The toughest thing of the summer school in VCU is undoubtlessly the 4-page paper.I have never written a 1500-word paper before.
What topic should I focus on?
How can I develop my ideas?
How to organize the paragraphe?
How to write in an academic and professional way?
......
All kinds of problems came to my mind when I started to work on my paper.The topic range was so large that I was not able to figure out a specific one.I kept changing my mind on the topic for several times, from history to culture and finally I decided to write something that related to my major, so I chose to write on the Great Depression in America.
Since I had a class on economic history of America last semester, I am quite familiar with this importment event in American history. And I read some paper when I studied this class, so it is not hard for me to find the materials.
But how to organize this materials and form my own opinion is the most difficult thing.And I am still working on it.
Thursday, when Matt finished reading my draft, he did give me some helpful advice. And I found out a big difference between paper in America and in China. In China, writers like to be professional and explain things in an academic way, which often confuses readers. If a paper is not well understood, people may think it is a valuable one. And keep studying it even though it just explains the topic in some obscure words. But in America, writers are supposed to make the paper easy to understand even make it easy to those who know nothing about the topic.So I always find that American papers are easy to catch the writers' ideas. Well~it is really a big difference.