Changing it up

After struggling with Microsoft Word for hours, I decided today halfway through the thesis period to just give up on using Chicago formatting and instead revert back to MLA. I have no idea how to make the citations-in-footnotes work, and without that my paper won't be a real paper anyhow. To avoid wasting any more time, I decided to move on and just use MLA format, so that I can spend the next few weeks working on my actual presentation. If it needs to be at least 25 minutes, it'll require quite a bit of planning and rehearsing before I present the actual thing in front of my judges.

I plan to email my judges a reminder about the upcoming presentation by the end of next week, and then send them my paper the week after. Meanwhile, I'd like to have this paper done by the end of this week or beginning of next week (I won't be in town next Wednesday to Friday), so that afterwards I can start creating my PowerPoint and assembling whatever other sources I think I'll need (websites, maybe even a few videos here and there) for my final presentation.

More formatting~

I'm still working on figuring out exactly how to make the Chicago formatting work in my paper... To help me with my bibliography, I googled the Chicago formatting style, and I found a few links that have been pretty helpful for me:

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/media/pdf/1300991022_717.pdf

http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html

The sample paper is especially useful - I'm attempting to model my thesis paper on that one. It's not the same, since my paper isn't really a research paper, and I have more web/electronic sources than the sample paper, but it's still really helpful in figuring out the finer points of the formatting, like the line spacing and such.

I chose to include the sources that I referenced, but did not cite directly, on my bibliography. I may remove them later but I think for the most part I'll just leave them in. My bibliography seems more complete with them.

I've been having serious issues with the citations in footnotes, though - and that's mainly because I don't know how to use footnotes. If I enter a citation in a footnote on one page, it shows up on every other page in my paper! I have no idea how to stop Word from doing that, either. This is something I wasn't anticipating, so I'll have to spend some more time figuring out how exactly to get around this problem.

Still working on formatting

Adding in the Chicago formatting to my paper is taking longer than I anticipated, because there are actually a lot of things that I need to make sure I keep track of, besides the in-line citations with works in the footnotes. I'm still working out the finer details of the formatting, including line spacing, italicizing, etc.

I realized today that my paper was only 24 pages (because of the spacing that somehow was awkwardly messed up when I opened the file today), so I added a bit more to the child education section. I also added another section to the paper wherein I talked about the stories of the children I'd received as the Readathon progressed, and how it made me feel proud and excited that my volunteer work was, in fact, making a difference and motivated me to continue fundraising.

I think I may need to somehow find a way to incorporate more sources into my paper - since I intended this paper to be a personal account and not a research paper, I'm not sure if there's a minimum number of sources we're required to reference or cite. If I can list sources I referenced (but did not cite directly in the paper itself), then I can add a few more to my list. If not, I'll probably have to add even more stuff to the paper. We'll see; for now, I'm just working on adding the in-text citations and full citations in the footnotes.

Absent~

I was not in class today because the choir went to compete at American Classic Choir Festival. We did really well, too! :)

Decided on a format

Today in thesis, I worked some more on my paper. But first, I went around to my A day teachers and told them I wouldn't be in class on Friday because of choir again and talked with a couple of my classmates about SNHS things.

After looking through the last email and reading through the OWL website, I decided to try Chicago formatting in my paper. I think it'll work out pretty nicely; it's just going to take some work. I've never used a format that's not MLA before, so figuring out the whole footnotes thing and in-text superscripts will probably take a while. But I'm up for the challenge! Having my paper done already is a huge plus, because I still have about 3-4 weeks before my presentation. I'm hoping to have my paper completely done by the end of next week or so, though, so that I can spend some time creating the PowerPoint for my final presentation.

In class today, I also completed the child education section of my paper. It's shorter than I was initially anticipating, but that's not necessarily a bad thing - I might add more stuff to it later, but my paper is still 26 pages. It was 28 pages after I added the child education section, but then I went through the entire paper and started adding in the Chicago formatting - one of the things I had to do was single-space all the quoted text. That shortened the length of my paper by two pages.

In the next few classes, I hope to finish adding the Chicago formatting into my paper and then get started on my presentation preparation.

Hooray for productivity over break!

Spring break was really great for me thesis-wise because I finished my paper! I have my first draft complete, and it's 26 pages double spaced. Today in thesis I spent time reading through it again (I hadn't looked at it since I finished, because I wanted to give myself some time away from it to be able to look at it again with a fresh pair of eyes) and editing the paper. I have to cut down on some of it, probably, to meet the length requirement, but otherwise I think I'm good. I found out today that the minimum length was 25 pages, not the maximum - I can go up to 35 or even 40 pages, if I want! I doubt I'll do that, but still, it's nice to know I won't have to worry about going overboard.

I also started working on the child education part of my paper; I had left that for last because that was the section that would require actual research and looking up sources and using citations and all that. Since the rest of my paper is just a personal account, it doesn't really have the look of a research paper (because it's not) and so I decided to leave the actual research-y stuff for last.

In the coming class periods, I intend to complete the child education section of my paper (shouldn't take more than 2-3 class periods, I hope) and then go into revising/editing the entire paper. I'm going to have to work out how I'm going to use a citation format though - I realize that I can't just use it in that one section of my paper; it'll have to be throughout. I'll see what I can do.

Absent today~

I was not in thesis today because the choir was at UIL competition all day. (We did pretty well, too, which was exciting!)