This week was a bit of a setback for both of my students.
Delanie turned in a thought letter on Saturday for the paper she’d been planning since the beginning of the semester, about Orange is the New Black and prison re-entry. She found some good resources about re-entry and reintegration, but when we got to class, she was having trouble finding enthusiasm for the paper, because she predicted her thesis would be really similar to her last two arguments in 199 (about how people make “home” from whatever system of security, comfort, personal relationships, etc. are available to them) and a lot of what she is studying in her anthro and sociology classes. We brainstormed different directions she could explore. She was leaning toward another documentary but I thought the new material in her thought letter had been the fact that Orange is the New Black, although based on a memoir, was written for entertainment. I suggested a different feature film, show, or even a short story, painting, advertisement, or other piece of pop culture. She seemed relieved and exciting to open up the paper to this material. I asked her to email me her final topic by Wednesday and submit a thought letter with a plan for putting all of her research together by Saturday. She met with a research librarian and chose two Norman Rockwell paintings that depict “a woman in a man’s world.” We’ll have class on Monday (we didn’t originally plan to) to make up for this week’s class and get back to our schedule.
Estefania requested extensions on her work this week because of a roommate problem, so she wasn’t able to do research for her third paper before our class on Thursday. We still met and used the time to make a plan for her research. She’d like to assess the mayor of San Antonio as a possible political candidate and hopes to interview him over the phone as part of her research. We made a preliminary outline and discussed how she’ll need to have empirical evidence of what personality traits and policies make a “good” or successful president, so she’ll have a standard for her comparison of the mayor’s job performance. We also went over the format of an annotated bibliography and I asked that she complete an informal one for next week, simply listing her sources and how they will work in her paper. She also asked to spend some time on an assignment for another class. She had submitted a research proposal for her Poli Sci class and we reviewed her professor’s comments and worked on making the language of her research questions less vague. She had to leave a few minutes early to meet with her RD, but we continued working on the Poli Sci questions via email Thursday evening/Friday morning. Her outline and annotated bibliography are due on Tuesday, assuming her living situation improves!