Today was rough. Actually no, it wasn't rough until after school at soccer workouts. Todays workout was the hardest one we have ever done and no matter how fast we ran it did not please our coach. The funny thing though, our coach wasn't even there! Our assistant coach was there and so encouraging with our effort but I guess it didn't cut it. For me, the hardest part is that our coach was not pleased. I am all about pleasing people and find that someone being disappointed in me is the most heartbreaking thing. All the girls on the team (including me) put in a valiant effort today and I am proud to call them my team mates, but tomorrow I have a feeling we will be doing the same workout we did today only faster. It will be hard and I know that going into it but all I can do is my very best and what ever happens will happen and that's exactly how it is going to be. Any one still reading this post? Well the real subject of this post is dealing with a research paper I am working on but I had to let out my feelings about soccer and the title fit so I went with it. Back to the research paper though... This research paper is 25% of my entire semester grade. Yes, I typed that correctly! Points wise that is 430ish points worth for one paper. This paper is for my english class (AP Lang) and its topic is the writing styles of a particular American author. Luckily, we got to pick which American writer we wanted to research and I picked E.B. White, whose writing interests me. Reading his works and all the information I have gathered on him has not been as boring as I thought it would be so I feel very fortunate. This paper is going to be 10 pages long. I don't know about you but the only thing I have ever typed that was ten pages long has been notes from an entire semester. Getting through it will be just fine as long as I continue to stay as organized as I have been lately. We have multiple due dates along the way so it is a good thing that I have a place for everything. To organize all of this research information I am keeping a file folder sort of thing that holds anything and everything that has to do with this paper. One slot in the file folder is for general information about the assignment, another is for information I have read, and another is for information I need to read. As I get farther along I will fill up the other slots with various other topics such as the outline, rough draft, notecards, and the final draft. Here is an array of information I have spread out on the floor while I am working on it. The note cards seen are source cards which contain a works cited entry for each source I have gathered information from. The other set of notecards is for important statements that I have pulled from each source. So here are some pictures:
My floor looks like a lovely place doesn't it? Well it is perfect for spreading out all of my stuff so I am grateful for that. If you read my top five Tuesday from last week you can see tons of my favorites used above in these images. Unfortunately the big pile of binder clipped pages are the ones I have yet to read which is what I will be doing after I finish this post. I am convinced I will make it through them though, especially since I have the dixie chicks playing in the background and a few of yesterday's home made cookies in front of me ready to be eaten! Well I hope y'all survived through these ramblings and I would love any and all advice y'all have on research papers, organization of research papers, ect.
Happy Tuesday!
dWa