Scientific Researcher Inventory (SRI: ~2004--not standardized) (Clara B. Jones)

SCIENTIFIC RESEARCHER INVENTORY (SRI)

 Clara B. Jones, Ph.D.

Age________ Gender (circle one): M F Classification (circle one): Soph Jr Sr

Race___________Major:___________________________________GPA___________

Read each characteristic of a scientific researcher and place a score from the scale in the right-hand column indicating how representative the characteristic is of you, employing the scale from 0 (Strongly Disagree) – 9 (Strongly Agree). All results will be summarized and treated anonymously.

Characteristic 0. Strongly Disagree, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Strongly Agree		Score
1	I can focus on and/or persist at a task for very long periods of time without interruption.
2	I can compartmentalize tasks (e.g., prioritize, sequence, and break down large, complex tasks into manageable components).
3	I do not get bored easily.
4	I am not overly dependent upon high levels of stimulation.
5	I am more of a “task oriented” person than a “people person”.
6	I am more dependent upon internal motivation than external motivation for getting things done.
7	I can provide my own reinforcement/reward for doing a job well.
8	I am not particularly dependent upon receiving others’ approval.
9	I pay close attention to detail.
10	I don’t make a lot of mistakes.
11	I know where I want to be in 5 years.
12	I have a career plan.
13	I think of the glass as being “half full” rather than “half empty”.
14	I know how to turn a negative into a neutral or a positive most of the time.
15	I am willing to travel away from home for graduate school and other opportunities.
16	I am able and willing to take intellectual risks (e.g., to think creatively).
17	My thinking is flexible, not rigid.
18	I have very good “time management” skills.
19	I have very good organizational skills.
20	I make good choices.
21	I am a “go-getter”, confident but not cocky.
22	I assume personal responsibility for outcomes and do not blame others.
23	After a disappointment, I recover quickly. In other words, I am “resilient”.
24	After a disappointment, I “get back on the horse” (i.e., I continue a project or task and do not abandon it).
25	If one option does not work, I can “switch” to another one.
26	I am more realistic than idealistic.
27	I am creative.
28	I can “play by the rules”.
29	I am a perfectionist.
30	I respect both intuition (e.g., “a feel for the organism”) and cognition (e.g., rational problem-solving), and I know the difference.
31	I know that personal opinion is not fact.
32	I am comfortable with delayed reward.
33	I demonstrate very good impulse control.
34	I am a good “team player”.
35	I can lead or follow, depending upon what the situation calls for.
36	I am driven more by research ideas and questions than by making money.
37	I have very good reading comprehension skills.
38	I have very good writing skills.
39	My thinking strategies are efficient.
40	I am not afraid of success.
41	I make statements that can be supported by evidence.
42	I am well prepared in mathematics, computer science, logic, statistics, and science.
43	I am highly motivated to be a biomedical researcher.
44	When I was growing up, I had a role model or a mentor who was a scientific researcher.
45	I currently have a role model or a mentor who is a scientific researcher.
46	I can afford the financial costs associated with applying to graduate school.
47	I have had theoretical and/or empirical research experience.
48	I am willing to work without monetary compensation in order to obtain research experience.
49	I am not a procrastinator.
50	I am not a person who tries to “get over” or to change or override rules.
51	I am willing to invest my own resources in my career.
52	I manage stress well.
53	I am not fearful of people who are different from myself.
54	I have friends who are different from myself.
55	I can focus on a single task without multitasking.
56	I am not threatened or defensive if the facts are contrary to my personal beliefs.
57	I can modify my personal beliefs in the face of empirical and compelling evidence to the contrary.
58	I am objective.
59	I am not afraid of failure.
60	I have people in my life who support my decision to have a career in scientific research.
61	I am “passionate” about an area and/or a set of questions related to scientific biomedical research.

Review of les echiquiers effrontes by Mark Young (by Clara B. Jones)

les échiquiers effrontés

Mark Young

2018

Luna Bisonte Prods

$16.00

27 pp

Review by Clara B. Jones*

“Derrida, of course is the primary proponent of bricolage which, more than anything else, is the term I would use to best describe my poetry.” Mark Young

Mark Young's new collection is an experimental work. Many articles and books have attempted to answer the question, “What does 'experimental literature' mean?” The Russian Formalist, Viktor Shklovsky, proposed that experimental art is a technical “device for making strange” and that experimental writing draws “attention to the use of common language in such a way as to alter one's [sensation and] perception of an easily understandable object or concept.” I hesitate to categorize les échiquiers effrontés out of respect for the subjective and improvisational process employed in its creation. Here, I intend to share my own reading of the text rather than attempt to decipher any intent or message on the author's part.

Mark Young is a highly-regarded writer living in Australia who has produced dozens of books. He has been featured in jacket 2 and other venues, as well as, by the Poetry Foundation. Editor of the online journal, Otoliths, Young promotes innovative poetry, visual poetry [“vispo”], and artwork. The improvisational meters and rhythms of jazz characterize Young's work, and William Carlos Williams, Charles Olson, Ursula Le Guin, and Jorge Luis Borges are among his literary influences. On the back cover of les échiquiers effrontés, the author provides a prose poem about his inspiration for the book: “[Marcel] Duchamp's Nude came eddying down the staircase carrying a chessboard and some sort of dictionary. 'Your move,' she said.”...“I never won again. A readymade Mark, he called me.” The book has been summarized as “conceptual and surrealist visual poetry constructed on chessboard grids,” and, by highlighting Duchamp's Surrealism, Young makes clear that his collection is a product of unconscious processes.

Chessboards constitute the dominant element of the book, providing coherence and unification of 24 visual texts, in addition to, one erased quote (by the military officer [cum strategist] and writer, François de La Rochefoucauld) and two visual devices—one based on a poem by artist-poet-sculptor, Hans Arp (p 15) and, the other, a reworking of one detail of the painting, “Mona Lisa” (p 27). A chessboard is an 8 x 8 grid of squares upon which two persons play a game of strategy to “checkmate” an opponent's King. In the abstract, the board may be viewed as a map or table and the squares as fields or cells, respectively. Young positions words, images, memes, photographs, or other visuals in cells that can stand alone or in relation to one another. Similarly, each chessboard can relate to others—or, not—enhancing imagination, playfulness, and complexity. The chessboard, also, can be divided into strips or diagonals, permitting additional visual, interpretive, or other, permutations. Individual images may repeat in one or another way. Nelson Mandela, for instance, is mentioned in Young's prose poem, and the politician's photograph appears in a cell on page 16. Repetition, most notably associated with Gertrude Stein's writing, is a common hallmark of experimental literature.

Close “reading” of les échiquiers effrontés reveals multiple layers and scales. One might view each chessboard as a table with mathematical qualities since each cell [square] has a numerical identity. Thus, the upper left-hand square can be quantified as, Row 1, Column 1, and so on. Also, cells surrounding images may be viewed as frames, just as the chessboard, itself, frames the complete composition which is, in effect, a construction of pictures within pictures. Variation and flexibility characterize the text, surrendering freedom of interpretation to the reader, as all Postmodern creations do.

Titles may or may not relate to particular grids. Often, a title repeats words in corner squares. In a few cases, titles appear to have no relation to the compositions to which they refer. Young's inclination to uncouple titles and works is a convention that seems designed to give each component singularity or authority on its own, without interdependence. An interesting feature of the elements superimposed (seemingly at random) upon squares is that, in addition to the colors themselves, many have multiple meanings. For example, “Persephone” is both Queen of the Underworld, as well as, an analogue synthesizer. Similarly, “sigil,” a word used in Young's prose poem, is a symbol, sign, or seal and an e-book editor. “SMURF” is a comic character, as well as, a symbol of freedom. Duchamp is a chess player and an artist. The symbolic importance of Duchamp to les échiquiers effrontés cannot be overestimated since the Surrealist-as-chess player is a strategist as was La Rochefoucauld, and, like Young, an artist who minimized the boundaries between art and life.

Young joins a long tradition of artists employing the chessboard in visual, or, in this case, vispo, works, generally, in depictions of opponents playing the game. Used as an avant garde device, however, the chessboard has a Cubist quality seen most famously in the paintings of Wassily Kandinsky (e.g., Compositions X and XIII, “Decisive Pink,” “Continuous Line,” and “Small Dream in Red”). Young's inventiveness is apparent in each component of les échiquiers effrontés, as well as, throughout the book as a whole. This collection is a tour de force demonstrating that his reputation as a noteworthy innovator is well deserved. I am eager to experience where Young's imagination and compositional abilities take us next.

*Published January 2019 in Entropy

Review of At Your Feet by Ana Cristina Cesar (Review by Clara B. Jones)

At Your Feet

Ana Cristina César

Katrina Dodson, Ed.

Brenda Hillman, Helen Hillman, & Sebastião Edson Macedo (translators)

2018

Parlor Press

$14.00

103 pp

Reviewed by Clara B. Jones experimenting with book review form...*

“In literature, it is only the wild that attracts us.” Henry David Thoreau

Who is the author? Ana Cristina César (1952-1983, suicide*) was active in Brazil during the 1970s. Her work has been categorized as avant garde, a term usually reserved for visual artists and writers who are active politically, usually, in leftist groups or movements. According to Brenda Hillman, César was born and raised in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro, in a religious, middle-class family. Conducting research on “Ana C,” as the poet was called in her circle and among her followers, I did not discover that her formative years were marked by trauma or dysfunction. However, in an academic paper, Lúcia Villares (1997, Portuguese Studies 13, pp 108-123) reported that the 1970s in Brazil were preceded by military coups (in 1964 & 1968), leading to the isolation, exclusion, and suppression of radicals, activists, intellectuals, and the middle-class.

In response to these measures, strikes and demonstrations were carried out against the military regime which countered the actions with increased repression—especially of the middle-class, including, censorship, seizure of books, attacks on left-wing publishers, among other interventions. César and her circle of poets formed a group, “geração Marginal” (“the marginal generation”) that published and sold chapbooks and books independent of commercial publishing houses and distributors. The marginal (marginalized) poets advanced a view of a fragmented world in which the power of language was reduced. These oppositional writers expressed their sense of impotence, in part, by emphasizing their communal efforts and by asserting themselves as survivors in a hostile environment.

Through her writing, “Ana C” identified with the “poesia feminina” movement in Brazil, part of the opposition supporting women's search for identity and voice. This group held that to be a woman was to be “desdobráve”—a woman capable of transforming herself. Consistent with this background, César's poetry is in general, fragmented and written in collage style, mostly, dispensing with meter, rhythm, music, and lyric, though her pieces are infused with vivid image and color. The reader of At Your Feet may find that poems seem to increase in complexity, self-confidence, and clarity from beginning to end; though, according to Hillman, there is no evidence that César's poems were arranged chronologically. Though I am not qualified to say, the translations appear to be excellent; at least, I found them rich with artful language. After a tour of the continent, César returned to Rio, jumping out of a window in her parents' home not long after.

What is At Your Feet about? The book is a collection of intense poems, mostly about bad or failed relationships with men, as well as their associated emotions and feelings. Also, the book's title suggests subservience. Thus, for example, “I went on the attack: it's now, sweet-/heart, in a car going up in flames,...in the early dawn, because of you and furious: it's now, against this traffic....” (p 19). The author seems driven to make sense of things—with men, with herself; though, there is no mention of political unrest except in the sense that the poems, themselves, may be viewed as oppositional—against the military regime, against traditional mores, and against conventional literary practices and criteria. The primary subject-matter seems contradictory to her reputation as a feminist and her documented identification with women and feminism. For example, she relies upon many female stereotypes (e.g., lovestruck, hysterical, silly) and expresses negative emotions toward other females (e.g., they arouse jealousy or are viewed as intruders: “that total bitch/of a woman”, p 77).

Nevertheless, one of César's stated goals was to become assertive, authentic, and outspoken, rather than, a passive and suppressed woman. Thus, her bold expressions of emotional vulnerability may be viewed as attempts to be radically, unabashedly honest (“Let's have afternoon tea and I'll tell you my big passionate story, which I've kept under lock and key, and my heart beats out of sync while we eat gaufrettes...I'm touched by fire.” (p 11); “Call again tomorrow/no matter what.” (p 17); “Without you, I'm really a lake, a mountain./I think of a man named Herberto./...And without bravado, sweetheart, I raise the price.” (p 33). On the other hand, a few of the poems demonstrate moments of assertion and agency (see, for instance, “Final Fire,” p 89), but the intention seems never to be sustained. Ultimately, this collection is about a young woman searching for her own voice, her own agency, and her own will, as well as, the ability to resist socialization and circumstance.

Formal Structure: As mentioned, the poems in At Your Feet, are fragmented, like the political landscape within which César found herself and like her own psychological makeup. Thus, her classification with the avant garde is warranted by the innovative nature of her forms, matching her content. As well, many of her poems appear without titles (a type of erasure?; a silent, “Untitled”?), a convention sometimes used by the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poet, Susan Howe.

César's work seems to align with the movement, Surrealism, since many of her poems exhibit “automatism,” sometimes, by way of, impulsiveness (but, “My boy. It's not automatism. I swear. It's jazz from the heart.”, p 41) and the mining of unconscious processes (“Poetry doesn't—telegraphic—occasional—/leave me solo—loose—/at the mercy of the impossible—/—of the real.”, p 47). The collection includes prose poems and an interesting list poem (“Onomastic Index,” p 93) that includes the names of at least two famous females who died tragically. Structurally, many of the poems might be classified as “fragments”—a single or a few lines. In keeping with a fragmented identity, voice, and form (Post-modernism?), most of these poems are cynical, self-absorbed, emotional, or detached, or are about “boredom” (p 85) or “illness” (81) or victimization (p 83) or hysteria (p 19). Thus, as a whole, the poems' forms are consistent with their meanings and themes—as defined and expressed by the author.

Conclusion: In the final analysis, César's collection shows the work of a young poet without the ability to see herself through an objective lens. As Marjorie Perloff has stated, a mature poet has the ability to see the humor in themselves [sic], something lacking from At Your Feet. It is a cliché to point out that one would like to see how this writer might have developed over a long, productive career. Without this option, one must view the collection's value primarily in relation to the socio-political atmosphere in which it was written. In addition, the poet's work is interesting as an example of a “young adult” sub-genre, and critics could mine the volume for what it tells us about the challenges of early adulthood, particularly, about the development and maturation of females who succumb to suicide when relatively young. Hopefully, César's complete body of work will become available in translation at a future date. Combined with At Your Feet, the poet's writings could become a valuable resource for those interested in avant garde beyond the United States and Europe. I recommend this book because it is a very interesting and enjoyable read. Indeed, despite its limitations, I was unable to put the book down once I began to read it because César took me, and will take you, on an intense “joy- ride”—on an emotional roller-coaster that you will enjoy (see Epigram).

*Note: César's fate brings to mind two other young female artists who jumped out of windows to end their lives: photographer, Francesca Woodman (1958-1981) and poet, Elise Cowen (1933-1962), both Americans. One of my motivations for writing this review is the hope that a reader who is an academic or critic will conduct research on these cases—or, pass the possible project on to someone. Based upon my own limited knowledge, there appear to be some similarities among the women's trajectories. For instance, both César and Cowen jumped out of windows at the homes of their parents, and César and Woodman both traveled in Europe before they took their own lives. Further, all three of these women may have experienced an increased measure of popularity—as well as, disillusionment?—before they killed themselves. I think, though I am not certain, that this apparently contradictory pattern is common among suicides. (My contact: foucault03@gmail.com)

*Published January 2019 in i am not a silent poet