| Term paper requires many late nights and 'backbreaking labor' (12/07) | | Print | |
| Written by Bonnie Tang | |
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The sixth floor of San Francisco’s Main Library is home to a vast collection of books, print media, photographs, maps, posters, archives and manuscript collections documenting all aspects of San Francisco life and history. The archive houses copies of old magazines, newspapers and even issues of “Seventeen” dating back to 1970. It is in this archive that many of Honors U.S. history teacher Barbara Blinick’s students obtained much of their research information for their fall semester term paper, an in-depth student-directed essay on an aspect of civil rights. The term paper “is a basic requirement in college, and I feel responsible that (students) are prepared for college,” Blinick said. Blinick uses this project to help students develop skills in research, critical thinking, writing and content knowledge. “My hope is that the project teaches the students how to find and evaluate information, and have more practice in expressing themselves in writing,” she said. Students learned “a very practical and realistic way of researching a topic,” junior Karyn Smoot said. “We pretty much went through the whole process from choosing a topic to writing the paper.” The students spent a tremendous amount of time researching and writing their papers, which they turned in last Monday. “I spent at least 15 hours (on the project),” junior Jonathan Go said. “I learned that sunset and sunrise are much prettier when seen in one waking period, in that order.” Smoot also put a lot of work into her project. “I’m not really sure how much time I spent on the paper. I just know it was hours and hours and hours.” Junior Elsa Lau recalled a similar experience. “I remember staying up until three a.m. one day to put together my primary documents; it was the first time I stayed up so late doing homework.” Despite the students’ apparent lack of sleep, some students still enjoyed the project. “I liked doing a term paper more than constant outlining in some ways because it was an ongoing project that progressed in small steps,” Smoot said. “The only thing that I didn’t like was that some historians get years to do their research and article writing, while we only got less than a semester (to research) and only two weeks to write the paper.” Other students were not as eager about the assignment. The project required “backbreaking labor,” according to Go. Lau agreed. “I was not all that enthusiastic about this paper because it required so much time and effort, but it definitely gave us a taste of how it would be to write a research paper in college,” she said. Just like a college research paper, students learned how to do proper citations and footnotes as well as effective methods of finding information from online archives. “The tedious things like citing references are probably good practice for projects we will have to do later,” Smoot said. Go was confident that he would be “Lord of Citations” after writing the term paper. Junior Desiree Choy agreed that she benefited from the assignment. “I actually learned a lot from this project,” she said. “It was really eye-opening.” The assignment is worth 20 percent of the students’ semester grades, according to Blinick. “It’s a huge part of their grade, since it’s a college-level term paper,” she said. “I don’t want to misrepresent what colleges want.” |
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