My Capstone Project

My capstone paper was probably one of the hardest papers I ever had to write during my college career. My capstone was probably so difficult to write because I knew that this would be the last English paper that I would ever have to as an undergraduate.

When I was first told that the capstone would have a minimum of 10 pages I was overjoyed. I heard horror stories of previous English majors who have taken the capstone course talk about having to write a 20+ or even a 30+ paper. However, I soon found out that just because the page limit was much shorter than previous capstone courses - it didn't mean it would be any easier to write - especially since one of the criteria of the paper was that it had to be the best paper that I ever wrote.

After reading a blog from Mick I had a much stronger sense of what direction I wanted my paper to go in. I chose to write 5 poems, each containing several wisdom statements, each poem would be modeled off of the 5 Chinese elements, instead of the 4 western elements like in Elliot's The Four Quartets. I titled my paper The System of Five - I know it seems kind of lame but I like it. Despite the confidence that I had gain after reading Mick's blog I realized how difficult this paper would be to write. I mean this would be the last English paper that I would be writing as an undergraduate. WOW!

At first I tried to put off writing the paper but eventually I realized that I had to get started writing it and the sooner I finished it the better off I would be. When I did start to write it I found myself struggling to finish each poem greatly. Sometimes everything seemed to mesh well together but for the most part it was one big headache. But when I was finished with it I felt a strong sense of accomplishment - after all the poem wasn't to bad. And then I let a close personal friend read it, as well as some co-workers of mine who hate poetry. I told them that the poems were from another student in the class and I had to critique them and I asked them to help me out.

They all read the poems and I was pleasantly surprised when each one told me that they really like the poems and even helped me correct them some. When I told them that I had actually written the poems one co-worker told me that I should write poetry for a living instead of writing books for children - like I plan on doing. I did not know whether I should take that as a compliment or an insult.