My name is Dennis, and I have a problem. I am afflicted with what my friends call "academic butterfly syndrome." One minute I'm down a rabbit hole about the mating habits of seahorses, and the next I'm watching a documentary about the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, and then I'm reading about the philosophy of stoicism. My brain is just a giant pinball machine of random facts and fleeting passions.
So you can imagine my current state of paralysis. We have to choose our own topic for our final informative essay in my composition class, and I am completely frozen. The prompt is wide open: "Write about a process, event, or concept that interests you." INTERESTS ME? Everything interests me! I spent two hours last night just scrolling through Wikipedia's "Featured Articles" section, getting more and more excited and more and more overwhelmed. I almost started an essay on the history of pizza, then switched to the science of sleep paralysis, and then almost committed to the life cycle of a star.
My fear is that I'll pick something and then, halfway through the research, discover a new topic that I'm way more passionate about and completely abandon the first one. This has happened before. I have three half-finished essays in my Google Drive from last semester alone. It's like academic commitment issues.
How do you guys do it? How do you pick one thing? Do you go with your gut? Do you choose the topic with the most available sources? Do you think about what will impress the professor? I need a decision-making framework, or maybe just someone to tell me what to write about. I'm leaning toward the history of pizza right now... but also, have you guys seen the new docs about deep-sea creatures? AHHH. Help me before I spiral again!
So you can imagine my current state of paralysis. We have to choose our own topic for our final informative essay in my composition class, and I am completely frozen. The prompt is wide open: "Write about a process, event, or concept that interests you." INTERESTS ME? Everything interests me! I spent two hours last night just scrolling through Wikipedia's "Featured Articles" section, getting more and more excited and more and more overwhelmed. I almost started an essay on the history of pizza, then switched to the science of sleep paralysis, and then almost committed to the life cycle of a star.
My fear is that I'll pick something and then, halfway through the research, discover a new topic that I'm way more passionate about and completely abandon the first one. This has happened before. I have three half-finished essays in my Google Drive from last semester alone. It's like academic commitment issues.
How do you guys do it? How do you pick one thing? Do you go with your gut? Do you choose the topic with the most available sources? Do you think about what will impress the professor? I need a decision-making framework, or maybe just someone to tell me what to write about. I'm leaning toward the history of pizza right now... but also, have you guys seen the new docs about deep-sea creatures? AHHH. Help me before I spiral again!
