Since the beginning of this class, I’ve been stressing over the idea of choosing a topic. Since I’ve started really focusing on my English career last spring, I have fallen in love with a lot of the subjects I’ve studied. From race relations, to the Appalachian region, to poetry, I’ve never been at a loss for something interesting to do in the English Department. Surely, picking one thing would way to hard, right? And it was! At first, I was pretty sure that I was going to focus on race relations in Shakespeare, because I had looked at that very closely in the early stages of my English career. When I found out that I didn’t have to do a 35 page paper, I started looking at other things that I could do. I though about poetry, or even a short novella, but nothing stuck for too long. I decided to meet with my Academic advisor, COL Ball for advice. He reminded me of how much I loved the Beat Generation, and suggested that I do something with that. He led me to a site about some of the lesser know Beat writers, including one African-American Beat writer, Ted Joans. I became fixated with this Mr. Joans because he was never talked about, and his poems were complex, and mesmerizing. In one topic, I realized I could look at race relations, poetry, and the Beats, so naturally I was hooked. I am so excited to get started on my project, because I think that it could be something that I cherish forever.