Hey everyone, if you're following along in the syllabus, you're checking in regularly, you know that we've got a major assignment coming up, and of course that would be Paper 1. Paper 1 is going to count for a pretty sizable portion of your cumulative grade, so it's really important to understand what is expected of you, what you need to have done for this assignment. So the first thing that you need to do, if you have not done so already, is download yourself a copy of the Paper 1 guidelines. And there's a couple different places that you can find them. One, if you were to go into the Modules button of Canvas, click on Modules, scroll down to Paper Assignment Resources. That would be one place that you could download the Paper 1 Guidelines.
Or you can click on Assignments, and then you can click on Paper 1, and it should have some guidelines for you there as well. But the point of this video is to get you up and running when it comes to the Guidelines, Expectations, and Requirements. for paper one.
Okay. The first thing I want to do is really break down this question and make sure that we're all on the same page in terms of what's expected of you as far as answering. Okay. The question involves something that Frederick Douglass states in his book, My Bondage and My Freedom. And even if you're not through the entirety of that book, you can tell me that the central claim that he makes is that slavery is a system that victimizes everybody, slaves, slave owners, even non-slave-owning white people, okay?
And so what I'm asking you to do for this paper is how can Douglass make this claim? That's the question that you need to answer. How can Frederick Douglass make this radical claim? Because you really wouldn't expect him to make that sort of claim, considering he was once upon a time a slave in his own right, and he ran away to tell the tale.
So in any case, that is the question I'm asking you to answer. How can Frederick Douglass make this case? The second thing that I really want to emphasize, I want to underscore this very, very deliberately here. This is not a book report.
I've read Frederick Douglass before. I've read his books more times than I really care to remember. I know how it ends. So your job is not just to report on what happens in Frederick Douglass. Your job is to really take information both from our readings that we're getting completed on a week-by-week basis and also from our lectures.
And so, for example, if you're looking to kind of interrogate this idea of the victimization of slave owners, obviously you're going to want to focus on what Frederick Douglass has to say in terms of providing evidence, but you're also going to want to bring in some evidence from our class as well. be that a reading, be that a document, and you can even use something that we maybe used as a quiz leading up to this point in the semester. But you can also bring my lectures into that conversation as well.
As this video series continues to unfold, I'll do my best to kind of try to bring in some ideas from the lectures as well as the readings that might complement some of the concepts that we see inherent in Frederick Douglass. So it is an argumentative paper. which means that you need an argument, a thesis statement. And I want to say something very, very clear right now.
Your thesis statement is the last sentence of the first paragraph. Your thesis statement needs to be in your intro paragraph, and it needs to be the end of the intro paragraph. That's where I want to see your thesis statement. Now, when it comes to what your thesis statement consists of, I'm not really concerned as to...
exactly what that is, but I am concerned as to how you formulate an effective thesis statement. It doesn't have to read like this. This is not the point of this.
I'm just trying to give you some food for thought. But a lot of effective thesis statements when it comes to this paper begin with, Douglas can make this claim because, and then launch into your reason, your rationale as to why you believe he can make a case like this. So it is an argumentative paper.
You need an argument or a thesis statement. If you want to scroll down or look down at the guidelines, that's what I'm going to talk about next. I want to say this very clearly, and it's not a threat. I'm not trying to scare anybody, but I do want us to all be on the same page when it comes to plagiarism.
Do not plagiarize. And the best, most effective way to avoid plagiarism is to stay off the Internet. 90% of the people that get caught plagiarizing, at least in my experience, they didn't really mean to do so. The problem was they waited until the 11th hour and then they began to panic and they tried to get those juices flowing.
But the problem is when you get those juices flowing by... going on to the internet, those juices tend to follow you back into the paper. And if you're not citing your sources, that's going to be a problem when I go ahead to grade the paper.
So best thing that you can do to avoid plagiarism is to stay off the internet, because there are serious consequences for getting caught plagiarizing. We're going to use an MLA format, especially with respect to the citations of the materials in this paper. Now, speaking of the...
materials. I don't want to see any outside sources, okay? You don't need to go to the Texas Labor History Archive and dig through their records. You don't need to take a field trip to Austin.
I've given you so much information that you could probably write me 10 pages and still feel a little bit cramped in doing so. So no outside sources. Just stick to the Douglas readings, our weekly readings, and as well as my lectures, okay?
Please... provide a works cited page. You need to let me know where you're getting your information from. I told you on day one, I'm in the business of trying to develop good, effective academic habits and letting your readers know where you got your information from is a good, effective academic habit.
So a works cited page that comes at the end of your paper. The paper itself is going to need to be at least two pages, two full pages. Starts up here.
Ends down here. Okay, so I want to make sure that we're all clear on that two full pages and no more than three You're gonna double space everything you're gonna use normal default one-inch margins on everything No font may be larger than 12 point or smaller than 12 point 12 point font But the style is essentially up to you. If you're a Calibri person then use Calibri personally I like Times New Roman, but that's just me In any case, no bigger, no smaller than 12. Now, people always ask me, so I'm going to go ahead and answer this question while I'm thinking of it.
What happens if I go over by three lines? Well, if it's three pages plus three more lines, that's forgivable. That's not really going to be penalized.
But if it's three pages plus three more pages, then yeah, that's a problem. Because one of the biggest points here is to really get students to focus and determine for themselves exactly what information is vital. is essential to get their points across to demonstrate their thesis statement, and what bits of information that you might be able to get away with not including.
So you need to be very discriminative. You need to be very selective when it comes to exactly what you're going to use and what you're not going to use. I also want to make sure that your thesis statement appears in bold lettering.
You'd be surprised how many people straight up... I don't know what they're arguing when I ask them to point out their thesis statement. So let me know that you know exactly what you're arguing.
Please, bold letter face that thesis statement. That will help me out a lot. Try not to use personal pronouns.
I'm not going to sink your paper if you do use something to the effect of I think that blah, But I want you to approach this paper as if you're writing it for the Harvard University Press. Bring that level of professionalism to this paper as you're writing it. So instead of I think, one would think.
Do you see how much more professional that sounds? Again, we're trying to develop good academic habits here. The same thing goes for contractions. Like I said with personal pronouns, no, I'm not going to make or break your paper because of this.
But if you can avoid using things like. can't, doesn't, won't, do not, cannot, will not, that just sounds a lot more professional, and that's what we're trying to get done here, okay? And so if you don't follow the guidelines for the formatting of this paper, there will be a penalty that's associated with a failure to do that. And the same thing goes for people that turn in their paper late, okay?
Now, unlike a discussion forum or a quiz, I will accept it late, but just like anything else, if it is late, it will have a penalty, which does include... include weekends. So we're at least a solid week out before this thing is due.
We've got options right now. The day before the paper is due, or worse yet, the day after the paper is due, we're not exactly going to have options. So I can't promise you an extension, but what I will promise you is that I'll hear you out.
If you've gotten a math exam next week, if you've got a lot of family things going on, job interviews, I'll at least hear what you have to say. So be thinking about that. All right.
If you scroll down further, you're going to see some guidelines when it comes to how I want your your sources cited. If you're using one of my lectures. Use my last name and the date I gave the lecture.
You don't remember the date I gave the lecture. Use the title of the lecture. You don't remember the title of the lecture.
Go into Canvas, click on Video Lectures. Every single one of my lectures from now until the end of the semester has already been preloaded on Canvas. There's your title of that lecture. All right?
As far as the weekly readings are concerned, You got a choice here. You can use the word YOP as in the American YOP and the page number that you found that on. Or you can use the person's last name. So for this case, Tom, let's say you're using the Declaration of Independence. That would be Jefferson and whatever page number that's appearing on in your YOP reading.
All I ask is that you stay consistent throughout the course of this paper. don't use Yop and then Jefferson and then Yop again. Okay. Lastly, if you, and you really do need to use Frederick Douglass, Douglass's last name and the page number that you found that information on and the book that you're reading. Remember, I told you that you don't have to have a specific version of Douglass.
If you went to a bookstore and bought one on the cheap, that's great as long as it's the unabridged version, but use that version's page numbers. You don't have to worry about, you know, the one that I assigned or the one that I assigned. the one that's there on canvas, use whatever version that you are reading.
Okay? So I hope that makes sense. And I hope that this video has put your mind at ease a little bit. I know the bark of paper one sounds pretty intense. It sounds pretty intimidating.
I promise you the bark is a lot worse than the bite. Once you get going on this, you're going to take off like a rocket. If you are looking for a little bit more food for thought, there are several other videos.
that will break down the Frederick Douglass reading and link them to various themes, concepts, lectures, readings, etc., etc., that we've been dealing with up until this point in the semester. So, once again, I hope that this was helpful, if for no other reason, that we're all on the same page in terms of what to expect. So, if you'd like to follow me over there, it's the next video down.
In any case, best of luck, everybody. I'm rooting hard for you.