Imagine, if you will, my 5th year history class around last May or so, when everyone was asked to pick a topic for the all-important Special Research project. A naive, fresh faced young Kate, considering herself to be something of a history buff, decides to go against the grain. Dismissing the usual Michael Collins type drivel as strictly for the common plebs, Kate opts for something delightfully obscure; Walt Disney’s contribution to World War II. It’s perfect; as far as she knows it’s never been done before. Hell, most people didn’t even know that Disney made any type of contribution to World War II. History teacher is most impressed by Kate’s little brainwave, and Kate skips off into the sunset full of big plans to do the entire project over the summer. Everyone’s happy.
Fast forward four months, to the day before first draft of said masterpiece is due in for inspection. I don’t think I need to tell you that the whole doing the project over the summer idea came to nothing. Best laid plans of mice and men and all that. I thought that I’d have a decent amount of time to cobble something or other together, but no. Tomorrow, I’m supposed to have something resembling an essay ready. And upon finally reading the book that I ordered sometime in June (yeah, how on the ball am I?), I realised that it’s about as reliable as your average issue of the Sun. As far as I can see, it mostly consists of hearsay, slander, speculation, and stuff that’s just downright made up. For example, I’m very interested to know exactly how the author of this book discovered that Walt enjoyed dressing up in his mother’s clothes as a young’un. So, the only source I have is a load of codswallop (god, I love that word), and only has a paragraph in roughly 200 pages that could be of use to me anyway.
‘Not to worry,’ says I, trying to stay positive, ‘I’ll try find something on the internet’. No joy. I realised for myself exactly why this topic isn’t done very often, there’s basically no information there. A few fairly dodgy looking sites, Wiki (yeah yeah, I know that’s bold but I’m grasping at straws here), and a load of pictures of Disney WWII memorabilia, posters and the like. Cool and all as that is to look at, it’s pretty much useless to me. At this rate, I’ll have to pluck stuff out of the air, which I hear is somewhat frowned upon.
So today, far from getting an epic first draft done, I managed to browse failblog for about 3 hours, eat some rather questionable chocolate rice cakes that my mam had in the fridge, and write this blog entry. I knew it’d be a great procrastination method. 😀 I also ordered another book that might actually be based on a small bit of fact, but since it won’t be coming for another week, it doesn’t help me much in my current predicament.
Gah, curse my over-ambition.
Why don’t you ask your teacher for more time though? I think it’s a bit ridiculous you have to have a first draft in this early…
Ah I know Dick, its totally riduculous…sure this is it.
Is it too late to pick a new topic? I should know as I’m doing the project too, but I’ve know idea when the closing date is. My project is a bit on the ambitious side too, it’s on a local man who my GAA club is named after. (At least it’s original, eh?) I haven’t got too much information on him, hopefully I’ll get to interview a relative of his as a source (fingers crossed she won’t mind). All I’ve done is the outline plan, so I’m hoping I’ve got loads of time left.
Ah no, I doubt it’s too late to change your topic. I mean, we have till the end of March or something, bucketloads of time! At the rate things are going, I might well have to change mine too..
Hey Kate, wow I can’t believe that’s your project because I was initially going to do that as mine too! It’s definitely interesting but after failing to get any sources, I opted for something less interesting but easier. However I do remember watching a Disney propaganda film that may/may not be helpful to you at all but if you want to check it out, here’s a link;
You might have already seen it before but I thought I’d help!:)
Good luck with it all, gosh History is so stressful for Leaving Cert, no?
Wow, seriously? And here was me thinking I’d really broken the mould 😛 Yeah, I know, it is really interesting, way better than your run of the mill stuff, so I’ll try stick it out till the bitter end. 🙂 Ah thanks, I had seen a few of the propaganda films, but not that one somehow..
God yeah, tell me about it, its a good thing I love history, dunno how I’d cope otherwise!