posted
This past June I sent in my submission to the Phi Alpha Theta national history paper prize competition. Phi Alpha Theta is the national history honors society. I'd worked on this paper in a variety of formats for almost a year. Initially it was for HST300, which is a sort of beginner's research class for historians where we do an original research paper using primary source documents and secondary that we have to find on our own, and we do a unit on historiography. At the end of the class we have to produce this paper and it has to be so long and have so many sources. I created a 50 page monstrosity. The following April I had to edit that down to 12 pages for the Michigan Regional PAT Conference, which after much blood, sweat and tears, I did. I won a paper prize for best social history paper at that conference.
For the PAT National Competition, I was allowed to add 13 pages back into the paper, and to be honest, I kind of put it off to the last minute. I ended up putting a lot of my favorite stuff back in that had to be cut originally, but I didn't have time to smooth it out the way I wanted to. I figured it didn't matter anyway, I was never going to win anything and this was really all just for practice.
Fast-forward three months. Last night I had a dream that the results were emailed to us all and that I took second place. Normally I hate dreams like that because they only disappoint me when I find out I really didn't do well at all. Only this time it turned out to be prophetic, because I took second place in the competition! Officially it's the Nels Andrew Cleven Founder’s Paper Prize Award, of which there were two, so I guess I tied for second. It comes with a nice cash prize of a couple hundred dollars, but more importantly...bragging rights! This will look great on my CV when I apply to grad school in two months.
posted
I'm not surprised, based on all the thoughtful, intelligent observations you've posted here. Congratulations!
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Jake: Congratulations, Lyrhawn! I'd be interested in reading your paper.
It's a 25 page long examination of the legislative process involved with passage of the Landrum-Griffin Act, which was a labor law reform bill. There's a longer 48 page version, but I wouldn't subject anyone to that.
Might actually be interesting to see that the rancor we hear now really wasn't terribly different 50 years ago. Maybe less demonization, at least directly from politicians, but the mud was still being slung.
If you're still interested, I'll email you.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
That is AWESOME. Congratulations. I am very happy for you. I remember talking to you when you were telling me that you had to whittle a 50-page paper down to 12 pages, so it's nice to hear the results of your labors!
Posts: 7877 | Registered: Feb 2003
| IP: Logged |
Largely due to winning the National PAT Award, I found out today that I won Oakland U's Undergraduate Distinguished Achievement Award. The award is for one undergrad who does work above and beyond regular coursework to bring distinction to himself and the University. I'm very excited to get the news before I send my grad school applications out, as it's one more thing that I can point to to try and set myself apart from other applicants.
The only down side is that I have to go to winter convocation to accept the award, which is going to be boring. But I'll probably get over that when I get the award check in the mail.
Now if I can just get into grad school...
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Psh. Dude. You are going to get in to grad school.
Sorry I haven't had a chance to really answer your email, life has just been crazy. One of my professors wants me to comp, while taking a full time load, and teaching 144 students. So yeah... trying to get all that worked out. But hopefully this weekend I can sit down and bang out a bit of my experience.
Congrats on the award!
Posts: 2827 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
The only other things I have in the pipeline are departmental honors, and grad school. I figure the departmental honors are probably a pretty good bet at this point.
Grad school however is what's making my blood pressure rise and fall like Japanese prime ministers.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
Just wanted to say that I defended my title. My senior thesis that I submitted before I graduated last year to the same Phi Alpha Theta paper contest won this year's Nels Andrew Cleven prize. I also won another regional PAT conference award with the same paper last March.
This paper was on a Detroit reverend, Charles Hill, and how his detractors used red baiting and anti-communist smear tactics to harm his civil rights work in Detroit between 1935 and 1955. The project was a lot of fun, and I'll probably be getting back into the same type of work in Detroit next summer when I start my MA research.
Now that I'm in grad school, I don't think anyone around here would be much impressed by the award, but hopefully some of my professors from undergrad will get a little geeked about it. I'm still pretty proud of all the work I did back in Michigan.
Next stop is trying to get something published.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[The Wave]](graemlins/thewave.gif)
