Last week in ASTU100, the class wrote essays on A Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. For the assignment, we were to interview our peers and gather information for our essays from their feedback. Their feedback coming from a question formulated from the topic of our essays. When first explained what we were to do to prepare for the essay, I and many of my peers were confused by the task. However, after doing the interviews and information gathering, I was excited to start collecting my best feedback and construct my essay. The essay seemed so easy to write! Using what I had learned from my peers and combining it with what I knew to create new, more researched responses to my essay question.
This was a great assignment. I would highly recommend that other professors have their students, even if only in their first year, gather their own, primary research for one of their term essays.
My step-mom is a professor at SFU and in her field, she is always doing research. I mean, that’s her job. I always thought of doing research as a boring, lengthy process. Research is imperative to publishing. You need to backup your theories. Nevertheless, I’ve always considered it to be very boring.
Not only was gathering information from my classmates interesting, it was nice to get other’s points of view in the class. So often, we each hand in our own essays without seeing anyone else’s and get them back without sharing what quality of paper has received what mark. Obviously, if I were to write a horrible essay and in return get a horrible mark, I would not want to share with the class. However, I think students should be more open with their marks, so that we can all grow and become more academically successful together.
I really appreciated my peers sharing so many good ideas with me. I literally could not have completed my essay without them. My question inspired them and their answers inspired me. I loved it! I hope I was able to do the same for them.
My opinion on my step-mom’s job has completely changed. I can see how meeting new people with new ideas can be exciting. I can see how doing research can be a job that somebody can enjoy. I never thought that I would ever become a researcher in my career, but now the idea doesn’t seem terrible. In fact, if ever I became a researcher, I now know that I would enjoy it.
ASTU100, we’re all real researchers now!
