Week 7 Blog

Hello again interested readers. This week saw me continue my work towards editing my paper to be sure that it is ready for the College Board deadline, and this week also saw me begin to work on the meat of my project’s presentation, including the general script for what I would say during the presentation. I also began mentally preparing myself for the presentation, which entailed me reading my draft copy of the script aloud and focusing on my tone of voice, posture, eye contact, etc. to be sure that my presentation would meet the standard of excellence that the College Board expects. With all of these goals in mind, it has been a fairly busy and productive week for my project.

I began my week by looking at my own previous PowerPoint work from seminar and focusing on what strengths and weaknesses my past presentations exposed. One of the first weaknesses that I was able to note down was my tendency to be fairly verbose with the writing in my slides, making it seem more like I was simply reading information from a script rather than actually presenting it to the audience. Another trend that I noticed from my slideshows was that I was often relying on my slides to remember what specific information I had to convey at certain times. I noted that I would have to practice and more thoroughly rehearse my presentation this time around and that I would have to avoid even considering my slides an asset for myself, but rather using them only to help the audience better appreciate my own arguments, discoveries, etc. Finally, another trend that I kept track of was that I frequently would only go into as much detail as my paper would, but I have realized that for this presentation I will want to discuss more confusing sections more thoroughly so that the audience is clear on my reasoning throughout the work.

During this week, I also spent a large portion of the time working on my presentation script and on my speaking skills to make sure I would be able to provide a presentation worthy of the time and effort that I put into the project. I began by writing a general summary of each of the elements of the paper and then allotted time to each section based on its importance to the research being conducted and its difficulty of understanding for the audience. I also tried to connect the summaries into a semi-professional format and began practicing reading them aloud to myself, noting what inflection and tone to use for various points in the presentation and getting used to discussing the material in a nonchalant manner.

This week saw me enter into a new and determined focus on mastering the art of presenting. Whether it was looking back and noting the weaker points of my previous seminar presentations or just getting comfortable with presenting the information to an audience, my work was entirely directed towards making a presentation that I could be proud of.

Regards,

Lazar Vukcevic 

Week 6 Blog

Hello once again interested fans and readers. While my last blog had me focused on dealing with the discussion section of my paper and trying to find out where my research would fit into the academic conversation, this week had me switch my focus towards examining the different individual sections of my paper and seeing how to best transition between the different sections. I also continued to use papers similar to my own to get a better understanding for the type of organizational style that would best fit the information that I am trying to present to my readers and audience. With all this in mind, it has been a fairly calm week compared to the others.

The first step that I took this week was to examine the biggest portion of my paper: the literature review. I began by reading the lit review over by itself, taking note of the tone and general voice of this section of my paper. I noticed that for this portion of the paper I was generally very expository and a majority of the lit review was an explanation of terms or ideas relevant to the topic that I would be exploring. While this is essentially the purpose of the lit review, this tone did not continue throughout my paper, so I began to look for ways to slightly modify this tone and make this section of the paper more in line with the rest of it. One of the first measures that I took to attempt to correct this action was leaving in any explanations necessary for the audience’s understanding while still removing those that were not necessary to keep only the vital information. Another step that I took to better connect the lit review to the rest of the paper was to modify the final paragraph to lead into my methods section. This helped to provide the paper with a better flow and made it seem like the two sections were actually connected, rather than separate pieces on the same topic.

Besides my work to better transition within the paper, I also began seriously considering different methods of organization for my paper, such as when to employ sub-headings and a better implementation of footnotes. I found that while there is a consensus for the use of Chicago citation by papers in my field, there is very little agreement on specific paper organization and style, leaving the decision up to me. I found that, for the information being presented, the incorporation of footnotes for definitions in the lit review would likely decrease clutter and make the information more manageable to the audience, and I also noticed that while transitions between the sections of my paper are important, a clear indication of the beginning of a new section is also fairly important to maintaining audience clarity and retention.

This week has seen me place a very direct effort into the elements of organization and the transitional points of my paper, and I have quickly realized just how important a well-organized and clear paper is to the reader, even if the information is fairly clear or straight-forward.

Regards,

Lazar Vukcevic 

Week 5 Blog

Hello again followers and interested readers. As of this week I am pleased to announce that the research and result gathering portion of my project has come to an end. The entirety of my work and goals for the project as of now are to edit the existing material that I have created and to continue my research of how to analyze the results that I currently have. The majority of the work that I allotted time for was to research papers similar to my own to better understand how to discuss the results that I ended up with, but I did also take time to look back at my literature review and try to understand where my research would fit in the current academic conversation. With all this in mind, it has been a very busy week.

My first step was to begin searching for my papers similar to my own. One of the papers that I quickly found to be both similar and useful for my analysis was one entitled “Nuclear Proliferation Case Study,” in which the researchers were studying a number of radical nations that were attempting to proliferate their nuclear arsenals, including North Korea, Iran, and a few others. The focus of the study of these countries is to determine the extent of the nuclear programs of these nations and to determine how faithful the nations that signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) have been. The research is similar to my own as the researchers provided ratings for each nation based on the nation’s honesty about the size and scale of its nuclear programs and its adherence to the NPT, if they did sign it. The researchers explained that one of the limitations of their results is that using a rating based system introduces an element of subjectivity to the research, meaning that this will also be a limitation to my own research. Another helpful piece of insight that this source provided me with is that an important element to my own discussion section is an evaluation of the information with present context. The researchers clearly indicate in their discussion how their research of previous data on nuclear weapons in these nations is relevant presently, and they indicate what this research means for the future of the field, an element I had previously not considered.

Besides examining this similar paper for help with my discussion section, I began to review my literature review to understand where my research best fits in the academic conversation. I presently believe that my paper would best fit into the policy discussion that Iran has been the focus of for the U.S. and many other Western nations, as my research directly evaluates the effectiveness of policy and diplomatic action previously carried out by U.S. presidents.

This week has seen me really ramp up my focus on understanding where my work fits into the academic conversation and I have also placed a larger effort on getting a feel for how to write a proper discussion section for my paper.

Regards,

Lazar Vukcevic