For my capstone project, I plan to conclude the bulk of my background research by February 9. This will include reading the entirety of Dean Spade’s Normal Life, selections from The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff, and additional resources on data violence. I know that I am lacking knowledge about “big data” and certain administration processes of healthcare, but I hope to fill in these gaps so that I do not make glaring mistakes. Through the research process, I will be working on an informal annotated bibliography of sorts. I have been collecting articles for some time now and have done a fair amount of reading, so I would like to begin working on an outline for the paper ideally by February 9. The outline will include a thesis, headers for the main sections of the essay, and a breakdown of my argument into a “claim, evidence, reasoning” (CER) format.
After February 9, I will begin composing the essay. This next part is difficult to imagine the scope of time needed, but I hope to have a first draft completed by March first. After which, I will revise on my own, as well as reach out for peer revision and help from our writing resource centers on campus. I plan to have a final draft by March 22nd so that I may have time to complete other requirements of the Scholars Capstone, like the additional paper and presentation. I have never devoted myself to a piece of writing like this before. I remember reading Edgar Allen Poe’s Philosophy of Composition in high school and thinking that the way he described the writing process sounded so romantic: the labor it requires, the constant revisions, and the painstaking details. Yes, I was inspired by that text. Did I continue to vomit out essays hours before their deadlines? Also, yes. So, I am looking forward to seeing what I am capable of when I take the time to let a piece of work marinate throughout the entire process of composition.
Hopefully, I will return here with something that I am proud of. Best of luck to everyone else going through the Capstone process!