Day Eight - The Paper

After spending a good chunk of yesterday actively NOT thinking about the paper, I had to buckle down and work.  Earlier in the week, I decided that I would sleep in a bit, wake up and get to work.  But my conscience got the best of me, and I changed my mind to go to church this morning.  Ross and I attended the Georgetown campus of the National Community Church.  The church was located at the end of Wisconsin Avenue, across from Waterfront Park.  It was a good spiritual boost to start the week.

After we got back and ate lunch, I began working on the paper.  My style of paper writing is to create a rough outline with my sources, then turn that into paper form.  So as of this writing, I am at roughly 600 words.  What has stuck out to me though is how far I, along with many of my colleagues, have come in the last week.  Earlier, I spoke of the self-doubt that many of us were experiencing.  Now as we discuss our papers with one another, we are speaking with more confidence about what we believe and the interpretation we are taking.  Now don't get me wrong.  I am not saying that all of the sudden I am an expert in republicanism and the colonial documents.  But things are starting to make more sense to me, especially as I am making the connections between the essay question, the readings and our lecture/discussion notes.  I am feeling better about the paper (though that is like saying I would feel better about my ability to perform surgery playing Operation).  Still a long way to go, but I am getting there.

MEET THE FELLOWS: Kathryn Pruter is from Wanueta, Nebraska in the southwestern part of the state.  she teaches five different classes at her school, which is necessitated by the fact that she is the only social studies teacher at the school.  The high school has approximately 50 students.  I asked her about class size, and she told me that one of her classes last year had 1 student.  How's that for class size?  Of course, if the one student doesn't perform well, you could drop from 100% proficiency to 0%.

TOMORROW: Back to lecture... topic is 18th Century Political Thought.