Opinion

SHOHAM GEVA
EDITOR IN CHIEF

CLAIRE BRYAN

AND REGAN DETWILER
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LAURA SCHINAGLE
MANAGING EDITOR

420 Maynard St.

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

tothedaily@michigandaily.com

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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Claire Bryan, Regan Detwiler, Caitlin Heenan, Ben Keller, Minsoo Kim,

Payton Luokkala, Aarica Marsh, Anna Polumbo-Levy, Jason Rowland, Lauren
Schandevel, Melissa Scholke, Rebecca Tarnopol, Ashley Tjhung, Stephanie

Trierweiler, Mary Kate Winn, Derek Wolfe

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

W

hen she was 10 or so, my little
sister received some of the worst
advice of her life. It was written

in the comments section
of her fifth-grade report
card underneath the part
that graded her behavior
in class. I can’t remember
exactly what the grade
was grading — probably
something
meaningless

like hyperactivity — but
I do remember that she
had received her first “N”
for “needs work,” with
the suggestion that she
“ask fewer questions.” I
remember her sitting in our kitchen sobbing
to our parents about, for the first time ever,
getting something less than straight “Os” (for
outstanding). She was miserable. And now, on
behalf of my little sister almost 11 years later,
I want to take a moment to call out you, Mrs.
Michnick, for giving utterly terrible advice to a
young learner.

Though I never received this damning cri-

tique myself, it very well could have been writ-
ten on my report card, too. Just like my little
sister, I love asking questions, and in elemen-
tary school, I never had any shame about it.
Looking back, I can see now how my enthu-
siasm could have come across as borderline
obnoxious — I also received an “N” from Mrs.
Michnick with a similar suggestion to calm
down. It’s true that in class, I would bounce in
my seat with my small legs tucked underneath
me, almost like a bird perched on a branch so
my hand would reach slightly higher than my
classmates’ and be more visible to the teacher. I
knew I was over-eager, but in my mind, staying
quiet simply didn’t make sense. Not because I
liked to hear my own voice or because I wanted
to prove that I was smarter than my peers. I just
knew I loved to learn and asking questions was
a sure way to do so.

As I got older, I (thankfully) got a better grasp

on the etiquette of asking questions in the class-
room. I understood that simply raising a hand
wasn’t quite as unobtrusive as I had thought
and that not all questions should be asked in
front of the class. But perhaps most important-
ly, I gained a newfound sense of urgency and
assertiveness in my inquiries. I began to ask
questions that pushed beyond clarification. I
became more skeptical, stopped blindly accept-
ing all the material taught to me as unequivo-
cally true, and began directly addressing
material I found troubling or inconsistent. In
my unapologetic quest for knowledge, I eventu-
ally found that the subject in which I had the
most questions — compelling ones that would
follow me outside the classroom and stay with
me, gnawing until I could begin to search for
some semblance of an answer — was history.

I understood that lobbying too many critical

questions in front of the class could be seen as
an affront to my teacher’s credibility, so I saved
my bravest questions for outside the classroom.
Throughout middle school, I would visit my
favorite history teachers during my lunch

period to ask more exploratory questions that I
had jotted down in my notebook earlier in class.
In seventh-grade world history, I asked about
the Incans’ ability to develop a complex society
without the wheel. In eighth-grade U.S. history,
I questioned Thomas Jefferson’s inconsistency
as a slave owner who supposedly believed “all
men are created equal.” By the end of middle
school, I realized that studying history does not
mean memorizing a rigid linear narrative com-
posed of names, numbers and dates. Instead, I
realized studying history means asking ques-
tions — particularly thoughtful criticisms of the
past — and then devouring as many sources as
possible to weave together a plausible answer.
By the time I graduated middle school, I knew
I would study history in college because it
allowed me to ask as many questions as I wanted.

But after I entered high school, something

changed. To be sure, I still asked questions
— just not as many as I used to, and the fierce
unapologetic nature in which I used to inquire
had faded. Maybe it was part of growing up,
of becoming more self-conscious and insecure
of my nerdy status in the eyes of my peers.
Whatever it was, it fundamentally affected
my confidence in the classroom, and I began
to apologize. I apologized because I felt like I
was interrupting and drawing unnecessary
attention to myself. I apologized because my
voice was too quiet or too loud, or because I
thought my question was stupid. Sometimes, I
would even start a question with, “I know this
is dumb, but…”

I know I’m not the only woman who does

it, and this tick, though innocuous on the sur-
face, reflects deeper feminine insecurities and
feelings of inferiority. An unnecessary apology
before a question immediately undermines the
validity of the question before it has even been
asked and surely impacts young women’s abili-
ties to be assertive both inside and outside the
classroom.

I knew that apologizing before asking ques-

tions was not a natural behavior for me, but a
learned one. However, I continued to apologize
my way out of the classroom until one of my
favorite history professors abruptly drew my
attention to the habit this past semester. On the
first day of school, after raising my hand and
inevitably beginning with “Sorry,” she sharp-
ly cut me off in front of the whole class and
demanded that I ask the question again — this
time, sans apology. My face burned, but I knew
she was completely right.

As I enter my last semester at Michigan, I’m

pledging to try as hard as I can to stop apolo-
gizing before asking a question and to work on
rebuilding my confidence in the classroom to
what it was before I hit puberty. After all, ask-
ing questions is the best (and only) way to learn.

Before I walk into the first day of class, I’ll

remind myself of a piece of good advice doled
out by Mr. Melendez, the other fifth-grade
teacher who taught alongside Mrs. Michnick:
“There are no stupid questions. Just stupid peo-
ple who don’t ask questions.”

— Anne Katz can be reached

at amkatz@umich.edu.

Keep asking questions

Reading to read

F

all semester of sophomore
year, I was feeling pretty
good about how things were

going. I had finally finished my first
round of required art studios, and
had moved on to elective academics
on
Central

Campus, a totally
new world. I was
both
enthused

and unsure about
the
workload,

but ready to roll
with it.

Then,
at
a

mass
meeting

sometime in the
first or second
week of classes,
I mentioned all
the reading I had been assigned to
a girl just starting her junior year.
“It’s so interesting,” I told her,
and meant it. She responded in
kind, and then said in an off-hand
way how she skimmed those very
reading assignments I was just
learning to love.

I tried not to show it, but I was

both shocked and disappointed
by
her
words.
To
hear
an

upperclassman, a student with
a whole year more experience
than me, dismissing her assigned
reading so easily — it stung,
especially since I’d made my mind
up well before that conversation to
read everything that was set before
me, at least to the best of my ability.
It hadn’t been a decision so much
as it was a lifestyle choice — simply
who I am. Reading — anything and
everything — is just something I do.
From the backs of snack packages
to the copyright pages of books, I
linger. I look. I do more than flip
past the words to take in a general
sense of their message. So when I
walked away from that conversation
sophomore year, I took it as a sort of

dare. Skim, me? Hardly. I was going
to ready everything I was given,
word for word.

In a 2013 USA Today College

article,
Princeton
undergrad

Prianka Misra shares a similar
stance toward reading. “I struggled
with the idea of reading insincerely,”
she says in the interview. “I actually
want to be able to understand …
but when you’re skimming you
can’t really do that. You’re really
just looking at the core points of
an article and not really taking a
greater in-depth look.”

To be fair, the workload of a

200-level course at Princeton is
probably a bit different than what
I’ve
experienced
in
200-level

courses here at Michigan. I’m not
sure I could read 200 pages for a
class each week, word-for-word
and diagram-for-diagram, the way
Misra does. And even she admits
that after a couple of years, the
novelty she found in that kind of
work ethic has started wearing
off. “I can’t really afford to try to
analyze a point if we’re not going
to spend more than 10 minutes on
it [in class],” she says. However,
in favor of doing a full read, she
believes “there is value to being
able to summarize something, but
there is also value to nitpicking and
finding the small points you really
take issue with or keenly going over
each and every part of something
for
a
more
comprehensive

understanding.”

Now a junior myself, I’m of

the same mindset I was in at the
beginning
of
sophomore
year,

but with a few more semesters of
reading all the readings behind me.
A couple of times, I even went so far
as to continue reading from a book
outside of class, simply because it
was too interesting to put down
until I reached the end. I’m not

the kind of person who highlights
passages or pauses to write out
chapter summaries once I’m done
with them and, unlike Misra, I
don’t try to analyze the text as I
go. But for the most part, I enjoy
the process of reading, and what I
can’t understand is when people
simply don’t read. Not for classes,
not for pleasure — among my
friends and peers, many shirk the
effort it takes to open the pages of
a book and fall into the world held
in place between them. This, to me,
is crazy. For me, reading is what
makes life interesting, and it never
ends — there’s no shortage of new
bestsellers, books made famous by
their movie adaptations, and, oh
yeah, assigned academic texts to
lose myself in.

I’ll be the first to admit that

sometimes doing the reading can be
a little long-winded — sometimes
it drags. Once in a while, other
tasks call my name just a little too
loudly to be ignored in favor of the
reading I’ve been given. But what I
love about reading these assigned
pieces is that the time I spend on
the task never feels wasted. Sure,
sometimes I disagree with what an
author’s saying, but isn’t that also a
part of college — for our eyes to be
opened up to new opinions? If so,
this is one of the places I find it —
chipping away at my reading in big
chunks or little-by-little, on the
bus, over meals, between classes.
There’s nothing quite as satisfying
as checking off each assigned
chapter on my syllabus. And there’s
no feeling quite like curling up
with a good book — assigned or
otherwise.

— Susan LaMoreaux can be

reached at susanpl@umich.edu.

SUSAN

LAMOREAUX

ANNE
KATZ

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Monetizing Detroit’s culture

T

he day after Christmas, I
took a trip with a couple
of
friends
to
Midtown

in Detroit. We spent an hour at
the
Detroit

Historical
Museum
—

worth a visit, I
should
add
—

and
when
we

finished walking
through the late
19th
century

replica town on
the
basement

floor, we drove
over to Traffic
Jam and Snug for
lunch.

Located on Second and Canfield

streets in Cass Corridor, Traf-
fic Jam and Snug sits next to sev-
eral new stores and across from a
crowded parking lot. These stores
include Shinola, the Detroit-based
watch and leather company, and
Third Man Records, the Jack
White-owned record store that
opened in November.

In all respects, both Shinola and

Third Man Records are destination
stores; the carefully designed dis-
plays, good music and overall cool
vibe makes them worth the 45-min-
ute drive from home. But it wasn’t
only the physical products (which
at Shinola were well out of my bud-
get) and the smell of incense waft-
ing through Third Man Records
that struck me as special or unique,
though they are. It’s that both stores,
aside from being saturated with an
overwhelmingly white clientele — a
topic for a different, serious conver-
sation — appear committed to local
manufacturing. That’s something
you don’t see every day.

Shinola is in the middle of build-

ing a watch-dial factory, which
when finished, will be visible to
shoppers through a transparent
window as they walk from the mid-
dle to the back of the store.

Tucked in the back of Third

Man, shoppers will soon look
onto a 10,000-square-foot vinyl
record press which will manufac-
ture records 24/7 for artists and

bands signed with the label as well
as other local acts. Right now, the
space is effectively empty, but ide-
ally by the middle of this year, eight
presses imported from Germany
will be operating and, according to
Third Man co-founder Ben Black-
well, teaching the public — or at
least those who walk through the
building — that “all this stuff is alive
and well.” This stuff meaning vinyl.

Of course, this isn’t the perfect

story of homegrown, authentic
Detroit manufacturing. Shinola was
recently questioned by the Federal
Trade Commission for the “Built in
Detroit” mark on its watches. Why?
Because even though it is accurate
the watches are assembled with-
in the city limits of Detroit, none
of the parts are manufactured in
America. Because they come from
Switzerland, Thailand and China,
Shinola could be violating the FTC
requirement saying “all or virtually
all” parts must be manufactured
in the United States in order for
retailers to claim their products are
“Made in U.S.A.” As of now, Shinola
maintains it’s not being misleading
because it’s open about where its
parts are from. That’s certainly up
for debate.

Also, Shinola was founded by

Bedrock Manufacturing, an invest-
ment firm based in Texas owned by
Tom Kartsotis, a co-founder of Fos-
sil — another watchmaking com-
pany! And the name Shinola comes
from a half-century defunct shoe
polish company — from New York.

As for Third Man, while no one

should criticize Jack White for this,
the company is based in Nashville.
Furthermore, White hasn’t always
had a strong relationship with
Detroit, saying he left the city early
in his career because it was chal-
lenging to live and create there.
However, it’s worth noting that he
did pay off the Masonic Temple’s
$142,000 in back taxes in 2013 to
keep the building from foreclosing.

From all of this, it’s easy to see

how what these companies are
doing can be perceived as merely
opportunistic,
taking
advantage

of Detroit’s gritty reputation and

history of manufacturing to profit.
Especially in the case of Shinola,
where none of its founders are even
from Detroit, it’s using this image
of the city to sell madly expensive
luxury items, products the average
person cannot possibly afford or
justify paying for.

For me, that’s uncomfortable and

feels a bit like a farce. At the same
time, though, I’m asking myself,
“So what?”

No matter where these people

come from or where the company
is based, there is an immense value
in bringing the value of manufac-
turing and hand-crafted goods to
the forefront. For the people who
will shop at these places (and again,
there’s an entire conversation on the
astounding and concerning lack of
racial diversity at the stores), they’re
going to be exposed to the creation
of physical goods. They’ll see the
records being pressed and the bevy
of parts being carefully assembled
into a wearable timepiece.

In a time when everything seems

to be moving up to the cloud and it
is way too easy to order whatever I
want from Amazon, Shinola is saying
timekeeping is an art not to be taken
for granted. Third Man is musing
that music shouldn’t just travel on
circuit boards and servers. And both
of those reasons make critiquing
these companies extremely difficult.

I’m not quite sure how to balance

this point with the questionable
authenticity of these companies.
Maybe it’s just a matter of trying to
be a more informed consumer.

That said, there’s no doubt that

as Detroit continues to progress
economically, this balancing act
won’t be going away. The people and
leadership of the city need to ask
themselves soon whether outsiders
coming in should be given the abso-
lute right to monetize its culture.
The answer will define what kind of
city Detroit is going to be.

The clock is ticking.

— Derek Wolfe can be reached

at dewolfe@umich.edu.

DEREK
WOLFE

E-mail JoE at Jiovino@umich.Edu
JOE IOVINO