As spring quarter and this school year comes to a close, I think it is the perfect time to reflect on my time in Humanities Core. Coming into this course, I was nervous about taking a year-long college level English class and having to write tons of essays. While I definitely did write a lot in the past three quarters, I accomplished more than just that. Through the numerous readings, lectures, and seminars, I was able to gain an understanding and engage with topics that I would have never even considered before. From the didactic lessons in Kalila wa Dimna, to the significance of the llama to the Incas, to the various animals as karmic agents in Indian thought, I challenged myself to think critically about how the relationships between humans and animals have evolved over time.

In regards to this quarter specifically and the much anticipated research project, I would say that I faced quite a few difficulties. This quarter in general was the toughest one so far, having endured two previous quarters and feeling a bit defeated. Due to a number of unforeseen circumstances, I did not have as much time as I would have liked to really immerse myself in the research project. However, with this being said, I was still able to conduct a substantial amount of research and learn a lot about the relevance of both historical representations and modern day issues in animated films like Zootopia.

Through the research process, I picked up a valuable tool that I believe I will use again in other courses. That tool is Google Scholar, which I used to find all my secondary sources such as scholarly articles and scientific journals. I found this tool to be extremely valuable, as it filtered out any unreliable or irrelevant sources, allowing me to focus on the topics that I intended to research.

Another element of this research project that contributed to me growing as a writer was the working draft, in which I created an extended outline of my paper. In previous essays, I had always begun by forming cohesive thoughts and writing full paragraphs in the working draft. However, when starting the working draft for this research paper, I felt extremely overwhelmed and had no idea where to start. I took a step back, and realized that the factor that was throwing me off was the multitude of sources that I had collected. I had all these useful sources and relevant evidence, but they were disorganized and I hadn't quite connected the ideas between the sources. Therefore, I decided to draft a detailed outline, in which my evidence was allocated to the different arguments I wanted to make. This extra step was very beneficial to me when it came to creating my final draft.

My biggest takeaway from this research project would be to carefully budget my time. I was doing a good job at the beginning of the quarter, making sure I was collecting secondary sources, evaluating my primary source in depth, and developing research questions. However, where I fell behind was the final annotated bibliography. I had underestimated how involved this assignment was and how crucial it was to constructing my research paper. I ended up finishing the annotated bibliography all at once, which was definitely exhausting and probably not the best way to complete it. Nonetheless, I successfully submitted the assignment and realized afterwards how important it was to writing my final essay. In the past week, as I have been writing my final essay, I have found myself constantly referring back to the annotated bibliography to relate sources and pull evidence to support my arguments.

All in all, this research project has been a learning experience like no other. It taught me how to engage with reliable sources, examine film as an educational type of media, and compile vast amounts of information from countless scholars to form my own, informed arguments. Logging off my first year of college, I feel that Humanities Core has challenged me to be a better thinker and has sufficiently prepared me to take that critical mindset to other fields of study outside the humanities.