Crunch Time

Now that the lovely Thanksgiving break is over, it's time for the deadly final two weeks of school.

Tomorrow I will be turing in my first major research paper. This is for my theory class, which turned out to be pretty awesome. I am researching framing and looking at the way participants in a certain scandal framed the problems and solutions involved with the scandal. Tomorrow I will also be making a 10-minute presentation on this paper in my theory class, which should be heartily entertaining. The paper will be around 15 pages without my coding sheet.

Next Monday, I have my law paper due. In my law class, I am researching the effects of a certain case on the way colleges deal with censorship. The case, Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier, decided that a principal can censor high school publications even at a public school, if the material does not fit into the educational pedagogy of the school. I think writing this paper will be fun. I was drawn to the case because when I was teaching, the ways we were censored, both in the student newspaper and the types of books we were allowed to teach, irritated me greatly. For example, I wanted to teach my favorite book ever, Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (which I just reread last week. If you haven't read it, it's awesome!), but was not allowed because of the instances of rough language. (Even though other books we were allowed to teach had the same language.)

Next Tuesday, I will be presenting my study in my research methods class. I proposed a study comparing blogs on newspaper web sites by the newspaper's circulation.

Next Wednesday, I have to hand back 167 mini research papers that my J110 class turned into me right before Thanksgiving. I have, presently, 60 finished. So sometime in the next week, I have to grade 110 papers!

So, I'll be churching out some thousands of words between now and next Tuesday. Wish me luck! I'll try to post an update about my presentation tomorrow night.