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Path to PCA: An Overview

• Stage 1:
  • Understanding how the course works
  • This course centers on you researching and creating an original academic idea concerning your loved narratives.
  • If it's Sci-Fi and/or Fantasy, it'll do.
  • Topics can be from many different narrative sources:
    • comics
    • graphic novels
    • novels
    • animated films and series
    • TV shows
    • films
    • videos games
• Stage 2:
  • Mining ideas from sources on the weboverse.
  • Explore an entire universe of ideas and concepts outside the more simplistic expressions of youtube and twitter.
  • Part of this stage is learning how to differentiate the academic-idea built articles from the pedestrian, parasitical passages on social media/youtube and in sensationalist magazines.
• Stage 3:
  • How to keep track of those sources
  • Ebbinghaus proved that we will forget 75% of what we learned just one week later.
  • We all need a method to better remember the various sources supporting our research.
• Stage 4:
  • Slamming ideas and narratives together to forge a new concept
  • This is where it's at; founding a new, original, never-heard-of idea, concerning your loved narratives.
• Stage 5:
  • Spelunking databases to find academic sources
  • Deeper and more unheard of than academically built popular written ideas are peer reviewed journal articles, where academics talk to like-minded academics about their research.
  • You are about to "meet" academics who spend their lives, their careers, talking about that very thing you love.
• Stage 6:
  • Writing a 300 word abstract of your new concept/idea
  • This is the big writing in the course.
  • One page, double spaced.
  • A concise discussion of your overall new idea and sub-points.
• Stage 7:
  • Learning layout/design to create a new poster
  • This is the way...of the digital world.
  • If it looks bad, people will think it is bad, from power points to websites.
  • At this stage, you'll learn how to speak visually
• Stage 8:
  • Over three weeks, babbling each week (speaking) for 5 minutes, then 10 minutes, then 15 minutes on your idea
  • There's plenty of research revealing that public speaking is people's worst fear.
  • This ain't that.
  • It's not public speaking when it's a topic you love and the audience seeks out YOU because they WANT to hear what YOU have to say.

Optional: Spring Term

• Stage 9:
  • Attending FURC in February
  • Two days at USF; one hour of discussing your poster to passers-by.
• Stage 10:
  • Presenting at PCA in April
  • Travel to New Orleans and present your idea to a room of people who love your topic too.
• Stage 11:
  • Writing the idea as an academic article in the Summer
  • Preparing for upper division (Bachelors) work and for graduate school work.