Just finished my Lib Arts Capstone at TESU

[rlw74]

I personally was not able to use sample papers I found here. I structured my module 2 based on a couple sample papers I found in the forum and it turned out it wasn't what my professor wanted. Fortunately, I hadn't submitted anything, but I did have to re-write a lot and move most of it into module 4 based on the sample my professor provided. Your choice of professor will really affect a lot of your experience and expectations, and you can not really prepare yourself for what to expect until you are in the course and know what s/he wants.

I did feel that content didn't matter much - obviously if the sub-questions and content were way off base I know it would have been pointed out. However, I felt my paper was graded almost entirely based on how well I used APA format. That will really depend on the professor.

I would pick really narrow sub-questions. Most professors will edit them. My main question, just by changing one word made it more manageable. Maybe have four or five sub-questions picked out in case you cannot find the research you need, but only write on three at the most if you can help it. Otherwise, you'll end up with a lot of pages and extra work.

The capstone was a valuable experience as I've had to write a lot of APA papers in grad school. However, it's not a typical APA paper. The modules help break it down into manageable chunks but I felt it was a lot of starting and stopping and redundancy. Four separate introductions and conclusions in the same paper isn't normal.

To prepare ahead, I would just read about your subject as much as you can. You won't use half of it and you might even change your angle a lot, but you'll have a solid base. Most people get really bogged down in the research. It's the most time-consuming part. Picking a topic you already know a lot about will help too. I picked something I was really comfortable with and had been reading about for more than year. It was not hard to find the resources I needed and I had a pretty good idea what questions would work or not work. Even with that, I regret I didn't narrow things down a lot more. 3/4 of the way through I came across a more interesting angle but didn't want to re-write everything. I was really sick of the whole thing by the end too! Months working on the same topic is hard when you are used to going through a study.com course in a week.