This week we started the dreaded junior theme. Our mission is to ask a specific "why question" about a controversial topic in the United States. While I did have a variety of topics in mind, one kind of stood out to me. I don't want to state my "why question," because odds are it isn't 100% true to what my final question will be, and I will likely blog about my topic in future blogs. However, I do want to address some ideas that I had that I am not planning on writing a 5 to 7 page paper on.
My current question largely involves the US media and how it influences people's views on global warming, and when I thought deeper about how much the media influences us, a few more topics came to my mind. For one, a question I asked myself was: "Why are electronic/hip-hop/rap songs SO popular right now? Why are they played all over the radio?" These questions led me to even more inquiries: "Is it because people actually prefer this kind of music, or are these artists given more opportunities than artists of other genres? If so, why? What else does the media have such an influence on?" Now, I really would like to find the answers to these questions, but it would be ridiculous to try to fit all of these questions into a short-ish paper.
But that's what I like about the Junior Theme; we are forced to ask questions we would normally never ask.With the Junior Theme project, you really have to be thorough in your research and the topic-narrowing process. There are so many questions to answer, but with only a few pages to answer them, you have to focus on just a few questions.
I like the title of this post. Freshman year I already knew what Junior Theme was, based on information given to me by my friends in older grades. Now that it's here, however, I'm finding that it's not nearly as stressful as I expected (at least, not yet). I'm glad that Bolos and Doc OC remind us that we'll all be at different points in the process, and that it's okay not to be sure yet of what our final product will look like.
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