self evaluation

i would first like to start by saying that we are all glad that the class was not like your last class, and therefore i think we got more out of it because you weren't constantly on us to do just the bare minimum. with that said, i think i speak for us all when i say that i got alot out of the class because i put alot in.

the attendance was an excercise in self control. after the scare tactics of the first class, i would say everyone did a great job of getting to class ON TIME!!! i only missed one day towards the end of the semester for a catering job (which was cleared ahead of time) and i even made it to the LOC field trip. although sometimes my blog was not up to date at every class meeting, the final project was completed in a timely fashion (which was probably the single largest accomplishment you wanted for all of us after the horror stories of last semester's last minute grading bonanza.) i did need one extra day and had to drop the paper off at your house in South Riding, but true to my word it was there and it was complete and coherent.
the paper itself was no easy task. this was my first foray into real research, and i would say that my meeting with George Oberle made the difference between an ok and a great paper. i actually wrote hime an email thanking him because i am not sure i could have grasped the online journal searches without his help. the paper nearly killed me, but now that i am on the other side i can say that it really did make me a stronger student. i hope that you liked my final paper (i put alot into it) and i will also be looking for a 499 class on which i can build this into a larger paper. if nothing else, i now have the skills to take 499 head on.
the most beautiful thing about this class is that there were not surprises. i am fairly sure of my final grade because i earned it. i thank you for your no nonsense style of teaching, it really left me no option but to do the work and learn from it. one suggestion would be to require that every student make an appointment with George for next semester, that way there will be no way around it (you could even require that people sign up to see him within the first few weeks of class so there is no delay.)
now for the grade part:
my estimation for grades for this class are as follows-
class attendance and participation- A
charm - A+
blog work - B
research work - B+
final paper - A
-----------------------------------------------
final grade - A

thanks for the great class and i assure you that the skills i have gained will last me a lifetime (or at least through 499)

have a great summer, John Baber

link to paper for comments

http://www.archiva.net/hist300ay05/papers/haber.doc

Bibliography

Here are all the sources that I plan on using in my paper:


Brown, JoAnne. “A Is for Atom, B Is for Bomb: Civil Defense in American Public Education, 1948-1963,” Journal of American History 75, no. 1 (1988): 68-90.

Bryan F. Swan and Generose Dunn. “A Unit on Atomic Energy for Junior High School,” The School Review 62, no. 4 (1954): 231-236.

Henriksen, Margot. Dr. Strangelove’s America: Society and Culture in the Atomic Age. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997.

McClure, Dorothy. “Social Studies Textbooks and Atomic Energy,” The School Review 57, no. 10 (1949) 540-546.

McMahon, Clara. “Civil Defense and Educational Goals,” Elementary School Journal 53, no. 8 (1953): 501-508.

O’Brien, Christopher. “’And everything would be done to protect us’: The Cold War, the bomb and America’s children, 1945-1963.” Ph.D. diss., University of Kansas, 2002.

Ridgway, James. “School Civil Defense Measures,” The Elementary School Journal 54, no. 9 (1954): 501-508.

Scheiback, Michael. “The Atomic Generation: Coming of Age with the Atom, 1945-1955.” Ph.D. diss., University of Kansas, 1993.

Wattenberg, William. “Culture in Catastrophe,” The English Journal 36, no. 6 (1947) 320-321.

Whitfield, Stephen. The Culture of the Cold War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U.P., 1991.

The White House. Executive Order 10952: Assigning Civil Defense Responsibilities to the Secretary of Defense and Others, 1954. Washington, D.C.,: GPO, 1954.

Winkler, Allan. Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety About the Atom. New York: Oxford U.P., 1993.

Update

I am a little behind, and am just now listing the sources that I have found. I've been having problems with the whole cross-referencing thing, so I finally got off my butt and went to see George Oberle in his office in the Johnson Center library yesterday. He was prepared and knowledgeable, and gave me some great suggestions what specific terms I should use when searching. He showed me how to get in touch with a number of Local School Board Record Centers and the Library of Virginia for access to primary sources.
I write this because he said not many people have been there to see him, and I just wanted to tell everyone who reads this blog that he put some time and effort into helping me dig deeper into my research. Many of you may have hit some dead ends along the way, and he showed me ways to always leave a window open. He has done all the same research we are doing now, so he knows in what ways to help any one of us. I know my paper is better off after our meeting.
My next post will be my bibliography, followed soon thereafter by the outline. I am determined to get this paper done right if it kills me!

Post #5: Library of Congress

Our trip to the LOC was most imformative. Now that I possess the pertinent information on how to get down there (Capital South metro stop), where to enter, where to put my coat, and where to eat I am ready to do some actual reseach there. Now that I have my reader's card I was able to hitch a ride with my dad over spring break and check out the LOC while he was at a meeting down there. Although I only had time to get a few books, I am now familiar with the process of cross referencing. I plan on attending the LOC again in the coming two weeks before the rough draft is due so that I can access extra material for my paper.

Post #4: Topic Statement

My paper topic will concern the effect of domestic Cold War propaganda on the youth of Fairfax County during the 1950's. I will obtain information by conducting interviews with people who experienced the Cold War era as children growing up in the Fairfax County area. The first steps of my project will be to collect information on the effects of the Cold War era on children in general and then try to apply it to questions I will use in my interviews. My goal is to take a central theme that I will find through research of the topic and apply it to a more specific case study by interviewing actual witnesses of the events in question. This will allow me to draw specific and personal conclusions about how this time in history affected children.

I have already consulted a web site (there is a post on it) that states how to conduct an oral research. Now I need to collect background information on the Cold War and children so that I can come up with a hypothesis that will be the platform of my interviews. I will talk to Professor Cohen who taught a Cold War history class last semester about possible directions for my thesis and primary sources.

Post #4: Oral History Guidelines

This is a link to the Oral History Association's online pamphlet that talks about the guidelines for conducting proper oral history research. I posted it so that it would be easily accessible as we begin the research paper.
http://omega.dickinson.edu/organizations/oha/pub_eg.html