Soon I will be posting a picture of my “territory map” – a map of my thoughts between the sources I have read so far. I found myself thinking in the order I read things – A BIG NO NO. But, I think that just proves how extra extra important it is to understand how the sources talk and work together before you even begin to write. This is something I plan to do for the rest of my essays (in all classes) because I have always had difficulty with organization and clarity in my writing. Underneath the territory map I will explain it all!
Time to keep going! (This is the middle of the beginning of a long process!)
Source: Tenor
GAP: gaps are good! I can analyze the gaps and then start a deeper conversation with other sources! I have a pretty clear gap in the UC davis source – they mention how much better the athlete’s grades are (with no explanation – it was more a data report) and I want to investigate and bring to my audience’s attention this GAP. I can build off this as it brings a great chance for an introduction to many of my sources. While reading this, I was near my brother (who graduated from Vanderbilt 3 years ago) and I asked if he ever saw athletes get special easy classes – thinking the answer would obviously be no because a) vandy isn’t too athletically competitive and b) their sports are not even that good and c) they seem like a respectable institution, I was wrong. He brought up some hilarious classes that he heard about, but also brought to my attention something a lot of my academic sources did not even mention – teams often travel together, so they should take classes at least all together (but not easier classes!).
As I read through my sources, I start to notice each author kind of puts a blame on someone for these scandal – the NCAA, the primary schools that are to blame for supporting athletes slack, the coaches, the administration, the students….
Also, I’ve come across a source I would usually forget about and pretend I didn’t read… but this source was an exceptional outlier in that it gave a case of a young man who got hurt by the NCAA because he had a tutor who changed 3 of his sentences in one essay ever. Because of that he never got to play football again, and now has a very simple blue collar job. This source kind of starts dialogue with the sources who blame the NCAA – maybe they are not to blame for everything.
As I reflect so far on this process – I find myself a bit lost. I’m not sure if my SCU archival artifact will have a significant presence in my essay, other than just being another example and I guess relating to my campus (where I could also pull in my survey demographics, etc). I also have felt a little confused on what the style of writing it for each assignment, and I’m worried I might majorly screw-up and write something totally wrong! Overall I am intimidated, but I’m not sure if there’s anyway to get over that then just start writing!!