Frances Western Civilization Analysis

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A passing mention Frances Cayton heard in a history class was enough to fuel more than a year of intense research for a paper that never got a grade. In fact, it wasn’t even assigned. But that’s not to say that Frances, a senior at St. Mary’s School in Raleigh, wasn’t rewarded for her effort. Her paper was accepted for publication this fall in The Concord Review, a highly selective quarterly journal that publishes academic research papers from high school students. In Frances’ Western Civilization honors class sophomore year, teacher Lisa Grabarek mentioned that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s policies killed more people than Hitler did, and Frances wanted to know more. Her research led her to the Holodomor, a Ukrainian name (it means “murder…show more content…
She’d nearly forgotten about it by the time she got word that Grabarek was looking for her while she was on campus at the end of summer, just before the school year…show more content…
“I couldn’t really believe it,” Frances said. “Once I got into the process, I was more interested in the actual topic matter, and not really focused on whether this would get published or not. … I was just really surprised and shocked. I guess I still am. Holding it is, like, ‘what?’ ” Frances credits her teacher not only for her notes in the margin in all six of those early drafts, but also for the encouragement to keep going. “I would have never imagined when I first started Western Civilization that that would have even been a possibility in all possible worlds, that I could write a paper that would one day be published,” Frances said. “She was just really encouraging with it and really supportive. I think having that support made me want to follow through even more. It made me feel like I could do it.” As she begins to think about career plans, Frances thinks she might want to play a similar role in the lives of others. “I think it would be interesting to be a professor or a teacher,” she said, “or just to be in a place where I could continue doing my own research but also work with others and kind of help them find their own thing that they’re passionate

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