Outline

I am revising my outline. This is not the first time I have reexamined my outline and it will not be the last. Hopefully it is closer to the last than the first but that just seems like wishful thinking.

After some discussions with professors I have found that there are two main ways I can approach this paper. I can lay out all of my evidence (my case study) in the beginning of the paper and then follow it up with analysis and discussion, referring back to my case study periodically as needed. This puts a really big chunk of text (about 15 pages) in the beginning of the paper about something that the reader is not necessarily inclined to care about. It also would also mean that I would have to repeat a lot of facts, stating them first to provide background and second to make my argument. This tactic is easier but clunky, drawn out, and likely less effective at getting my point across.

The second approach uses more of a “clean up as you cook” method. Instead of giving all of the background first an analysis later I will intertwine the two. Of course I have done this for papers in the past but never at a scale this large. While theis option may result in a better paper, it seems like it will be easy to mess it up and difficult to get it right. I am currently pursuing this second approach. I am worried that I will include too much unnecessary information because I know that I have problems letting go of facts that I have unearthed and discoveries that I have made. The editing process, one that I have never enjoyed, is what I will spend 75% of my time on.

I have started to write which has helped me to gain a better understanding of what I am concretely dealing with. I am a little worried about backing up my arguments with the arguments of others but I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it…sometime in the next two weeks.