As I started Junior Theme last week, I already knew exactly what topic I wanted to discuss in my paper. Since I am a high school male athlete, I am very interested in Title IX and its side-effects on collegiate sports, specifically on men's sports. In addition, because of the fanfare that surrounds the essay, I had heard that the junior theme was a persuasive research paper, and this really cemented the topic that I wanted to do. But, as I should have known, this American Studies class is much different than other classes.
As I soon figured out, going into the junior theme with this mindset is completely wrong. Because I already had an opinion on my topic, I could not research Title IX with an open mind. Instead, I had a very narrow viewpoint that did not grasp the other side of the arguments. When I decided to change topics to something that I had not learned as much about, capital punishment, it was much easier to think of the junior theme as an inquiry and not something that it shouldn't be.
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