Research Process

For this draft of my proposal, I took out a significant chunk of my original idea which ended up streamlining my proposal. In writing a research paper from scratch, I realized that I cannot make assumptions when I make a claim. Even though this is the case for any normal paper, in a research paper the sources used are perhaps not familiar to the reader. As a result, I have to back every claim I make with direct evidence. While I make assumptions in crafting my argument, I find that there is trouble in actually finding the sources which agree with those loose assumptions. For example, I still need to find a source that shows that privileged students from wealthy backgrounds are naturally more capable as they come out of high school and have more achievements. Once I find this source, I can link the wealth the positive factors such as high self esteem. In creating this argument, I am questioning the importance of self esteem in different contexts which might not end up being consistent. Furthermore, I encountered a problem when trying to compare the way more “expensive” education differs from “cheaper” education. Expensive education refers to private schools or wealthy public schools in rich towns while cheaper schools may refer to inner city public schools. In my paper, I want to make the claim that the education itself is the variable which changes a student's self esteem, not other factors that may come from privilege such as parents pushing their children in certain ways.