Introductions (Part One)

Wednesday October 17, 2012

     Today was a busy day! We started off by doing some online research that pertains to our topics.  There is a list of online website types in one of our textbooks: archive, electronic essay/exhibit, teaching resource, gateway, journal/web zine, organization, and virtual community.  Our goal was to go online and find a good example of each of these that would help us with our Senior Seminar paper.  I found some good websites that I have to look further at.  One of these websites had a list of different words that came out in the 1930s, it was really interesting and even had some cartoons from the period, but I don't know how useful it will be to my paper (which is why I have to look at the website closer).  Other websites were also interesting and I made a copy of each of them to look at them later when I have time.  This activity took up about half of our class time.
     The other half of the class was spent critiquing each others' introduction paragraphs.  We were given a copy of everyone's intro, given time to read it and make marks/corrections, then we discussed them out loud.  Mine was one of the first to be peer reviewed and the others did not hold back about what they liked, didn't like, and things that I need to improve on!  I thought my paragraph was good, but now I have good feedback in order to fix it properly so that common people and other historians will understand it better.  We only got about three or four introductions done before we were released for the day.
     Today I got more books for my essay.  I also made another appointment to go to the Aurora Historical Society.  I most definitely need to start writing soon, but I keep finding more information!  Before I can even start writing I need to organize all my sources, notes, and ideas.  I am going to focus a lot on different groups and organizations in the city because many of them did things like food drives, clothing drives, and other things to help each other out during the Great Depression.  I also plan to make an appointment with Susan Palmer to see if she has any other ideas or information for my paper.  Martha made an appointment with her and got a lot of good information and ideas that really helped her put her paper into a proper order.  I think I will work my self into the ground this week and start getting ready to write, then this weekend really hammer out some of the main ideas and fix my introduction.  This just really sucks because I have a ton of other papers and readings and various assignments for my other classes that are coming due.  I am having such a hard time with time management this semester!  I can't wait for December 12th to get here!