Completing Your Proposal – Tips!

Hi all!

I try not to email blast twice a week, but now that I’ve looked through a few of your drafts I wanted to give you a bit more information/guidance for next steps for the “completed proposal.”

Your goal is to try to paint as clear a picture as possible in the reviewers’ mind (the reviewers are: will be 2 residents, Ruta, Craig, and 2 NYU faculty). While of course you have a lot of open questions, the more specific/clear you can get (even if you’re not sure!) the more useful this process will be for you.

I really encourage you to *swap with someone else* for feedback right away – especially for the sake of clarity. You could even share with someone outside of class! Get someone to ask you questions, ask them to describe back what they read. Try to assess if you are making logical connections, or if you are leaving crucial connections out. Sometimes things make sense in YOUR head, but you have to write them explicitly for others to understand! If you are struggling with writing, you can get help from the NYU writing center.

After you submit your proposals on Tuesday, it will take about two weeks for us to process. Of course you will continue to make progress, so if you make any major breakthroughs and want to update your proposal, let me/Ruta know and if the reviewers haven’t gotten to it yet – you can submit a change!

Tangential to the proposal itself, I’m noticing that some of you may be at the stage where you’re exploring some interesting high-level concepts, but you might benefit from more specificity that will let you go deeper / dive into making / land on something stickier. Some things to try, if this is you: 

• Can you think about your project through the lens of a specific metaphor? (Think back to Crit Ex, if you remember that section!)
• Can you try an “A to C” exercise? How to: combine your thesis question with a random noun, and see what happens! You could even use a *random noun generator!* I like this one because you can choose easy medium or hard: pictionary noun generator. The more random and unrelated, the better: you may not go with the idea you come up with, but trying to create that connection will take you somewhere surprising and juicer. 
• Here are a few other similar brainstorming activities I like to use to get down to “the project” (prepared for a different class, but elements are relevant!)
• Do more of the “matrix” activity, but with really specific things on each axis!

One last thing – Brian’s OH link above was missing because he prefers to just be emailed to make an appointment, and this is Nun’s Appointment Link. 

If you have any questions about the review process – or anything at all – don’t hesitate to reach out, happy to share!

Sarah

PSSST – IF WE HAVEN’T MET FOR A 1-1 IN A WHILE… IT’S TIME!!! 👀  Make your 1-1 appointment