Other Senior Projects

I flipped through a few stacks of projects, looking for topics that I could in some way garner some wisdom from. There weren't many that had topics that I could see myself writing anything similar too. Lots of SD, etc.

I found one by Annah Nesbitt, I think, that I read in full. And to be honest it wasn't "so great" to use Derek's terminology. Her paper was written on the commoditization of Che Guevara, and how that has manipulated his image into something that he would be appalled with.

I agreed with the title, and it was a good one. It was frank, and kinda informal, I think it said "You know revolution and all that..." She was referring to the response that one gets when asking some random teenager what Che meant. So her title was great. But her basis for writing the paper was an encounter she had with her little brother, one of those teenagers. Not only did she go into why she chose the topic in too much detail, but the paper itself wasn't what I expected from the title. She ended up writing a biography, and tying in a little bit of theory of why Che was such a good symbol.

She could have written about the "evils of capitalism" or the convenient way Che and his ideas have been pushed out of history books and onto t-shirts instead, but she just fell a little short.

Initial thoughts on my project

I've been having a hard time deciding what to do, and the comments left for about my first post, all encouraging incorporating the pilot in some way haven't helped to clarify things, but I appreciate the support of my classmates.

At the moment the best idea I've come up with is further developing a paper that I began writing over last summer. It's a straight forward research paper, with some room for speculation because of certain holes in available scholarly opinion, on the long-term ramifications of the Clinton impeachment scandal.

There are a lot of things to examine and expound upon. Currently I have about eight and half pages of rough draft that focuses mainly on the elements of constitutional law that were involved in the decisions of the 105th Congress. I only have a paragraph or two on the influence that the scandal had on the political culture of the US, but that's the area that I can do most of my work in.

First of all, there is the argument that the "moral call" position was flopped from democrats to republicans with the scandal. This has a lot of ramifications in terms of the religious fundamentalism that makes up a definitive portion of Bush II's platform/administration.

Also there are questions of how the scandal affected the election of 2000, and even 2004.

More importantly the apparent lack of attention the government paid to polls during the impeachment scandal has held true through the Iraq conflict as increasingly negative public opinion seems to have little or no effect on the actions of the government.

Additionally the creation of the moveon organization, which revolves around email, is one of the first major examples of the digital/internet age making its way into politics. This is substantial for discussion because the organization was formed around the need for moving the Democratic Party away or on from the scandal and its ensuing issues with the electorate.

There's a lot to talk about, and I could easily make this topic into a substantial research assignment, but as I said I am really intrigued by using the pilot in some way. Perhaps writing the paper, and then publishing it in the pilot as a serial? But that would marginalize the pilot itself...I dunno.

Notes on myself

My name is Patrick McCaully, my concentration is officially titled Liberal Studies of the Modern Period and my minor is in Political Science. When I entered Appalachian State I was a member of Watauga College and was undecided as to the course of my undergraduate career. I really didn't know what to do, so I took a lot of classes that simply sparked some form of interest.

After doing this for two years, I found myself with an abundance of IDS classes, quite a few PS classes and a little bit of everything else. My interests have always been centered around politics, but I also feel that in order to fully understand the things talked about in PS classes, it's best to have a bit of general background in History, and to an extent English. Not to mention that these other classes are just plain interesting in their own regard.

Liberal Studies of the Modern Period as a concentration allowed me to continue taking classes that interested me, no matter what department they were in, and apply them all to one degree. Rather than saying I fell ass-backwards into it, I prefer to say that it best fit my interests.

Currently my primary interest is writing, mostly about politics. I am one of three editors for the Pilot, which you might have seen around campus, and I really enjoy both writing for it and putting it together. My pieces for the Pilot generally range from commentary on events or people to interviews and more straight forward research.

I still don’t really know where I want to go with my senior project, but it will certainly involve writing in some way and probably take the form of a research project/paper.