Justin Garlisi, Verrazzano Class of 2021, completed major in History
My experience writing a paper for the
Verrazzano capstone reminds me a lot of my experience taking classes as a
history major. In fact, the process of writing it was not too different from
the time when I wrote a capstone essay in my HST 401 class. Both capstones
required a twelve page paper with lots of research to back them up. Moreover, having
a mentor for the Verrazzano project by my side was similar to having my history
professor critique my drafts. Essay writing is usually the bread and butter of
any history class, with the occasional research paper for dessert. My
Verrazzano capstone addressed sociological issues--not historical ones--but the
process of writing it was about the same as writing a historical research
project. The writing and research skills my history professors taught me came
in handy. Both projects involved diving into CSI’s library to look for
scholarly sources. Thankfully, the Internet cannot catch COVID-19, so the
digital library worked just fine.
I did all of this while sitting on my bed with my laptop in front of me, communicating with my mentor through email. It would have been nice to visit my mentor in person to talk about my work, but the pandemic had our hands tied. Despite that road bump, it did not interfere with my writing. My mentor and my scholarly sources put me on track, and from there I wrote as much as I could. Getting the words right was tough, but I can assure you that my paper was at least quasi-intelligible. Either way, I feel good about finishing it; it put my historian skills to the final test before I graduated.
If I developed my project further (it’s about the stereotypes atheists experience and how atheists respond to them), I would probably look for more testimony from atheists. Without their experiences, it would be difficult to describe how atheists respond to discrimination. I would look for varied testimony to prevent myself from overgeneralizing as well--atheists’ behaviors are not guaranteed to be alike. Another way to develop my research is by looking at the atheist’s backgrounds. I didn’t give their upbringing much attention in my paper, but it is possible something fruitful is waiting to be found there. I do not imagine atheism is the most popular subject among researchers, but there is plenty of scholarly literature available to expand my knowledge on the subject.
