Former English teacher? MiniPaper? I think yes!

I know we've all had one. You know, that teacher that changed your life forever, and whose memory retains that lingering sentimental/academic halo even after all these years. Allow me to introduce you to mine: Mr. Nagro, my Shakespeare, sophomore honors, and AP English teacher.

Due to his challenging course and no-nonsense teaching style, Mr. Nagro is considered by some to be the most feared teacher at Timpanogos High. You see, Mr. Nagro loves to play devil's advocate; as students, if we ever evaluated a text on too shallow a level, or took a certain moral belief for granted, he was quick to pick at our previously unshaken assumptions about literature, life, English, etc. Imagine our surprise, we little sophomores, at meeting this man so unlike the complacent pedagogues of years past. Many students bowed down to him in the classroom, then breathed in an air of complaint once they reached the outer doors, but that always bothered me. Teacher says something with which you disagree? Tell him! Argue with him! (Ok, well maybe not argue. Make your point respectfully and intelligently, then wait to hear his side. He is probably smarter than you anyway, but still share your opinion when you feel the need.) It was my tendency to do so that forged a friendship between the two of us. He is a great man, one that helped bring my intellect into the realm of intelligent and active expression. So why not talk with him about my thesis topic?

We've been emailing back and forth, discussing social restrictions and the power of the individual against the orthodoxy of the majority. In my research and brainstorming, I've focused largely on the reasons that an individual might be motivated to confess, and how confession can have effects besides internal ones. Mr. Nagro drew my attention to a list of big political scandals that came down to confession vs. concealment, and the effects those had on the public and those political careers.Take, for example, Nixon, Clinton, Senator Vitter and Senator Weiner. (Those last two required a quick Google search refresher, I am embarassed to say.) After looking those over, I realized something- I've been thinking of confession on a very small scale, not in a context of the social magnitude that compares to Hester's. Big political scandals? That is where I need to be if I want to match Hester's social-to-scandal ratio, and I hadn't even considered them until now.

Don't you love it when you have to rethink your thesis the day before you have a mini-paper due? After my chat with MaKenna, I decided to focus only on themes of confession. We pinned it as an agent of change: something that works internal changes on the sinner, alters individual social conditions and has potential to change widely held perceptions of morality. Bing!! Now I'm beginning to think that voluntary vs. forced confession might play an even more vital role than I had granted it previously, and that I'll have to refocus my view on modern confession. So here is all I have to say: Bring it on, Tuesday. I WILL have a solid thesis by the end of the day and it WILL be the most grounded, focused, specific thesis yet.