This City Tech student, a law and paralegal studies major, described a research paper he’d written for his English II class. The assignment required students to consider a work of art and a poem, select a theme common to both, and write a research paper and give an oral presentation in class. The professor assigned the same artwork to several students in the class and facilitated small group discussions in class, which this student found very helpful as he was working on his assignment (noted in his drawing in the bottom right corner):

“So, but that was actually helpful because it gave, the interpretation of the painting is not easy so for all of us to come up with different ideas on the interpretation really, that kind of helped.”

This student also shared time estimates for the steps he took in his research process, and was surprised to realize that he spent more time doing research and gathering sources than he did writing his paper. As well, he found some parts of the assignment to be more challenging than others:

“Creative writing is hard for me so looking at the poem and going line by line to the poem to interpret it, was hard because it took a little bit of digging to find that, that’s where the information’s at. The easiest part was the oral presentation, that to me was the easiest.”