Assignment: As Confucius said “True wisdom is knowing what you don’t know” and Socrates said “Wisdom is knowing what you don’t know.” This assignment is asking for the story of your personal search for information, as well as what you are learning about the topic in terms of what do you know vs what don’t you know.
- What do you know?
- Explain what you already know about your essential question. Explain why the topic is important to you, and what is motivating your inquiry.
- What understandings and experiences are you bringing with you as you start this research process?
- How have any outside sources informed your understanding of your essential question?
- What don’t you know?
- Why is it important for you to find out more about this question. Tell what you want to know about your essential question?
- What are the areas of inquiry that you think need to be explored?
- What are the other questions that are lurking just beneath the surface of your guiding essential question?
Going into Senior Project, I feel a little bit lost – which I suppose is fitting for the focus of my project. I feel relatively prepared because I have taken Michel’s class on Inferno and done an Honors Project on Purgatorio, but I feel that every time I approach the poem I am overwhelmed by feelings of doubt. How will I be able to pursue all the elements of my project in such little time? Will I have to let some things go? I came to this project about a week ago, as this had been my initial idea but I wasn’t really excited enough about it, until, of course, a week before Senior Project began. I decided to pursue a project centered around Inferno because it is an important year in the poem’s legacy, as it is the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death, but I also for personal reasons. I feel that Dante’s words have been infinitely important to me during high school, and I truly feel that through my darkest points, and even during my lightest points, The Comedy has guided me. I think I’m bringing a lot of personal connection to the project, which is really important to me, and I am also being guided by wonderful Dante-loving individuals who are informing my understanding of Inferno and my essential questions. What I don’t know is what I am going to do with all the information I’m absorbing. Beneath my essential question, I think I’m also venturing to understand what writing and language mean to me, as well as what the creative process looks like.