It started out as just another English assignment, “Write an essay about a piece of literature." I took those words to mean freedom, the freedom to choose exactly what work I would analyze in my long essay, whether or not it appeared in our class' anthology of literature. To my teacher, this meant that her students would each choose pieces of literature that either we had studied together as a class, or that were included in our anthology. In class we were instructed to start writing (with pen and paper) the author and work we were planning to use, a thesis statement for our essays, and three supporting points for our arguments. I had chosen Paul Laurence Dunbar and his poem "We Wear the Mask," which has been one of my favorite poems for a long time. Unfortunately, our anthology only had one poem in it that was written by Dunbar, and it was only four lines long. I decided to take the risk of going outside the unspoken assignment boundaries and loaded "We Wear the Mask" onto my iphone. I had never before had the experience of analyzing a poem to the depth of a 4-5 page paper. This made my analysis tricky, but I decided to comment on the repetition, the use of punctuation, and the content of the poem to support my analysis. I turned in the short assignment to my teacher, and expecting the possible negative response due to its absence from our class anthology, quickly explained my choice of literature. Although she responded dubiously to my choice, she agreed to let me use it.
The next class period that we used to work on our first essays was spent at the library, learning how to research using the library's digital collection of journals and research articles. For me, this "lesson" was completely unnecessary because of all my past experiences doing online research for my psychology classes. However, for the classmates who had never been through such an experience, navigating the online resources was difficult. Our teacher expected us to come up with, at the very least, three references to use in our essays by the end of the class period. Although I knew how to peruse the digital collections, finding good sources for my chosen poem proved to be harder than I thought. I barely managed to finish by the end of the class period, and didn't end up using at least two of the sources in my final essay. Not all of my classmates were so lucky. Many of them struggled to find one good source before the end of the class period, but my teacher was lenient and allowed them to continue working on it on their own time. I quickly finished the rest of the assignment and received an "ok" grade for my work. However, our class also had a big final research paper due at the end of the semester which we had to base on one of our previous analytical essays. I decided to use my essay about Dunbar.
I needed to find another piece of literature that I could pair with this poem which I could write another 5 or so pages about. Earlier in that semester, our class had studied Ellison's "Battle Royal" in our anthology. At the time I had found the short story interesting, but thought nothing more of it. As I flipped through our anthology, looking for another piece of literature which I could use for my research paper, I happened upon "Battle Royal" again and was immediately struck with the idea that it could fit very well with my previous paper on Dunbar. After doing a bit of research about Ellison's work and conferencing with my teacher about the possibility, she agreed that it was a good idea. Because of the similarities between the two works which I could see for myself, and the research which I found on both of these pieces of African American literature, I was able to quickly complete the rest of the assignment, and received a good grade after a revision.
A few months later, I received an e-mail which talked about a competition in the English department at Western for papers that addressed diversity in some way. The only requirements were that it had to have been written originally for an English class at Western, and it had to address diversity. I thought of my paper on Dunbar and Ellison, and decided to revise a few minor parts of it and submit the paper to the competition. Although I had no high hopes of winning as I had never won anything or had anything published from a writing competition in the past, I thought it was worth a try. About a month later, I heard back from my English advisor that I had co-won the award for the contest with a graduate student! I couldn't believe it! My paper was actually good enough to win a competition that had a monetary award! I went to the ceremony a few weeks later and was able to hear the reasons why my paper had been chosen. It was such a great experience that now I no longer mind writing research papers, because I know that they can even lead to winning awards if you work on them. This is definitely a story I would tell to my students if I was requiring them to write a research paper. I realize that there are many other rewards that can be gained through writing a good research paper, such as knowledge of a topic which interests you, but sometimes tangible rewards are just more satisfying.
The next class period that we used to work on our first essays was spent at the library, learning how to research using the library's digital collection of journals and research articles. For me, this "lesson" was completely unnecessary because of all my past experiences doing online research for my psychology classes. However, for the classmates who had never been through such an experience, navigating the online resources was difficult. Our teacher expected us to come up with, at the very least, three references to use in our essays by the end of the class period. Although I knew how to peruse the digital collections, finding good sources for my chosen poem proved to be harder than I thought. I barely managed to finish by the end of the class period, and didn't end up using at least two of the sources in my final essay. Not all of my classmates were so lucky. Many of them struggled to find one good source before the end of the class period, but my teacher was lenient and allowed them to continue working on it on their own time. I quickly finished the rest of the assignment and received an "ok" grade for my work. However, our class also had a big final research paper due at the end of the semester which we had to base on one of our previous analytical essays. I decided to use my essay about Dunbar.
I needed to find another piece of literature that I could pair with this poem which I could write another 5 or so pages about. Earlier in that semester, our class had studied Ellison's "Battle Royal" in our anthology. At the time I had found the short story interesting, but thought nothing more of it. As I flipped through our anthology, looking for another piece of literature which I could use for my research paper, I happened upon "Battle Royal" again and was immediately struck with the idea that it could fit very well with my previous paper on Dunbar. After doing a bit of research about Ellison's work and conferencing with my teacher about the possibility, she agreed that it was a good idea. Because of the similarities between the two works which I could see for myself, and the research which I found on both of these pieces of African American literature, I was able to quickly complete the rest of the assignment, and received a good grade after a revision.
A few months later, I received an e-mail which talked about a competition in the English department at Western for papers that addressed diversity in some way. The only requirements were that it had to have been written originally for an English class at Western, and it had to address diversity. I thought of my paper on Dunbar and Ellison, and decided to revise a few minor parts of it and submit the paper to the competition. Although I had no high hopes of winning as I had never won anything or had anything published from a writing competition in the past, I thought it was worth a try. About a month later, I heard back from my English advisor that I had co-won the award for the contest with a graduate student! I couldn't believe it! My paper was actually good enough to win a competition that had a monetary award! I went to the ceremony a few weeks later and was able to hear the reasons why my paper had been chosen. It was such a great experience that now I no longer mind writing research papers, because I know that they can even lead to winning awards if you work on them. This is definitely a story I would tell to my students if I was requiring them to write a research paper. I realize that there are many other rewards that can be gained through writing a good research paper, such as knowledge of a topic which interests you, but sometimes tangible rewards are just more satisfying.