Blog 10 "research"

One of the requirements to complete the graduate program at Brooklyn College was a research paper. It was very difficult for me to get back into the mode of formal writing throughout the 2 and half year process but the two semesters long Thesis was especially tough for me. My undergraduate Degrees are in the technical field of entertainment so after completing the core requirements such as English etc…I didn’t do any formal writing until I applied to Brooklyn College. The first year and a half I completed a few papers where I had to display synthesis and a host of observations that were mostly informal writing assignments. When I took the research course I hit a wall because I was introduced to a new style of formal writing. There was a large amount of information coming to me at once.

This assignment was a full academic year. I had to conduct my own research and compare it previous research. Sounds simple, however, when you consider the formatting and detail a thesis paper or “term paper” has to be presented it can be intimidating. I don’t know enough about writing as a specific area to tell if the strategies and tools in these chapters are standards across writing. In the text Benjamin speaks about repetition and how it is expected. The students were given the formatting for the assignment and many examples were provided but I can still recall myself as well as many peers having to do multiple revisions. We all were struggling with how to present the same data repeatedly in each section. The assignment was actually very much simpler than we thought.

As we learned the purpose of a research paper which is to generate a question, conduct research and answer the question, the padding stopped and meaningful data began to flow through the document. A thesis paper can be compared to a story told in fine detail. The class was taught oddly, but it made sense. The mistakes were built into the lesson. As I revised and corrected the paper over the course of its completion, I gained more understanding of what I was doing as time passed.