This week in American Studies has been completely focused on kick starting our Junior Theme papers. I have dreaded the thought of this assignment since I was in 8th grade when my brother did his. Now it is my time to write this monster of a paper.
I started the week browsing around for topics and has a list of 5 possible directions to send my paper in. They were abortion, gun control, minimum wage, laziness and technology, and nutrition labels. I am a very passionate advocate for the pro-life view on abortion, and thought that this would make a fantastic topic to write my junior theme on.
I did a good amount of research to get arguments from both sides on the issue of abortion and thought that there was no possibility of doing any other topic. Mr. O’Connor then shut that topic down because of how difficult it would be to make the paper NOT an argument for my side, and instead a more balanced and historical look at abortion.
I had no idea what to do from here because I had banked so much into the abortion topic. I later met with Mr. Bolos to discuss ideas with him. I had written “nutrition labels” basically just to have a 5th topic so it looked like I was working harder. Bolos saw this and explained to me some unknown details about the food industry that really fascinated me. He showed me a book called The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, which goes into an in depth analysis of the food industry and how it works.
Right now I am thinking that my paper will be based around the question, “Why does the American diet look the way it does?”. I’m guessing this will change, and will keep posting blogs as my topic takes different forms.
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