, and sometimes knowledge is key.

So just walking about with a lot of knowledge won’t make you a success. You have to throw yourself into action, the right action, and make things happen, even if you’re stomach screams no. Forward is the way to go. That will give you ambition, nerves and moral. You have to build yourself in a way.

I do what I have to do in order to achieve my objectives, with common sence ofcourse. And if that includes having to get an education, so be it.

So if I were ‘trolling for hits’ I might say something like “knowledge and experience are both irrelevant”… so if we leave the theoretical for a second – and try to get at what we’re really talking about – we’re trying to figure out how to decide who will be a good player for our team – and we usually do this when we interview potential candidates for a development position…..

So – knowing that we’re really talking about who we want to hire to help us do something, I’d say “how experienced” or “how knowledgable” are really secondary questions that help us to get at the root of what we’re looking for…..

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

I don’t care if you have a Ph.D. in compiler design if you can’t build a straightforward, elegant web app (if that’s your problem space) to solve a particular business problem.

I don’t care if you’ve been programming since 1952, and you used to eat lunch with Alan Turing himself… if you can’t piece together current technology to solve current problems – it doesn’t mean anything to me.

… so are knowledge and experience important – yes – BUT – they’re extremely difficult to nail down objectively AND they’re ONLY a tool for finding out what someone is capable of doing. But, if we have other tools for doing that – we shouldn’t let either of them dictate anything to us……