Collaboration
Over the past few weeks working on this project, I have noticed that collaboration is a very useful tool. So far, it has facilitated the progress of my project greatly.
Coming up with ideas for a research paper can be very challenging at times. It certainly was for me. In my experience, the best way to overcome this challenge is by talking it out with other people. Ask them if they have any good ideas. Often the conversation will turn to what you’re interested in and so on. If you do not know what to write about, there is a high chance that someone else has an idea that may relate to your interests. My problem when starting Project 3 was finding a way to relate things I enjoy such as hiking or backpacking to a higher education. The two things seemed pretty hard to relate to each other and I couldn’t imagine how hard it would be to make the subject stretch into a research paper. However, I later found through talking with others over possible subjects a topic that I thought was both interesting and relatively easy to write about.
The activity the class did when we circled up and asked each other about our theses was also extremely helpful. Seeing what other people were working on was very interesting, especially when their subject related to mine. It helped to see how other people had structured their thesis and made it easier for me to strengthen my own. It also helped to actually talk about the subjects of our projects. I felt that with each person I talked to, I was becoming more confident in my argument. Talking about the thesis also helped me to realize which facts were best able to support it. By repeating the same things to all my classmates, it was easy to see how I was going to have to structure my paper. All in all, I pulled a lot from the activity.