Are You an Intellectual?

Other small learning communities encourage their students to choose research topics that pertain to their SLC. As School for Advanced Studies students, you are free to choose nearly anything, but it should be intellectual.

According to Dictionary.com, the word intellectual as an adjective means:
1. appealing to or engaging the intellect: intellectual pursuits.
2. of or pertaining to the intellect or its use: intellectual powers.
3. possessing or showing intellect or mental capacity, esp. to a high degree: an intellectual person.
4. guided or developed by or relying on the intellect rather than upon emotions or feelings; rational.
5. characterized by or suggesting a predominance of intellect: an intellectual way of speaking.
–noun
6. a person of superior intellect.
7. a person who places a high value on or pursues things of interest to the intellect or the more complex forms and fields of knowledge, as aesthetic or philosophical matters, esp. on an abstract and general level.
8. an extremely rational person; a person who relies on intellect rather than on emotions or feelings.
9. a person professionally engaged in mental labor, as a writer or teacher.

Those of you whose topics are less intellectual by nature will need to find a way to treat your topic in an intellectual manner.

Time Management

By now everyone should have selected a topic, read a general article and written a thesis statement. If you have done that, you should be working on a rough outline for your research paper. This may change as your research progresses, but it it good to have a road map, so you don't get lost or wander around the library, figuratively speaking.

Tomorrow will be a catch-up day for those of you who are behind or need help. I don't want anyone to feel they are hopelessly behind. I also don't want people who are ready to go to feel that they are being held up. Those who are on schedule can go to the library and start their research. The rest will use the laptops to get up to speed.

One more thing: buy some index cards on which to take notes. You can split a set of 100 with a friend. Or you can sell them individually when less organized people become desperate.

Revised Syllabus

I've revised the syllabus for this class to add the date for your presentations to the judges: Tuesday, Jan. 19. The revised syllabus can be downloaded from my teacher page. Click on teacher pages, my name, the name of this class, and you will see it.