It happened in my last semester that I had a writing class and in this class I had an assignment called a "Literature Review." This assignment, unlike its seemingly descriptive name, did not consist of reading a book and then giving "thumbs up" or "thumbs down." No, it was much more like a research paper, except for a few defining differences: pick a topic, find sources, and, instead of using said sources to back my own argument, the task was to compile the general arguments of said sources. In short, compare/contrast, but in as academic a way as possible.
There were two drafts that we (the class) had to turn in so that the professor could check our progress. You might think that this gave me plenty of time to do it and so I finished it in a timely manner. Right? Wrong. As any good college student does, I procrastinated.
And so it happened that I needed to turn in the second draft soon and that meant I needed to dig through a bunch of sources, find connected information, and form it all into a cohesive structure that portrayed the issue I had chosen (in this case "black abolitionism").
So there I was; sitting at a table with a notebook in front of me and a pen in hand. I had to write something. I felt I needed to understand the issue. I needed to understand all the facets to truly compile it. So I wrote. At first I didn't come up with much. Just phrases; things I already had in mind. But then, out of the vaguest idea, I began to draw circles and put these phrases inside them. Phrases like, "Push for change in law" and "AASS and other such organizations." When I had covered as many facets of the topic as I could come up with, I began to connect the circles; I had the circle "black abolitionism" in the center, which everything connected to, and then other circles would only be connected to each other if there was a direct correlation between facets. When I was finished, I found that the issue was now much more clear. I still needed to find the information within my sources, but now I had a deeper understanding of all the complexities and it helped me to write a more complete essay.
Moral of the story? If your teachers tell you that diagrams have strengths, they may be on the right track.
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3 comments:
Hey Rob,
Great post! Here I thought diagrams were only for math class...next time I'll try it instead of my traditional brainstorm/outline when writing a paper. Thanks for the tip!
Great post, Rob! We do something similar in the Office of University Relations when we're brainstorming. We call it mind mapping, and we find ways to connect seemingly unrelated ideas. It's a great concept and a great way to learn, especially if you're a visually oriented person. Thanks for sharing this!
Thanks for commenting. Glad you find it useful.
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