Self-Evaluation

Well here is a chance for me to display that I have learned. How exciting. Let me just take a minute to say how much I truly enjoyed this class. Beside the fact that it was a lot of work and sometimes very frustrating, I met a lot of great history majors (this was a first) and dramatically improved my writing skills. This class really opened up the door for opportunities as a new history major.
My attendance in this class was probably the best I had in any of my classes this semester. I only missed one class due to a cold. Unfortunately it was the class that we went over the library resources. Lucky for me Maddie gave me a card so I could make an appointment and catch up.
Class participation was pretty easy in this class. Everyone was so easy going. Sharing ideas and topics was really productive and I feel sharing my ideas with everyone really helped me with my topic. I feel that I benefited from peer work and enjoyed reading other peoples papers. I really tried to give people an honest opinion about their paper and add some constructive criticism. Minus the final paper, in which I forgot my original paper, I think I was always on time with my work. I had my blog caught up and my rough drafts on time. I attended the Library of Congress field trip and subsequently got in lost in Supreme Court. Attending this field trip really got me started on researching my paper.
This class took up the most time this semester. It really prepared me for what is to come in 499. I spent a lot of typing up my blog. I spent even more time immersed in books for this class; some were more fun then others. Research was probably the most boring and time consuming part of this, but I think that spreading it out really helped me and allowed me to spend more time pouring over each source. I spent countless hours writing and revising my final paper and then rewriting and revising it a second time. I think all this time spent on the final paper was worth it and really paid off in my final paper.
I learned how to budget time more efficiently this semester. I learned to not put things off until the last minute and most importantly make tons of back-ups. Also, no passive voice, ever! The problems I encountered usually just came from finding adequate resources. I do not think I would have done anything differently. The skills and knowledge learned came in the form of better writing skills and actually learning how to do research, which I was previously unaware of.
Like I said previously the knowledge I gained was researching skills. I had never done any research on such a large scale before. I learned about evaluating sources. I also learned where to find sources. I had no idea that there were so many places to look for sources, I would have never known about the Lion and Unicorn database. I took three other history classes and the things I learned in this class really helped those. I really enjoyed this class and look forward to the history of animation!