Thesis Thinking

This week the activity that sparked my interest the most was our thesis day with Annaliese. By this class, I did already have the majority of my paper written, so my current thesis was the one I intended to keep. However, I did find it incredibly important to learn the way a student is expected to generate a thesis in the college setting. Annaliese really drove home the idea that a thesis is a driving force for a paper. As well as for this paper it really is a claim that will be elaborated on with evidence throughout the writing. What I personally found interesting was the idea that a thesis statement does not only have to be one sentence at the end of the introduction paragraph. In high school, I was constantly told that if a thesis is longer than one sentence it is too much information, therefore to have a concise thesis that would receive full credit it had to be one sentence. As for its placement at the end of the first paragraph, I was taught that the thesis is most clear if it is placed in that portion of a paper. This has grown to be a habit that I cannot break myself out of. As for how I took those ‘rules’ with this paper’s thesis, I did decide that it was best to place it at the end of my intro, but I did make it 2-3 sentences long. After listening to Analiese’s lecture on thesis generation I felt much more comfortable with the idea of extending my thesis beyond one sentence. Not only did this class meeting with her break the high school stereotype of thesis writing, but it also made me feel much more confident in my paper and the words I had put in it.