Story of My Research Paper

This research paper has been a process definitely. :) I chose to research Othello because it is a play that is commonly taught in high schools. Since I am planning on teaching in high schools, it seemed like a natural fit. As I started to research, my ideas were very basic. I was dealing with the themes of the text, but it wasn't anything extraordinary. My updated "proto papers" lacked "pizzazz."

This is when social proof became very applicable (read my post about social proof here), and one thing that an old English professor said really struck me. She talked about Shakespeare as a great psychologist. Then Ian made a comment on one of my blog posts that encouraged me to address the needs of my students through Shakespeare. 

I started thinking that the characters in Othello go through similar situations (although to varying degrees) as high school students, and so I started to explore psychology as an avenue to Shakespeare. This was something that I was a little nervous about at first, because I have a very limited knowledge of Shakespeare, but it became very exciting. 

I went through all the normal stages of revision, a working draft, realizing that I needed more critical sources, and lots of edits. Then I arrived at what I thought was a work of art. When I met with Dr. Burton, he alerted me to some flaws in my paper that needed to be fixed. "Fixing some major flaws" turned into cutting over three pages of my paper. I realized that I was trying to address too many things at once, and so I focused my thinking and ended up with a much better paper. 

I am planning to submit my work to an Undergraduate Shakespeare Conference. I was in contact with the organizers a few weeks ago, and I am planning to do some follow-up with them and get my paper submitted. And like the rest of the class I will be submitting my paper to BYU's Scholar's Archive.