- Receive your assignment – you have the entire semester to write it.
- Breeze through the online journals at school. Realize there’s nothing related specifically to your topic.
- Schedule a meeting with your instructor.
- Tell the instructor you haven’t been able to find anything – there’s all kinds of stuff in the category, but you’ll probably end up doing a pilot study/poll for a good portion of it. Get told by the instructor to look harder, don’t give up. You really don’t have time for a pilot study.
- Call gov’t agencies related to your topic.
- Schedule another meeting with your instructor when the main message from the gov’t agencies is “WOW what a GREAT idea!!! Someone should do a study on that!!!!!” Get told by the instructor that a pilot study is possible, as long as you acknowledge that it’s a small sample, and may not necessarily be representative of the entire subject population. Leave the meeting with a black cloud rumbling in your psyche, muttering “NOT DOING A PILOT STUDY I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR IT!!!!!” and stomp your feet (on the inside).
- Put the paper on the back burner as family and other classes take precedence.
- Periodically bring up the lack of reference material in class. Roll your eyes as the instructor proceeds to Google it in class and bring up exactly what you said would be there – tons of stuff on the general topic, but NOTHING on your particular branch. Leave the class that afternoon saying “y’know what? This paper just MIGHT not get written!”
- Percolate for another week or two.
- Receive notice that for 20% (or maybe 10%) of your second exam grade, you’re expected to turn in a rough draft of your literature review. Leave class in a state of low-grade panic. It’s Thursday, the rough draft is due Tuesday.
- Read the blogs on your link list. Enjoy some Laughing Yoga. Crank up the tunes and putz around myspace, sending odd random messages to complete strangers. Bubble wrap as a background??!!?? Go pop some bubblewrap in manic mode. Stop popping bubble wrap and change your search paramaters one.more.time.
- Get inspired when your changed search paramaters bring up a subject you hadn’t considered, but that crossroads not one, but two social issues.
- Message the guy with the bubblewrap background, hugging his neck and kissing his cheek, thanking him for his unintended but timely inspiration. (receiving no reply to that particular message)
- Spend all day Friday paging through journals *yawn* and looking for subject-related books. Identify several sub-topics within the topic, all with related journal articles AND published books. Groan as you realize that you’ve just signed up to add more books to your “must read IMMEDIATELY” pile. (Love reading, btw. Reading under a deadline? Not so much.)
- Spend Saturday in the computer lab at school, printing out said journals (NOT!!!! printing all 100 pages at home) and go to the bookstore for your books since you can’t find them in the library.
…To Be Continued
Who has the bubble wrap background? What’s the paper about?
It was a guy’s myspace background, hun. I dunno if he’d appreciate linky-luvvins from me, though. And the paper is about Homeschooling and racism. The questions I hope to answer are: Does homeschooling enforce racism? Are non-white families homeschooling, and do they perform as well or better on tests?
The short answers are: If you’re already a racist, homeschooling isn’t going to do a lot to broaden your horizons. And yes, non-white families are blowing the doors off testing (take THAT, Bell curve!). I’ve just gotta stretch those two sentences out to 12-20 pages. *blinks*
Ah, yes.
Makes me remember the anxiety of my college days.
Good luck! You can do it!
Thanks SO much! See you Wednesday!!!
That sounds oddly familer to how I generally went about writing a paper..
however, your topic sounds really intriguing.
Thanks, dear. When I’m finished with it, I’ll probably publish it here, so look for it in a few weeks!
[...] …reading sources that you may not only disagree with, but that leave you slack-jawed in amazement. As I mentioned in Holly’s comment the other day, the title of my paper for sociology is Ethnic Prejudice and Homeschooling. [...]