Research can give you insight, and it can drive you insane.
Five weeks into this course, and I have started to see this course for what it is. On the one hand, you learn a whole lot about an issue of public importance. And in the process, you learn about how to find useful and credible research sources, write like a grammatically-correct maniac, and be a time-managing pro (in theory).
I have finally begun to understand why the course works the way it does. This week, we completed our "Compare and Contrast" warm ups where we had to - surprise, surprise - compare and contrast the main assertions of six of our sources to the main assertions of our other sources.
Had I been asked to work on this assignment two weeks ago, I would have cried.
The reason I think comparing and contrasting sources works so well at this stage in the process is because we have started to develop a proper schema for our topics. We can see the links between what our sources claim is true. We start to talk using technical jargon, and when we read new sources, we know, more or less, where to fit it in in the grand scheme of things.
My schema, though, is still expanding. Last week while searching for more recent general periodicals, I uncovered a recent Oregon case that involved eyewitness identification admissibility. In the State v. Samuel Adam Lawson, the Oregon Supreme Court reversed a decision from the court of appeals that convicted Lawson for the murder of Noris Hilde. Most interestingly, it revised the Classen reliability test in the process - basically Oregon's version of the federal Manson test that determines if eyewitness IDs made under suggestive circumstances are still reliable enough to be presented in court. I will be looking further into the Classen test and the subsequent revisions to it this week. Hopefully I will be able to use it as a comparison standard against the federal Manson test, which is the focus of my research paper.
With my interviews done, and only a couple more sources to find, I am looking forward to catching up this Spring Break. Have a wonderful week ahead, everyone!