Week Four

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Weekly Accomplishments

This week I made major progress on the paper. I decided to work ahead a bit so that next week can be a bit more relaxed. The first accomplishment I had was completing my literary review. In its whole the segment didn't take all that long, though it was the most work a segment has taken so far. Typically when I write bigger papers they are for African American or cultural studies and so I get excited when all of the papers and books I find are about African Americans. For this project however I wanted to find a source or two that wrote more wholistically about education at that time, and it was a struggle. I was able to find some great writings and some sources I will use later on in the paper. The writing process went quickly as I have been immersed in this period for several weeks now. Accomplishment two is finishing my methodology. This segment fly by and ended up being a little over half a page. Because the letters are our main sources there wasn't all that much to write about right now. Later I will add more to this section as I get more sources. The third accomplishment is making it half way through the program! I wasn't entirely sure how the program would work going in so I am counting it as an accomplishment that I have made it half way and thrived the whole way. I feel confident in my ability to keep up the work and make it to the end.

Roadblocks

This week hasn't been overly filled with problem or anything but there have been a few. The first roadblock is writing for a history paper with a more scientific example. The paper we have used as a guideline to show what ours should roughly look like is written much more matter of fact than what I am used to. So far it has gone mostly fine I just need to decide what parts I want to follow exactly and what parts I want to adjust. The Second roadblock was finding modern sources for my literary review. Education in Mississippi has been a well documented problem for a very long time so there are several dozen books published on the matter, the issue is that many of them focus on the turn of the century and beyond or are just outdated in their info and interpretations. Eventually I was able to find the sources that worked best but it took sifting through a number of other books. The final roadblock is the weather. I know I have written it down before but I will never get used to the heat, humidity, and rain. I know part of it is that it is June but being outside is brutal. One of my favorite things to do is go outside and read or do work especially when I have time to work at a more relaxed pace. But while I have been here there has been maybe two days I've been able to enjoy sitting outside.

Things I have learned

This week we had some really informative lecture and I got to read a lot of books on my topic. The first thing I learned this week was that Mississippi Historically has always been at the bottom in education. This makes its recent push all the more impactful as its one of the first times they have been out of the bottom 40 in education quality. Mississippi was one of the last states to adopt a public education system and even when it did issues of money and segregation meant most kids were stuck with a subpar education locking them into poverty. I do hope more states will follow suite with Mississippi and begin real educational reform. The second thing I learned was more about accessibility. I don't personally have any disabilities that hinder my ability to navigate the web so I try to learn about accessibility when I can as I worry that I miss things in design that those with disability would struggle with. My website now has alt text and a few colors were tweaked to contrast better. The third thing I learned was the various moves of several Pokémon by Prof. Eli. As an actual third thing I did learn about some tips on how to quickly read for classes. Most of the tips I already do but it was good to have a formal lesson on it.

What's Next

It seems like next week is going to be focused on the start of our findings and presentations. I look forward to it as I really like presenting an want to get some formal training on the how to best present. I am not entirely sure what exactly I will work on next as it depends on what is covered.