Happily, I’m nearing the end of the research/analysis paper marathon! I finished a 15-page seminar paper on Tuesday night. I wrote about English-as-a-second-language learners exchanging e-mails with other language learners to gain fluency and for constructivist and dialogical learning and multicultural English composition. Unfortunately, the requirements for the paper were quite demanding and were continually added until the week before the whole paper was due. My classmates were definitely not happy. I had to redo a lot of research, but fortunately didn’t had to rewrite or throw away any part of the paper (whew!).
I’m currently about 85 percent done with my more interesting seminar paper about how lyrics in Dylan’s three songs (“Times They Are A-Changin’,” “Masters of War,” and “It’s Alright, Ma [I'm Only Bleeding]“) are effective poetry and are highly influential sociopolitically. This paper’s a breeze and much more enjoyable to write compared to the other one.
Next Tuesday, I’ll visit the Hawaii Historical Society Library to inspect their copies of the earlier runs of the Hilo Tribune. That visit will definitely not be as grueling as the academic marathon I was in in the past 3 to 4 weeks.
