HIST 300 - American West

I keep, I keep thinking that it's not goodbye. I keep on thinking it's a time to fly ...

Wow. My paper is done. It's a bit hard to believe after all the work that went into it. I've done my self evaluation. The only thing that I have left to do is critique Leanne's paper. However, I have yet to receive it. I did a critique on her rough draft but, although I have heard from Leanne a lot during her revision process, I have yet to see a final product.

I look forward to her presentation today, however, as the ideas that she shared with me were very interesting and unique. This class has been a great learning experience for me and I've had a lot of fun with the people in the class.

BEST OF LUCK TO EVERYONE!

uh oh ....

So ... I'm graduating this semester and consequently have been trying to move my stuff out of my apartment in phases. I am not a particularly neat person ... so this frequently involves taking things in piles en masse and moving them to another location. This is relevant to my HIST 300 blog because I fear that my original draft has suffered this fate. I'm not sure what has happened to my original draft with all of the comments from Prof. P. This is worrisome since I have supposed to resubmit it with my final in ... 4 hours. Insert loud expletive here.

It's a time to fly

Will we think about tomorrow like we think about now?
Can we survive it out there? Can we make it somehow?
I guess I thought that this would never end
And suddenly it's like we're women and men
Will the past be a shadow that will follow us round?
Will these memories fade when I leave this town
I keep, I keep thinking that it's not goodbye
Keep on thinking it's a time to fly

So today was my last day of classes at George Mason. It's kinda sad to think about actually. I have been talking to Leanne over Facebook about her paper. Hopefully she'll finish it soon so that I have time to critique it before Wednesday. What she had in her first draft was very good, it just needed to be finished and polished.

Critique of Leanne's First Draft

Download leanne_draft_1.doc

Download critique_of_leanne_draft_1.docx

I spent a great deal of time going over Leanne's first draft and have uploaded a copy of it with my comments and edits in addition to my critique of it. I hope that her second draft is completed with enough time to allow me to critique it before the end of the semester!!!! She has a very interesting topic and has clearly done a great deal of work ... she just needs to finish it.

To do list:

1. elaborate on my conclusions
2. explain in paper what a Sanborn map is? Several students have requested this to assist them in reading my paper, but I'm not sure it's necessary for Prof. Petrik ...
3. Find more to substantiate my conclusions
4. Critique Leanne's first draft in detail
5. Critique Leanne's second/final draft

Progress

I have been working on my powerpoint presentation, focusing as much on the conclusions I reached from the data rather than the data itself because the data is pretty much just numbers. Additionally, I have been discussing with Leanne over Facebook the progress she is making on her paper because I am to critique it. The gist of our discussions have been my urging her to do it so that I can critique it by next class and her arguing that she has a week. Although I am sure that Leanne will have the paper done in time to submit it to Prof. Petrik I am concerned that I will not have enough time to critique as that is due the same day. In the meantime, I am going to give her a more detailed critique on her first draft. Hopefully this will help!

Sick as a dog

So I have been sick for the past week. Oral presentations are this week and I can't talk without having a coughing fit. However, I have been doing as much work as I can on the paper for hist 300. I found a book that discussing how the Mormons recruited over time, including a section on recruitment in the late 19th century. I was able to use this information to further contextualize the results of my data study. I added this information to my paper, the most recent of which is linked below. For those who read the paper, the Sanborn Maps I used are in my photo album. Please feel free to look at them if you have questions.

Download PAPER2.doc

Take Two!

The sources that I found to contextualize my data have been incorporated and the paper is much more interesting now! Although I found several journal articles and books that discussed European immigration to the West, this journal discussed the urban planning and growth of Salt Lake City. It is in the new bibliography!!!!

Additionally, I turned the data into a table which is much more readable. That is also uploaded below. Sheet Three is the one with the table on it!!!

Download PAPER2.doc

Download immigrantaddresses.xls

MIA

Ok, so I haven't been able to get proper internet access for the past week so I have been unable to post critiques and comments until just now. I commented on Leanne's paper and will go through to see who has not had a paper commented on yet so that I can help them out.

While I have been unable to POST to the blog this week I have not been idle. I discussed my paper with Kelly last week and listened to what both she and Prof. Petrik had to say about contextualizing the data that I have. I have been searching for sources to back up the information that Prof. Petrik gave me during our conference last week about Mormon recruiting goals.

Additionally, a friend of mine has family that currently lives in Salt Lake City so I have been discussing with her (Cristen Hazur) current issues of diversity there. Now, as in 1884, there was very little in the way of ethnic diversity. The VAST majority of people living in Salt Lake City are white. People of Asian, Middle-Eastern, and African backgrounds are few and far between. One of Cristen's friends from Salt Lake City came to visit her here and was very surprised by the sheer number of black people that existed here. She had never seen so many non-White persons in her entire life as she had simply walking through the mall or around campus.

I still need to do more research to see if there was any sort of religious significance to living near the Temple and I would REALLY like to find a way of determining the religious composition of Salt Lake City but I fear that THAT would take another massive research project that I do not have the time to complete for this class. However, it would be something very interesting to look at in the future.

Critiques welcome!

Ok, so I've been having some trouble with getting stuff posted properly up here. Hopefully the rough draft will post properly.

Word of warning: my research project is structured very differently from most people and most of the work involved crunching numbers. Consequently the actual WRITTEN paper will be much shorter than most of yours. Download PAPER.doc