So, mountain man, you continue to disappoint. After a particularly sucky performance on your first major paper (no understanding of style (despite the multiple lectures and book devoted to this topic that you were assigned to read), grammatically poor writing, unclear, failure to do the necessary components of the paper (that were neatly summarized in a handout for you), you set out to work on the final paper for the semester. I instructed all of the students, you included, to choose a topic that was related to course material (my area of expertise). You have decided to ignore this request despite my warnings that I could not do you as much good as a guide to this paper if I am unfamiliar with the area. To be fair, I cast a very wide net of things that were considered 'my area'.
Mountain man, why do you come to my office with questions ("How can I narrow this down?, Can I discuss this aspect of X component?, Is this a good hypothesis?)--This is an entirely novel area of study for me. After advising as best I could, why do you fail to take my suggestions.
I explain to you that you need to begin reading the articles that you have and you say you are going to find 20 more sources.
I explain that you should outline and summarize what you read as you go, and you insist you read all of the articles and then sit down to write the paper.
I explain that it is difficult to have a hypothesis for this paper if you haven't first read the literature that is out there, you insist as soon as you have figured out your hypothesis, you will sit down and work on literature review.
Are you trying to make my head explode. Just when I thought I had it bad, I found this post on RYS. Enjoy--it sure made me feel better about my difficult students.
