Got chewed out by a poli sci TA for using 'biased sources' in a debate paper

Last semester at UNC Chapel Hill, my TA gave me a C- on a paper about campus protest policies and said I relied too much on op-eds from The Daily Tar Heel instead of peer-reviewed journals. She told me I needed to cite at least 8 academic sources for a 10-page paper, not just news articles from last spring. So I spent a whole weekend in Davis Library digging through JSTOR instead of going to parties, and honestly my argument got way stronger even if I was salty about it at first. Has anyone else had a professor or TA totally reshape how you research free speech topics on campus?

2 comments

2 Comments

burns.ruby17d agoMost Upvoted

Yeah the library grind is rough but it paid off eventually. I remember reading this piece in The Atlantic about how campus speech debates are basically a proxy war for bigger political fights. That article made me realize these TA's aren't just being jerks, they're trying to teach you how to build a case that can't get torn apart by someone with a different worldview. The Daily Tar Heel is great for local flavor but it's not gonna hold up against a professor who reads 40 papers a semester. You gotta stack those peer reviewed sources like bricks. Davis Library weekends suck but that's just the price of admission.

troy_wilson817d ago

Man, that library grind is rough but it paid off.