Madison Kosh

UWRT 1104
October 18, 2016
The first draft of my inquiry proposal is something you could call a
shitty first draft. Due to the result of a family emergency, I wound up going
home to Wilmington one day early from our scheduled fall break. Shortly
after we got struck by a hurricane, causing no power in my house for three
days, the highways still being flooded coming time for me to drive back to
school, and ultimately resulting in me having to fly back to Charlotte and
spend an unnecessary amount of money on a flight. This recent chaos
caused me to miss class the day we discussed the beginning of this paper,
and the brainstorming of any topics I wouldve had to write this paper on. My
shitty first draft/first final product was something I was not too proud of, but
was also something I knew had the potential to be an excellent inquiry
paper. I felt the topic I chose was fairly broad but its content interested me
immensely, so I chose to stick with it. Once I began to research this topic I
discovered it was more broad than I had originally anticipated. After I got my
basic research and talking points figured out, I felt that the chances of this
being a well- written paper were fairly possible.
Well, when worse circumstances come to the worse circumstances,
you wind up with my luck. A mandatory event for another one of my classes
wound up falling at the same time I have this class on Friday mornings,
resulting in me missing another day of class where we went over and peer

edited each others first drafts. Given the circumstances I wound up in, I
received absolutely no feedback whatsoever on my paper, so I had to do the
best I could with the situation I was in. In no way at all do I feel this paper is
one of the best Ive ever written, but I attempted to follow its guidelines to
the best of my ability. Hopefully after the continuous editing and tremendous
efforts I put in to this paper, I created an attention grabbing inquiry proposal.
The Sense of Perspective
Every day of our lives, some of us more than others, use our five
senses to guide them through their day. We use our eyes to see where we
are going, our hands to feel the texture and temperature of things, our ears
to hear the words people speak to us, our nose to smell the aroma of freshly
baked food, and we use our mouth to taste the flavors of that freshly baked
food. Every day, humans involuntarily use their senses without even realizing
it. Individuals use the experiences of their senses to figure out what they like
and dislike, and once they learn those things, that is what guides the
decisions you make and is what shapes the person you become. After
realizing this, and how significantly our senses impact everyones lives on a
daily basis, it led me to think of people who were born without one of their
five senses, or had them taken away, like Helen Keller. Helen was born in
Tuscumbia, Alabama on June 27th, 1880. At less than two years of age, Helen
caught an illness that produced an extremely high fever and body
temperature, leaving her blind, deaf, and mute by the time she was 19
months old. By the time she was 23, she had strengthened her senses

enough to write The Story of My Life, an autobiography of her early childhood

through young adult life (Helen Keller Biography).

Although I have not

personally read Kellers book, it made me curious about the way the absence
of her senses affected her decisions and how she perceived the world. After
researching Helen, she is what guided me to my inquiry question: Does the
way every humans strength of senses vary, influence the perceptions of an
individual?
According to neuroscientists, the brain receives vastly more sensory
information per second than it can process, so it has to filter things out and
organize the remaining sensations into patterns and categories. This filtering
and classifying process is what we call perception (Lapari).
Every human on earth has their own view on the approaches they think
individuals should take on life and the way they think the world should work.
Of course morals, values and beliefs all play a part in peoples perspectives,
but what has guided people to value and believe in the things they do is the
strength of their senses and the ways they impact you. After doing some
research, I found that overall, humans, who are missing one or more of their
senses, or have one or more of their senses inhibited, have a more positive
outlook and approach on the way they view life; compared to the millions of
more people who have full capability of all five of their senses. For example,
Stevie Wonder, otherwise known as the blind prodigy, was one of the most
famous musical figures of the 20 th century. Being born six weeks premature,
Stevies retinas detached from stunted growth of his blood vessels. His

condition worsened and resulted in permanent blindness after receiving too

much oxygen in an incubator. However, he never let his lack of vision stand
in the way of his pure musical talent. Teaching himself three instruments
before the age of 10, and having his first record debut by age 11, Stevie lives
by his quote, Just because a man lacks the use of his eyes doesnt mean he
lacks vision (Stevie Wonder Biography).
Perception begins when the human brain receives data from the
bodys five senses. The mind then process and applies meaning to the
sensory information (Enayati).
After reading this quote, it made me think, in what ways are the
perceptions of people effected who were born without one or more of their
senses? This led me into consideration of my classmates, my professors, and
all the people I interact with on a daily basis. How your perception is what
guides you to do the things you do every single day. This made me realize
how anyone around me will never have the exact same perspective that I do
on anything, because no two peoples senses effect them in the same way.
But then it made me think, will the readers of this paper comprehend this in
the same way I do? Its facts like these that guided me into further research,
resulting in me discovering how the perceptions of people who are born
without certain senses, compared to the perceptions of people who were
born with all five senses, are incomprehensively different. This is solely
because one of the subjects has never experienced the way in which their
missing sense(s) independently influences their body and mind. A person

who was born blind has no way of perceiving the world in the same way as
someone who is not, simply because they have not experienced how the
sense of sight individually effects them. For instance, when a human touches
a surface that is extremely hot and it burns their hand, instinctively, they jerk
their hand away because loads of sensory information rushed to their brain
telling them that what they were touching was hurting them. Whereas,
humans who have never had access to their sense of touch are completely
unaware to the fact that what they are touching is burning their skin. So in
theory, they could wind up leaving their hand on the burning surface much
longer, unknowingly causing more damage to their body. Its the different
results humans experience through their senses that is the driving factor
influencing the way an individual perceives things.
The more research I did, the more curious I became about how factors
like emotion or physical disability influence the way people receive or
interpret their sensory information; ultimately affecting their perspective.
The 1999 Jeremy Podeswa movie, The Five Senses, demonstrates that the
way our senses differ from person to person, changes the way we perceive
things. Like in the movie, a specialty cake decorator loses her sense of taste,
which results in some of the worst tasting cakes in the world (Ebert). It is
inevitable that things like childhood trauma, mental and physical disabilities,
and past emotions and experiences all influence individuals perspectives on
ultimately everything. From miniscule things like the taste of a soda, to
abstract things like the way colors compliment each other in a painting; it is

common, every- day factors like these that shape the way humans perceive
things through the experiences with their senses. Think about how relevant
and important your perception is in your everyday life, and think about the
way it influences your actions. I hope my inquiry proposal expanded your
perception on the influences senses, and potentially other personal
experiences, have on every individuals perceptions.

Works Cited

Ebert, Roger. "The Five Senses Movie Review & Film Summary (2000) | Roger Ebert." All
Content. N.p., 28 July 2000. Web. 04 Dec. 2016.

Enayati, Amanda. "The Power of Perceptions: Imagining the Reality You Want." CNN. Cable
News Network, 14 Apr. 2012. Web. 04 Dec. 2016.

"Helen Keller Biography." Biography.com. Ed. Biography.com. A&E Networks Television,

2016. Web. 04 Dec. 2016.

Lipari, Lisbeth. "Human Perception: Making Sense of the World - Mind and Body - Utne
Reader." Utne. N.p., Jan. 2015. Web. 04 Dec. 2016.

"Stevie Wonder Biography." Biography.com. Ed. Biography.com. A&E Networks Television,

2016. Web. 07 Dec. 2016.