Week 4 - June 16-20

Hiking at Red Bluff this past weekend.

3 Accomplishments

1. I finished a rough draft of my methodology and my literature review. They are very rough, but they are complete.

2. I found more letters that I may be able to use! It depends on what I choose to include, though. The new ones pertain to more post-war activity, such as the World Fair.

3. I was able to create a map using new QGIS skills in class this week. This should be applicable to my project later on.

3 Things Preventing My Best Work

1. Similarly to last week--I haven't written a methodology in years, with my last one being on climate change and botany. It has been a bit of a learning curve, most especially with the differences to the normal history papers that I write.

2. As my project is interdisciplinary, I have been overwhelmed with the amount of sources that are available for my literature review. The combined amount of articles about Eugene Hilgard, the Mississippi Geological Survey, and the Confederate Mining Bureau has led to a large amount of literature to comb through.

3. I wish that there were more examples of the different sections of the paper that we could utilize. Though the one we have is helpful, it is a bit difficult as the topic is so different.

3 Things I Learned This Week

1. I learned how to utilize QGIS to create statistics. This will be helpful for census data.

2. I learned more about how to make my project accessible, and I was able to apply it to my website.

3. I learned more about the USM graduate school. The library science program is interesting.

4. Bonus: I learned more about Pokemon this week from Doctor Professor Eli.

Next Action Step:

I will continue to work on my literature review and methodologies. I would like to clean them up in the next week. I would also like to begin to work on an outline for my paper to begin to develop my argument and thesus.