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A Documented Essay

Jasmin Ivankovic 

Professor A. Ozkul

English 250 

23 June, 2017

An Uncomfortable Reality: A Documented Essay On Famines 

    Imagine that you are forced to flee from your home with just the clothes you have on and what you can carry in your hands. You are leaving behind your town–or what is left of it–your personal belongings, and life as you know it. You have to watch as those around you die of starvation. And, it won’t be long now before you find yourself starving. Constantly on the move, you cannot stop to imagine sleeping in a cozy bed or eating your next meal (Mercy Corps). This is just one example of a famine situation, and it is not unlike the reality which besieged syrian refugees. This essay first hopes to put the issue of scarcity, or severe food shortage, into perspective, and then turns to talking about solutions, practices that can improve famine situations. I shall close by discussing ethical theories which might guide activism for famine relief. 

What are famines? What are the causes?  How does one help? Our approach for answering these questions involves documenting various perspectives on famines, hoping to reveal their many-faceted causes, grasping for a bigger picture. To begin, I shall turn to the book Homo Deus, as it offers us some insight into the historical significance of famines:

[. . .] For thousands of years, [famines have] been humanity’s worst enemy. Until recently most humans lived on the very edge of the biological poverty line, below which people succumb to malnutrition and hunger. A small mistake or a bit of bad luck could easily be a death sentence for an entire family or village. If heavy rains destroyed your wheat crop, or robbers carried off your goat herd, you and your loved ones may well have starved to death. Misfortune or stupidity on the collective level resulted in mass famines.  (Harari 9)

     Our main focus here is on mass famines that resulted from collective failures, or from human issues and ideologies rather than solely due to natural disasters. And, more specifically, this essay is concerned with modern famine situations and our reaction to them. Therefore, our perception of the facts matters in determining good methods for famine response and prevention. First, let’s consider how to distinguish between mass starvation and famine:

The United Nations officially declares a famine based on three criteria: as least 20 percent of the households in an area must face extreme food shortages and a limited ability to cope; the acute malnutrition rate must exceed 30 percent; and the death rate must exceed two persons per day per 10,000 people in the population. (Paarlberg 41)

     Since Africa is the most affected continent, it will be our focus for now. Let us briefly consider the case of the recurring famines in Ethiopia. For the Ethiopian famines, the most obvious cause we can point to is drought. We can say that drought caused their economy to collapse. Farming is, after all, how nations feed their people; by losing the farms, there was no food supply—and people died. However, that is only part of the story.

One article from the Huffington Post argued that this recurring famine crisis in Ethiopia makes a good case for democracy because Ethiopia’s autocracy caused their mass famines.“Why does autocracy lead to famine? The most fundamental reason is that autocrats often don’t care enough about the population to prevent famine. Autocrats maintain power through force, not popular approval” (Haylemariam). That is to say: Ethiopia’s social structure is more responsible for people dying of starvation than their misfortunate droughts. Furthermore, social structure (or lack thereof) is what makes Africa’s famine situation seemingly unprecedented to us living in the first world. Nora O’Neil states this cause more generally in the quote below: 

But harsh circumstances cause famines only when social and economic structures are too fragile to absorb such natural shocks. Californians know that desert climates need not lead to famines. Minnesotans know that a ferocious winter need not be reflected in countless annual deaths from cold. Yet both regions would have catastrophic annual mortality if they lacked appropriate social and economic structures. Many natural catastrophes produce human catastrophes only when social structures are inadequate. (O’Neil 30)

Turning to a more general perspective, another factor to take into consideration when researching the cause of famines is overpopulation. The world’s population is constantly increasing at faster rates; you might ask then, what happens when there are too many mouths to feed? Similar to a theory proposed by Thomas Malthus in 1798, who said that the world’s population will exceed its food supply, causing scarcity, some people today still believe that we should be worried. However, Malthus was obviously wrong that this would become a global crisis; we all know that overeating is a serious issue today in America. But we should still talk about the rest of the world.

Although Asia is known for being over populated, they’re doing just fine thanks to their green revolution which occurred in the ’60s and ’70s. This was a biological science breakthrough. All across Asia, farmers began farming with seeds developed by plant breeds, making better wheat and rice that has more grain, and their food supply increased proportionally (Paarlberg 6). 

African countries, on the other hand, have missed these kinds of farming revolutions, making their farms yield less food, wasting more and more land. This is yet another thing one can attribute to causing starvation in African countries, where “[. . .] harvests have been falling and dependence on imported grain had been growing” (O’Neil 29). 

In his book, Starved For Science, Robert Paarlberg says African farms are resisting advancements in science technology on their farms, copying a trend popular in Europe, where they resist genetically modified seeds, artificial fertilizer, insecticide, and other farming technologies. (In America, these are called “organic farms”.) Paarlberg says that African farmers are being instructed to produce cash crops and not use more advanced methods of farming. Although science technology could help plants grow in conditions of drought and improve their overall yields, they refuse to adopt newer methods of farming. Paarlberg suggests that by adopting better farming practices, African farmers could resolve and prevent many famine crises in the long run. And, he reminds us that 70% of sub-Saharan Africa depends on farming. This sounds borderline malthusian and ideological. 

However, our focus is not on endemic hunger or poverty; It’s on mass famines. I want to reiterate from the introduction what one can imagine a deadly famine situation to look like. What one soldier saw in 17th century france is not so different from what is going on in certain parts of the world today:

An infinite number of poor souls, weak from hunger and wretchedness and dying from want, because, having no work or occupation, they lack the money to buy bread. Seeking to prolong their lives a little and somewhat to appease their hunger, these poor folk eat such unclean things as cats and the flesh of horses flayed and cast onto dung heaps. [Others consume] the blood that flows when cows and oxen are slaughtered, and the offal that cooks throw into the streets. Other poor wretches eat nettles and weeds, or roots and herbs which they boil in water. (Blanning, 52)

The above situation happened in Madaya, Syria in 2016. According to one CNN article, they were also boiling grass to stay alive. And, people were dying because the price of food skyrocketed with inflation. But the article argues that their starvation was caused deliberately for profit. Furthermore, the ongoing civil war is hugely to blame for causing this situation as well as the displacement of the syrian people. Said displacement has been called the worst humanitarian crisis of our time. Considering just how gruesome the situation is, does it not behoove us to help these poor souls? Up to this point, we have seen how complex famine situations can be. But the issue takes on even more complexity when third parties try to help; in doing so, they are crossing national, cultural, and ethical boundaries. 

There are immediate ways to send support. Flying over care packages and setting up refugee camps around Syria, like the American Non-profit charity, Mercy Corps, does, is just one example. For every famine situation, sending care packages may seem like a no-brainer; while this may work and save those dying from starvation, in some cases, the recipients of our support run into long-term planning issues. In his book, Food Politics, Robert Paarlberg tells us what happens when care packages are the main solution to a recurring famine crisis: they become dependent on our support (46). 

Although other solutions for African famine situations, like providing seeds and equipment, which improve yields in African countries exist, you encounter more stumbling blocks there. You find cultural and political barriers. Whether we aim for a short-term or long-term solution, we are still crossing some boundaries. By “crossing boundaries”, I mean we are either: unsafely going into countries which have been destabilized, getting mixed up in foreign affairs, or simply finding social/cultural dissonance. However, these things should not discourage us from helping. 

 In her book, Justice Across Boundaries, Nora O’Neil, a rigorous philosophical thinker, considers our activism important above all else. “We could list the facts of world hunger, poverty and famine endlessly. But facts alone do not tell us what to do. What surely matters is action, which action we advocate depends partly on our perception of the facts, and this perception depends on the ethical outlook we adopt” (30). Let’s now consider ethical theories taken from an American perspective. 

O’Neil’s offers us three ethical outlooks which can be used to assess our action. We can warrant action by measuring the happiness, health, and wellbeing of people living in affected regions; or warrant taking action to preserve our human rights, suggesting everyone has a right not to die of unnatural causes; or warrant taking action because you are fulfilling a human obligation to help those in need. 

Ultimately, we can conclude that famines are tragic, horrible things that have not changed much since ancient times. We have talked about Africa’s famine crisis, and its many assumed causes. We have discussed the complexity in pinpointing a cause to a given famine situation. And, we have found more complexity when looking to improve famine situations. But this complexity should not stop us from saving those dying of starvation and famine around the world. We know for a fact: it is all the more imperative we take action on all fronts.

Works Cited

“Amnesty International.” Home. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 July 2017

Blanning, T. C. W. The Pursuit of Glory: Europe, 1648-1815. London: Penguin, 2008. Print.

Harari, Yuval Noah. Homo Deus. Place of Publication Not Identified: Vintage, 2017. Print.

Haylemariam, Dawit Ayele. “The Cause of Ethiopia’s Recurrent Famine Is Not Drought, It Is Authoritarianism.” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 22 Aug. 2015. Web. 14 July 2017.

Melvin, Don. “Syria Report: Famine in Madaya ‘the Tip of an Iceberg’.” CNN. Cable News Network, 09 Jan. 2016. Web. 14 July 2017.

O’Neill, Onora. Justice across Boundaries: Whose Obligations? Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2016. Print.

“Population and Natural Resources Module: Conceptual Framework.” Malthusian Theory of Population. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 July 2017.

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Favorite Poems

Found in: Sincerely, by F.S. Yousaf

Former Stories / Better Conclusions

You were the girl

I wanted to impress through my writing,

For I knew that normal words would not work

With you.

You were special,

And craved the kind of love

That crazy, spontaneous writers had,

The ones that only reside

In history books.

…

Of course,

I pray our story does not end like theirs.

I only desire happiness for us.

–

Vision

Once we harmonized,

Your goals and dreams

Also became mine.

And I so dearly

Wanted to see you

Achieve them all.

–

Letters

I always told myself

That I could not possibly

Fall in love with you more.

But here you are,

Proving me wrong once more.

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Beneath The Words

Jasmin Ivankovic

Eng 105-Afternoon

Rose Toubus 

Sep. 18th, 2015

A Novelization of The Most Beautiful Thing,  

Beneath The Words

As Brandon looked out of his window, he saw the horizon’s blue velvet darkening in pace with the setting sun. He decided to leave the realm of middle school behind him as summer break came to a close. “Just how much will be different?” he wondered. Having nothing left to do that night in terms of making a schedule, preparing school supplies and clean clothes, or listening to one of Mom’s pep talks, Brandon was left with time to sulk.

Brandon failing to show up for dinner got Dad to go and knock on his bedroom door, where a silence ensued. Dad went in anyway. “Hey, bud?” Dad called, peeking his head out the double-hung window. “You okay? I hope you’re not feeling anxious about tomorrow.” Brandon’s window was on the second floor of their two story house, on the gable directly above the garage’s inclined roof. Ever since he was a child, Brandon would climb out the window at night to watch the stars or at day to read. It was not until middle school that he started to sit on the pitched roof in lapses of sadness or loneliness, which were predictable enough for his parents to know when something was wrong.

Brandon sniffed. “Well, yeah…,” he replied, deliberately not turning his head to see if it was genuine concern on Dad’s face. “My only two friends moved away. I’m going to feel like a loser with no friends tomorrow, starting all over.”

 Dad could hear the apprehension in his voice, and took a brief pause before he began to speak softly. “Listen, everything is going to be fine…,” Dad, being an architect, came prepared with a number of architecture metaphors, but he deployed only the most appropriate. He told Brandon that all his previous projects still stood tall, like how his old friends were still his friends. He said that every time he started a different project, he used new footing, new foundation, reminding him of the many exciting possibilities the future held in a voice that was careful with words and conveyed nothing but relatability.“You might even meet a cute girl,” Dad added, reminiscing about his time in high school. Although Brandon had at this point gotten tired of Dad’s architecture metaphors, this helped.

After many months had passed, Brandon’s friend situation was bothering him less because his focus had changed. Although his grades were good, he joined the recycling club, and made it on the baseball team...there was still something missing. It was that special intensity spreading through the halls that signaled the number of weeks before the Valentine's Day dance that made him see what that something was. 

Brandon did not personally connect with anyone yet, and the timeframe before the dance and getting to connect with someone, especially a girl he liked enough to ask to the dance, was narrowing. On the morning when Brandon realized this, he was sitting on a bench in the courtyard of Newton High School, trying to write in his daily journal but failing to come up with anything interesting due to distracting thoughts about finding a date. He ended up just tapping his fingers on the journal and watching the clouds hang; the clouds were sort of just hanging above him. 

He sat through class with the same finger-tapping concern. By the time the first period bell rang loudly, this dread of further exclusion and loneliness was only fortified. Brandon found a pink poster advertising the dance where he could not ignore it, hanging right over the neighboring lockers three gills. He hastily tucked the poster into his locker before reattaching the lock. 

During period two, he raised his hand and patiently waited to ask to go to the restroom. On his way there, he nearly walked right into a couple locking lips in the hall. They immediately stopped kissing and looked at him. The girl who was kissing the boy had on a bright red tank top, her hair a pretty brown color, wearing it straight down, which he found sexy. Her tinted eyes were either squinting directly at him or in his general direction, he couldn’t tell. 

Stupefied by the debilitating awkwardness of the whole situation, he stared back for probably longer than was called for, until he turned himself around, and shuffled the other direction with an audible sigh. 

Brandon was holding the back of his neck when he saw an opportunity to meet somebody new. “Hello.” he said, approaching the girl walking towards him in the hall, but she either failed to hear him or just did not want to. He went back to class feeling defeated. 

During lunch, Brandon followed the delta of laughter and conversations to the outdoor cafe that doubles as a recreation area, which was rather suspiciously full even before lunch began, it seemed. Brandon took a glance at different potential dates, but all the girls there in the cafe, sitting beneath yellow sun umbrellas, seemed to have a guy nearby and were engaged in intimate conversation with him. 

He forgot all about eating during lunch and took a seat on a bench near the foyer to try to write in his journal. He described what he imagined all the Saturday night parties people had thrown were like, and how he might have met someone new had he gone. Then suddenly someone sat down next to him; it was the girl who’d ignored him in the hallway. 

After seconds of deliberation, he talked himself up to try and said “Hey.” Then again, he repeated himself because she did not respond the first time. She finally looked up after seeing Brandon in her peripheral vision. “You really didn’t hear me?” he asked. She then made a motion, curling her hand, running her right hand’s pinky in an elliptical path around her left ear that was so universal it took him less than a second to realize she could not hear. “You’re deaf…?” She nodded, again smiling at him. 

The smile to him felt that he had for the first time found someone who felt more alone than he did at a new school. “Oh, I didn’t mean to…,” he said with considerate apprehension, making sure she would not be insulted by his ignorance. “I’m sorry.” She just sort of shrugged and didn’t seem to mind. “Oh, wait…,” he said, reaching for his journal, opening it to a blank page. Brandon and Emily wrote messages back and forth until lunch was over. 

After finding out her name and feeling a real connection, Brandon walked away with an awkward smile that remained on his face the rest of the day, the kind of smile that everyone probably suffers from but never knows they had after their first-ever romantic experience. 

Brandon took the train home that day with the smile still there. He walked into his house’s main hall and called for his parents. A silence ensued. Brandon walked up the steps to his room, and unpacked his belongings and found the poster in his backpack, which made him smile even wider. He listened to music, daydreaming of seeing her again tomorrow, looking over at his journal that he had renamed as theirs, Brandon and Emily’s, notebook. He tried to imagine the things they would talk about and draw, falling asleep with the ceiling light burning and his iPod on shuffle.   

The next day, Brandon and Emily met on the same bench during lunch and took turns drawing people standing nearby. Emily did not find him very good at drawing, but lied and gave him a thumbs up and a reluctant sort of head nod that he thought was cute and not the least bit insulting. They laughed about how silly their attempts at drawing were, and made inside jokes about all sorts of things. Brandon felt especially happy. He did not for a second consider that dating someone who would never hear your voice was at all unappealing or unsustainable. To him, she was better than everyone else for it.

The next night, he came home and practiced ways of proposing, how to ask her to the dance that was evocative of their relationship. He did this in the mirror in the bathroom, “Go with me to the dance?” written on a piece of printer paper that was cut out like a heart. He found this way too cliche and trite at this point. He even researched and learned enough sign language, and practiced doing the hand motions fast enough to be understood clearly. 

The next day came around, and he had trouble finding the right time to ask. It occurred to Brandon that he had never heard Emily speak, and that although her hearing was impaired, she should have some ability to talk. “Have you ever tried to talk?” he wrote down for her to read.

“People laugh,” she wrote in response. She appeared affected by the question. 

“I’d never,” he wrote and gave her a look to show that it was a sincere promise he understood her discomfort. At the same time it was a nudge towards something she probably was not ready for, leaving an awkward feeling between them.
 
They both went off to class without exchanging any more notes that day. The clouds were hanging again, blocking sunlight; a kind of gloom grew throughout the rest of the day, dragging on to the next.
 
Tomorrow when Brandon went to their bench, another boy had taken his seat. She appeared to be laughing at what he was writing in her notebook. Brandon saw him going in for a kiss, but before she pushed him off her, Brandon turned away in shock. 

Miserable. That was the only word he could use to describe the feeling of seeing her cheat on him like that, he wrote in his notebook. Even when they were together, beneath the words, they were not speaking, he now felt. When she looked at him and waved, he turned away. He faked being sick, trying to resolve his heartache. He decided to read on his pitched roof throughout the day, feeling miserable.
 
Emily had never had a relationship with a boy before and did not consider what he felt based on the boy trying to kiss her. The next day, as she waved at him and he walked away, she began to speak: “Hee..y!” sort of muttering her words in a high, but surprisingly comprehensible and normal voice, “he tried to hit on me… so...I pu..shed him a..way.”
 
Brandon, for the first time hearing her speak, turned around and smiled, saying nothing, except making that same awkward smile after first meeting her. He then felt it was the right time and asked her to the dance in sign language gestures carried out quickly and accurately.

She replied immediately, saying “yes.” 
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With Open Systems

Author: Jasmin IvankovicDated: 13th February 2020
Submission to: Albert L. Walker Excellence in English Scholarship Committee
This is the scholarship foundation founded in the memory of long-time Iowa State English Professor and Dept. Chair, Albert L. Walker. He is a very accomplished writer and community leader who passed away in March 2019 at 73 years of age. I have submitted this written piece in response to their 500-word essay prompt in order to describe my relationship to literature. Although I spent roughly 25 minutes on this before making my submission, I have made several application updates in the course of a day. And although what I have published here has a few wording changes not reflected by the submitted essay, It remains exactly 500 words, and the overall message has not been altered in any way, shape, or form.
With Open Systems
To put into words what literature has given in return for the many hours I’ve spent alone beneath a reading lamp brings catharsis like no other. I made my way through a library, where many like myself found the dimly lit atmosphere a calling that no other place could match. If it wasn’t for Salinger when I was 17, I wouldn’t have gazed out the dock beneath a setting sun as it shone over Lake Constance and had Holden’s voice (how I imagined it) in my mind, reminding me that I would never live another day quite like that one. And if it wasn’t for Wallace when I was 19, I wouldn’t have found myself so painfully aware of my own addiction to the glowing rectangle constantly in my hand; I wouldn’t have asked myself: “what was the double-bind holding me in place?”and found something there answering like a higher calling, my education, a kind of God I have given myself away to. Heller revived himself for me when I was 20, and I found myself laughing more and more each satirical left turn. I said goodbye to Snowden. I knew Ore made it to Switzerland. And, in my heart, I believed that Yoyo would, too.
What was the point of my day away from the engineering classroom? Was I better off looking through the binary-deductive lens of a dead mathematician? Who would I rather eat lunch with?
I kept myself rotating from the cold scientific truths to the imagined realm of the story and back. I grew each year asking for a quixotic mind to guide me from the depths of linearity and, in the process, became adept to the ways of literature and dependent on the ways of engineering.

But, more importantly, I was never alone. Because structure gave me time to believe. And I broke free, only to find a different kind develop. I once stayed up all night just to reread Fahrenheit 451. Because I was running from something, the shadows were mooning, and deep down, I knew that’s where I’d find my answers. Because if I wasn’t living a story within a story, then where would I be? If I wasn’t trying for opening the window to the best time I could have on any given day, you’d find me following Nietzsche into the abyss, because I knew it was staring back at me. And, you can ask for One Hundred Years of Solitude, but you would have to find the magic, surreal space being subject to forces from outside the vacuum. And I’ve only made it through to the few who could see that there’s a life outside. Further, there is also a growing life inside yourself, but only if you water it and provide the sunlight. My first principle was change, and I saw this change through every nuance-inspiring question. I said to myself that “each new question” meant “I was blind before I found the Answers.” The books just led me out.

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The Vistas of My Education

Preface

Discussing my personal life was not the goal of this blog; thus, I want to take some measures and preface by discussing the future of my academic blog. But basically, not much has changed other than the topic of the material. I will extend the span of this blog by incorporating things that may seem more personal than purely academic. You may know me as “Jay” or “Jasmin”. And you probably still don’t know how to pronounce it. How odd that we have grown into adulthood apart. This is something I do not regret but simply want to address. I have little in terms of a clue about who my audience is outside of those friends who have been close to me in recent years and, obviously, my family. It seems to me that we (or at least I) are simply no longer good judges of who our social media lives will attract from the vortex of mass communication and globalization and networking. I’ve invited some new and many familiar folks who might remember me from K – 12 to catch up and reconnect. And I point this out, so you know my intentions. The goal of this post is to reintroduce me after a long hiatus. Also, this was written as a requirement for a required class on engineering professionalism. Furthermore, there is some distinction to be made about my plans at the time of writing this essay and what came out the other end after this next semester began, that short-but-well-spent time. I’ve left the ending mostly unchanged although it doesn’t reflect my current goals. I intend to post about my current goals later. You see, I was very serious about finishing my education on time (although I’m a junior, I have 2 years). However, I got an idea for a novel and decided to drop most of my classes (except for Fiction Writing with Prof. David Zimmerman, who I now consider a friend.) The novel, Evolution Recall, will not be discussed in this post but there may very well soon be a dedicated post about it. But enough about the future. Here is “The Vistas of My Education.”

Jasmin Ivankovic
Leah Eilers
EE 166
12/12/18
Edited 3/25/19
Personal Essay

The Vistas of My Education

“I don’t know what I want to do,” was my standard answer to every question about my future up until my junior year of high school. “I need to find what I’m passionate about,” I continued, “then I can change the world in some small way.” I don’t exactly know why it means so much to change the world. What if the world already works? Why do I need to be passionate about my work? When did people suddenly start only choosing professions which were in line with their “passions”? These were the questions in the back of my mind. I was just a pizza boy who saved up enough money to buy a two-thousand-dollar electric Jazzmaster guitar, but the music was not the focus when I was imagining the bigger picture. The thoughts would fester and settle only after extraordinary effort to reframe my answer. “I want to be the exception,” or even better, I decided: “I want to be an engineer because the innovations made through the application of science and mathematics has made my existence today possible.” This one . . . this one stuck. It has a sense of catharsis. I’m expressing my gratitude for existence through my choice of profession.

According to psychologists, a good percentage of people make this decision (profession) from a subconscious sublimation, a defense mechanism that makes less socially acceptable emotions or habits more acceptable. Was this gratitude double edged? Was I really feeling bad for myself and humanity or in awe of our accomplishments? I choose to believe it was the latter. My habit for philosophizing and intellectualizing situations made me perfect for an academic arena such as ISU. Maybe that’s why I chose college over dropping out of high school. Moreover, maybe that’s why I chose to be social over anti-social when I could’ve gone either way.

I knew I couldn’t make it in prison. So, when my buddy, who’s now in prison, asked me to help him rob a bank, I said, “I can’t make it in prison, sorry.” And, I think that was a safe choice. I knew my future held more in store than a 6 by 8 ft. cell. What I wasn’t sure about at that point was what kind of engineering I wanted to do, plus there was always science or math. I had shown some aptitude for mathematics. I started buying books. Senior year, after acing the Algebra 2 final, I derived an advanced algebraic formula for the volume of a pyramid which ended up being very similar to something done by the integral operator.

When I got to this point, I realized how badly I had botched my education. I wanted a restart. I needed a new lease on life. The biggest turning point in my life and education came at 17 when I found out in art class that my ex-girlfriend had died from a drug-related incident. I cried for the whole class period, covering my face, and went home and picked up my guitar. I wrote what later inspired the final song that will be on my demo, the song is called “For Grace”. I cried again listening to it the other night.

At that point, at age 17, I was driven to learn about chemistry and physics and mathematics. I needed a distraction from all of what I had come to know as my indifference to social organizations and formal traditions. I had to stop being a punk. I mean, I idolized the hardcore scene; Minor Threat and Bad Brains. I liked the book Catch-22 a lot. This was just after I had just transferred schools from Roosevelt to Urbandale, basically starting over. And it showed, I did better my Junior year in this new environment. I somehow managed to get a 3.5 GPA by my senior year. What I was confused and upset about at the time was that I thought that physics might be more interesting than engineering, and I was interested in learning from more than the books I had bought off Amazon, but the school didn’t let me enroll in a physics class my final semester because I didn’t have the prerequisites in math. So, after I graduated, I spent a large part of that summer teaching myself pre-calculus and calculus. I went on a trip to Germany with my German II class for three weeks, starting June 22nd, 2014. On the plane ride, I read a pop science book on Quantum Mechanics. After I was settled in with my host family, I picked up their classical guitar and started writing music in my room for most of my days on the trip until they literally broke a string to get me to stop. (I’m not sure how bad I was.) Also, late at night, since I had brought the book The Theoretical Minimum by Leonard Susskind, I was writing equations of motions and studying physics. I also wrote a half a journal’s worth of fiction and drew some not-so-great drawings.

When I came back home to Urbandale, I found out that my parents and I were forced to move. We moved to Johnston. And, I remembered it was exactly one year after her death. This brought up a lot of emotions. I was angry and driven, I studied calculus as an escape. When it came time to enroll for classes at DMACC (the best I could hope for with my poor transcript, lack of academic knowledge, and one scholarship), I tested out of pre-calculus. Later, at ISU, I tested out of chemistry for engineers and a first-year Electrical Engineering course EE 185, as well as a programming course on problem-solving in C, EE 285. I did well in every class except one after that summer. And more importantly, I discovered for myself the value of self-teaching, as most of my idols figured out well before me.

Unfortunately, I did have to retake classical physics I after my first semester, because I figured a C- was not satisfactory. But, honestly, even that felt like an accomplishment! I retook the class, did well, and took a tutoring position at the community college for classical physics I, chemistry, and, later, differential equations. I helped get my friend Billy Noy an A in physics. During my time at DMACC, I took calculus II, in which I invented a shortcut method for doing partial fraction decomposition and presented it to the class. I did a final project in differential equations class that ended up being a presentation; it was on a set of error correction equations of varying orders of derivatives that mapped the trajectory of rockets or missiles going through the atmosphere. I used a mathematical modeling software called Maple for the numerical approximations to compare with the given information. My teacher, Prof. Chris Macclure, oddly enough took off to aid the military in mathematical training or some kind of undisclosable Quant stuff. I’ve always had this funny feeling that my formulas were used for real rocket projections. By 19, my reading schedules were so strict that I finished my reading list for the summer. I finished Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace’s giant masterpiece.  I also found outlets for my wild imagination by writing fiction. My teacher for composition I, Prof. Rose (sorry, I’m spacing on her full name; she’s a very nice older lady,) lauded me as her best student on the second day of class, after handing back an in-class writing assignment in which I wrote a short story in 45 min using a set of specific words rolled from picture dice. I felt alive during that writing session. I still look back at this moment in my education where I realized that writing was a passion; it felt like I was back in Germany.

By the time I had transferred to ISU, I was settled on engineering. Not only was I not good enough to be a physicist, but, I figured, engineering was more hands-on and, therefore, more fun. I did spend the whole day after declaring my Mechanical Engineering major regretting that choice, hastily writing my advisor emails, and ultimately switching to EE. My first introduction to the world of Electrical Engineering was at ISU and more specifically in EE 185 with one of the greatest professors at ISU, Mani Mina. In his class, I began learning how to program and use an Arduino microcontroller; it was my first introduction to an embedded system. Unfortunately, I had some health issues come up and had to miss most of my first semester at Iowa State. But I quickly bought a starter kit off eBay and read a whole book on it on my own. Although it seemed like there were unlimited possibilities, I soon found out that there were great limitations to what you can do with this board. I had convinced myself through logos (logic) that EE was the most interesting major I could find, but there wasn’t much bonding going on with me and the electrical components and the circuits. Furthermore, everything looked unexplainable. I couldn’t explain how simple components made such complex systems possible. But just as I began to resign myself to the permanently unknowable was when my first major breakthroughs and hints of passion came through, Fall 2018.

The breakthroughs first spurred in a Computer Engineering class of all places. And, no, I’m not saying that I want to switch my major. What I realized was how totally unbounded you are in EE when it comes to designing a system. This all came from learning the principles of Digital Logic in CPRE 281 with another great professor, Alexander Stoychev. I learned how the mathematical language called Boolean Algebra, invented by a self-taught mathematician, George Bool, in the *mid-19th century, and all possible thanks to a groundbreaking 1948 paper by the electrical engineer and information theory pioneer, Claude Shannon, can be implemented in circuits through electrical switches—such as vacuum tubes, relays, or the great things we have today known as “transistors”. Furthermore, in his class, we were introduced to a more powerful type of device, called a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). This is a system on a chip (SoC) that runs on a low-level hardware descriptive language; it is much more expensive and flexible than an Arduino. (They both have their pros and cons.)

Like the Arduino, this sparked again that initial idea that the possibilities were endless, but this time in a more wholesome way. Not only was the device verifying all our Boolean equations and circuits, but the theory felt profoundly elevated in my eyes. Towards the end of the semester, we were assigned a final project to implement on this board (DE2-115). Also, we were given the option to propose our own project idea. I happened to be the only one to propose and successfully complete my own idea in a class of about 200 students. My project, “Lockpicking”, is a logic puzzle game like the old board game “Mastermind”, except with a randomly generated combination that you are timed to break. It took me probably a hundred hours (I stopped counting after 40). I received a 100% on it, yet it only brought my grade up 2 percent. That’s not to say it wasn’t worth it, because it was. I had fun and learned a lot. (I’ll send you a link to the demo video for the project when it’s up on YouTube.)

After I finished the project, I emailed Prof. Stoychev and asked if he would be interested in mentoring me or starting a club where we could do audio or video processing on the FPGA boards. He told me that he teaches all of that in his graduate-level course, CprE 575. I jumped on board and signed up immediately. My interests are now geared towards making audio processors or guitar effects pedals. I’ve been playing guitar (electric and acoustic) since high school. So, naturally, I loved the idea of making my own effects. This winter break, I plan on spending a lot of time reading about audio processing and circuits design to get ideas for making these kinds of devices. Overall, I’ve become much more motivated to learn, and I look forward to several other classes I am planning to take, which I’ll talk about next. I’ll also let you in on what I plan to do after I get my bachelor’s degree.

I’m excited for CPRE 288, EE 330, EE 435, EE 465, ENGL 304, ENGL 306, and many more. These, I think, are the main ones that make me look forward to continuing and broadening my education. I’ve chosen these core classes because, in them, I imagine I will get to work on some fun projects and make further breakthroughs in the endlessly profound thing that is Electrical Engineering, and the English classes were chosen because I enjoy writing and reading poetry and fiction, as you can probably tell from this essay.

If I don’t get an internship by my senior year and have few job prospects because of that, I plan to apply to graduate schools sooner rather than later. I know my dream job is to be mixed signals systems engineer, which requires at least a master’s degree. I want to make specialized hardware that solves problems for people who need faster results. And that’s so broad that I can work under any imaginable domain of scientific discipline. However, I was going to take my dad’s advice and get some work experience before going back to school. I’m not yet sure which schools I would apply to, maybe AZ state. I would be interested, if my GRE score is high enough, in applying to an ivy league or two. Although I don’t see how I would get the letters of rec. or have enough experience in my portfolio or have the money for that, though.

My current focus is not only on learning but on making memories and bonds with peers and professors, building up a portfolio, and hopefully making money. Money is becoming more and more important the further I go along in school. I’m currently taking on student loans and they don’t cover enough for housing or food. Although hashing out the details is not trivial, I’m glad I’m not back to square one. Although it’s not perfect by any stretch, I’m glad I can proudly say “I know what I want to do with my life.” Ultimately, this winding journey has taken me to great heights and to ever more beautiful vistas.

Posted on by Nova-Ki

But Maybe Not (Rhetorical Analysis)

Jasmin Ivankovic

Professor A. Ozkul

English 250

February 2, 2017

In his essay, “Stranger Than You Can Imagine”, science fiction writer Damien Broderick makes predictions about the future of humankind and advances in technology. The title refers to Broderick’s claim as to how strange and dramatically different the next 50 years will look. Although Broderick makes his argument based on common knowledge rather than hard science or specific breakthroughs, he does so with a clear purpose. I think most readers would amuse his imagination because his strategy and style effectively make his point.

In order to support his claim, Broderick compares today’s predictions for the future and what science fiction of the past imagined their future to be, going back to the 1930s. He says that what we have today from their perspective is only slightly remarkable (Rodgers 64). But looking at today from the lens of 150 years ago, it is almost beyond comprehension (64). The author thinks that the main difference in imagining our future from today is the extremely fast rate at which key technologies are improving, concluding that we will see dramatic improvements in the next 50 years (65). This, I feel, is a very reasonable assumption and a good starting point that most people could swallow.

However, Broderick might not convince many readers on the specific details of his argument because he does not provide backing. For example, when he claims that stem cells will be the reason we successfully halt the aging process. The style in which Broderick presents this claim is basically by asking “why wouldn’t it work?” (65). Well, although babies do grow from these cells, it is hard to argue that we can use them to live indefinitely without providing more evidence on this detail. There are countless age-related diseases that have yet to be cured, and stem cells could certainly be the key to helping people with those. However, there is nothing here but imagination to suggest we will see eternal youth in our lifetime.

A huge redeeming quality of this essay is that Broderick anticipates and addresses doubts readers may have. He first does so by saying that the future will be strange because the specific details are unpredictable (64). He continues to do so by pointing out that, even if we cure people of aging, death will continue to exist because of war and other human issues (65). He reminds us that technology alone will not end war and poverty (65). He reminds the reader that, if we are to continue improving technology and making biological modifications, people must resolve moral and ethical questions new technology raises (65).

Therefore, I think Broderick’s main point is not to convince the reader that these specific things will happen in our lifetime. It is that they probably could but might not. “What we dream of today”, he says, “will be the merest shadow of tomorrow’s reality” (66). Broderick is admitting that he might be completely wrong in his premature predictions. But why is the important part—because we are underfunding programs that could get us there (66).

Broderick’s underlying motive is to get you excited about the future, enough so that a reader is either inspired to promote innovative research or goes out and improves the world somehow. Sometimes logical appeals do not inspire this sort of action like a healthy imagination does. I feel, like Damien Broderick, that our motivation and funding will make all the difference in how strange and wonderful the future turns out, and our imagination should be a guiding principle.

Works Cited

Rodgers, Johannah. “Stranger Than You Can Imagine.” Technology: A Reader for Writers. New York: Oxford UP, 2015. 63-66. Print.

Posted on by Nova-Ki · 1 Comment

Caring For A Change: Mass Shootings Data Research Essay

“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.”

At a time when building walls is a controversial issue (think Trump), Americans might have forgotten about the other types of walls they have built. I think we should listen to the advice Robert Frost offers in the above poem, and reflect. Among these “walls” Americans have built, is one for discussing gun control; nothing quite kills the conversation at a cocktail party like bringing up gun control. As a student at Iowa State University, even in an academic setting, most students have little interest in discussing the issue. But we should. If you don’t believe me, consider the fact that: as of 2013, on average, there has been one school shooting a week [everytownresearch.org].

However, the focus of this paper is a type of gun violence called a “mass shooting” which is not exclusive to school shootings. And I have gathered my data from cases which can be found in an archive on the internet [gunviolencearchive.org]. In this public archive, the term mass shooting refers to a case where “. . . 4+ victims [are] injured or killed excluding the subject/suspect/perpetrator, [in] one location.” In this paper, I shall discuss some of the under-reported aspects of gun violence in America; the appropriate reaction to mass shootings; and I shall leave you with my thoughts on what to do about the issue. In doing so, I hope to tear down the walls we have when it comes to discussing sensible gun laws.

These publicly available records on mass shootings include the following data: the number of people injured and deceased in each of them, the exact location (in America), the date it occurred, the age of the victims, and very little information about the perpetrator (although there is usually always a link to a source which has more information). And, of course, we don’t want to incentivize murder with fame in Iowa. So, that’s not the focus, either; I wrote this paper to show you what was hiding in the data on mass shootings.

If you do the math, you should find that out of the 312 victims of mass shootings (and counting) of 2017, 75% of them were only injured; however, each time people died, it was a considerable number of victims. There have been, on average, 3 people killed in each of these deadly mass shootings this year. (Technically it is 2.9 fatalities per deadly mass shooting.)

This can be compared to a car accident where 3 people in the car died and one or more was injured. And I invite you to imagine what would happen if this kind of car “accident” occurred all too often for it to be an accident (25% of all accidents). Do you think the rich, car manufacturing companies would take responsibility, trying to lower that number and improve their brand? I know I do. And although this issue is not specific to Iowa, I think it is worth taking some prophylaxis here at home.

I think most Iowans can agree that gun control, in general, is an important and controversial topic, especially in the light of events such as the Columbine and Sandy Hook school shootings. I bet we can all remember our former president, Barack Obama, crying (off script) at the podium during his speech in response to the Sandy Hook shooting. Yes, he cried, but he also spoke candidly about assault weapons. That was the appropriate reaction. It took me a whole 2 minutes after thinking about the numbers, while just reading through these reports—I began crying, too! I cried because of how young and innocent some of these victims are (were).

As far as I can tell, we still need to talk about preventing mass shootings, but especially the deadly ones. And that seems doable, right? Only 25% of them are deadly! I hope you take this data into consideration when you hear more mainstream arguments concerning gun control, but long before a shooter enters your school, or this issue hits closer to home. (I hope never.) I hope we can get a grip on Iowa’s current gun laws before then.

It should not be very hard for us to make sense of this data when you consider how easy it is for local terrorists and other criminals to get assault weapons such as AR-style rifles and AK-47 semi-automatic rifles, things which are not made for self-defense—things designed for killing people effectively. Why is it that our reaction to this issue is not proportional to its detriment on society? In fact, why don’t we care for a change?