Questioning my judgment for Topic choices

I am in awe of the wide variety of projects that were created in past senior seminars. To be totally honest, it is a little daunting. I loved all of the projects and they all seemed to answer such important questions and looked into such complex topics. All of their topics were very innovative and I am honestly not sure how they came up with their ideas. I need some serious help brainstorming in order to get to the point of establishing such a concrete topic for my project. I especially enjoyed the project about international students on campus. I think it came from an interesting perspective and enjoyed the experts of the international students writing throughout the project.

Coming into this class I had a few ideas of what I wanted to focus on, but it was nothing concrete. After reading and looking at the projects and ideas of past students, I feel very unprepared. Their projects were so specific and narrowed down to a particular point. My ideas seem way too broad to even consider, nor do I know how to exactly narrow them down to a specific point that would make the idea eligible for a senior seminar project.

While I am still pretty lost on my topic, I did realize the types of projects I did not want to pursue. My largest revelation from viewing other projects is that I learned which kinds of projects I did not want to pursue as it pertains to medium. While I enjoyed some of the typical research papers, I think I want to explore a different medium for my project. I won’t exactly know how I want to present my project until I narrow down my topic ideas and see which medium works for which project, but I think I want to try something multimodal.

My most pertinent question at the moment is figuring out how to narrow down my ideas into a single concrete topic. Looking back at past projects I have done during my time at Transy, my favorites were based on topics I cared very strongly about. My top two include my research project into John F Kennedy and how I believe he would be a republican if he were alive today, and second, a case study into the stereotypes revolving around Orange County women and how they are misjudged because of the extreme media misconceptions. While both of these topics can be pushed further, I think I want to pursue different questions within the same genre of ideas. So while I have narrowed my thought process down to either California or Political based questions, my main concern right now is figuring out the question I want to research, and what opinions I want to express in my project.

The Ability to Argue Spurs my Writing

Senior Seminar Blog Post 1

As I look back at my favorite projects throughout by Transy writing career, I find that the projects I was more emotionally involved in, turned out to be more successful. I am a very opinionated person, and my favorite way to share my opinion is via writing and using rhetoric to craft my point perfectly. In addition to projects that I felt very fondly and passionately towards, I also find that my best works revolve around very controversial topics. I suppose I like to stir the pot a tad, but I look at it as sparking a conversation with my opinion. That is ultimately my goal for my senior seminar project.

When I eventually narrow down my ideas and decide on a topic for my project, I want it to be something I am passionate about, and something that is controversial enough to spur some very interesting dialogue. I love when people disagree with what I have written because it challenges me to defend what I believe, and also challenges me to base my opinions on valid arguments. I think it only makes my writing stronger, and I love the conversation and debate that result of a controversial piece.

One of my all time favorite works was actually the project I did for my freshman research seminar with Tim Soulis. Tim and I always have great political conversation because we usually disagree on everything. I decided to focus on politics for my FYRS project because I wanted to see if I could make Tim agree with my opinion, even though we fall on different sides of the aisle. It was an amazing learning experience and was my first taste of producing quality argument driven work. 

As I stated before, my best pieces in my opinion are extremely argument driven, and I enjoy the conversation that follows. For my writerly portfolio, I plan to convene all of these pieces that were the most successful in their argument, and showed progression of my abilities to create an argument throughout my writing career. I plan to use my FRYS research paper, a blog post about southern culture I also wrote in my first year, Rambler OP Ed pieces, and other essays and projects that I feel best display my ability to present an argument, and show that my abilities have progressed throughout my time at Transy.