With graduation almost here, one of the last classes I needed to complete my major is a course called Senior Seminar. This is pretty much a wrap up English class of everything I have learned throughout my college years. Although it’s a full semester long, the class consists of one project called the colloquium. Though this has many parts to it, it’s only one project in the end. This project is graded by the English department faculty and either earns a pass or failing grade. If you pass your colloquium, you graduate. If you do not pass, you have one chance to revise your work and turn it in again for a second review. This is terrifying. One class, one project. That is what determines my passing on from college. Though not many people fail, it’s still nerve racking.
The colloquium has a preface that consists of about 10 pages and the actual colloquium which consists of 20 pages. Although I am an English major and a writing minor, this is the lengthiest assignment I have done since being at college. The preface is a timeline of everything in my life that has lead me to where I am now and where I want to be once I graduate. This is the easy part although I have been struggling to make mine engaging to the reader. The colloquium is a research assignment. To me, this is the hardest part because I have to take my timeline and transform it into a research project. My professor had us try to find a thread in our timeline to try and make a connection to help lead our research to something focused and something we are passionate about. For me, this is challenging though because all the courses I have taken and all the things I have done in my life are very diverse and unalike one another. Finding my thread isn’t as easy as some people.
Though I have been struggling, I think I am heading in a good direction. I have decided to focus my research on a Nigerian woman named Chamamanda Adichie. I watched a TED Talk last year with her and she talked about the danger of a single story. My thread within my timeline seemed to be voice. Letting mine be heard and helping others have their voices heard. I do think this to be true, but I think it’s difficult to have a research project based on that.
Though this is going to be a long, exhausting challenge, I’m excited to see where this project leads to and to see my final work. I’m excited to see what the English department will think of me and my work once it is completed.