Heart of Dorkness
I've always been a decent writer, especially papers. I'm good at spinning crap and reiterating the same points over and over in different ways to fill up a certain amount of pages. If I really like the prompt or the text though, if it's something I'm really passionate about, then I can write one kick-ass paper. I can't remember the last time that happened though.
I chose to write my final research paper for my Modern British Fiction class on Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. We all know how much I hate that book, but for some reason I cannot quite explicate, I wanted to write my paper on that novella. My thesis was that "through the treatment of women as inferior through objectification and displacement within Heart of Darkness, Conrad critiques imperialism as flawed and suggests that by objectifying and thereby shielding women from the truth, blinding them from the horrors occurring at the hands of colonizing men in Africa, society encourages imperialism to continue". Quite a mouthful, I know.
Like I said, I can't quite explain what on earth possessed me to write my twelve page research paper on this novel or this topic. I think a lot of it has to do with my interest in gender roles and gender normative behavior within sociological contexts. I'm not trying to sound smart, I swear. In layman's terms: "I like to learn about what society expects of men and women because they are labelled as such".
I wrote it in less than twelve hours (My rough draft was due Monday night and the final paper is due today at noon), plus Ellen completely destroyed my original thesis. I had a rough draft of a paper that would be okay for any English 101 class, but it basically included three general topics and didn't actually explicate any of them.
One of the things I love about learning from Ellen is that even though she may tear your work apart, it's like rebuilding a house: you have to gut the inside to make it better and eventually you wind up with a beautiful home. I also love that she makes suggestions and teaches you, but you get to where you want to be of your own intelligence, intuition and volition. She never coddles you or tells you that your opinion/viewpoint is "wrong". She's awesome.
All in all, I'm actually really proud of this paper. It's definitely not as good as it could have been, but for writing it in ten hours, I think it's decent. I asked her to email me with feedback so I'll let you all know when I hear back and what grade I received!
I chose to write my final research paper for my Modern British Fiction class on Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. We all know how much I hate that book, but for some reason I cannot quite explicate, I wanted to write my paper on that novella. My thesis was that "through the treatment of women as inferior through objectification and displacement within Heart of Darkness, Conrad critiques imperialism as flawed and suggests that by objectifying and thereby shielding women from the truth, blinding them from the horrors occurring at the hands of colonizing men in Africa, society encourages imperialism to continue". Quite a mouthful, I know.
Like I said, I can't quite explain what on earth possessed me to write my twelve page research paper on this novel or this topic. I think a lot of it has to do with my interest in gender roles and gender normative behavior within sociological contexts. I'm not trying to sound smart, I swear. In layman's terms: "I like to learn about what society expects of men and women because they are labelled as such".
I wrote it in less than twelve hours (My rough draft was due Monday night and the final paper is due today at noon), plus Ellen completely destroyed my original thesis. I had a rough draft of a paper that would be okay for any English 101 class, but it basically included three general topics and didn't actually explicate any of them.
One of the things I love about learning from Ellen is that even though she may tear your work apart, it's like rebuilding a house: you have to gut the inside to make it better and eventually you wind up with a beautiful home. I also love that she makes suggestions and teaches you, but you get to where you want to be of your own intelligence, intuition and volition. She never coddles you or tells you that your opinion/viewpoint is "wrong". She's awesome.
All in all, I'm actually really proud of this paper. It's definitely not as good as it could have been, but for writing it in ten hours, I think it's decent. I asked her to email me with feedback so I'll let you all know when I hear back and what grade I received!
Comments
Post a Comment