The Story of Gabe's Research Paper

Rebellion--it took a while to choose it as the topic of my research paper. When I thought out my three ideas for theses, or 'protopapers', I was thinking of going a fairly classic analytic route concerning Hal's change. I really didn't like the idea of taking on a well-known theme in a play. Dr. Burton lent me a book that had Henry IV, Part 1 with extra texts and contexts; I had recorded accounts to give me more info about the historical side of Henry IV, his son Hal, and Richard II. I was interested in an account that suggested that Hal's time away from the court and his princely duties was fueled by Hal's disapproval of his father's methods in dealing with Richard II.

I ended up not going with that because it was a very narrow idea to support, and my excitement about it was based on one source, so I figured I should expand my thesis to a more broad idea. I tried to go with a focus on the rebellion side of Hal's coming of age story. I checked with people on Facebook and Twitter to get some ideas about when rebellion is a good thing, and I received a lot of responses that I ended up using in my paper. When I made my first full draft, classmates recognized that I was pretty vague with my thesis--which I expected because I had such a hard time nailing it down. However, moving a key sentence in my closing paragraph to my thesis paragraph added clarity and after a few other revisions, I was done.

A picture of a sword fight, representing my
struggle in nailing down my thesis.

I was curious to see how delving into social media would affect my paper. I was slightly hesitant to use Facebook because of the open response environment (I do have friends that are trolls, even though they are very few in number) but I was pleased to find many good responses from a variety of people I know.

Making this paper a social process was definitely a first experience for me. The end goal of submitting this paper into a BYU online database was a good influence on my process of writing the paper. It was an enjoyable experience overall! I even applied some aspects of the social process into a paper for another class. I didn't do a tweethis (although I kind of wish I had) or an annotated bibliography for this other paper, but checking with homies and peers was a great way of fishing for good sources.