For one of the class's assignments, we were asked to write a research paper on anything somehow pertaining to the book. This seemed like somewhat of a challenge for me because it was a research paper with so much freedom and room for creativity - it was something I had never really done before because most of my research papers in high school had some guidelines that we had to follow with choosing our topics, if not simply giving us the topic to research. This was completely open-ended which though seemed exciting, was fairly nerve-racking as well.
I thought about what I was interested in. I considered past experiences of mine; anything that could pertain to anything related to the book. I was stuck and didn't know where to look. My teacher, Drew, told me to think about anything that I was passionate about, or maybe something I was involved in during high school.
I looked back to my resume that I hadn't touched since I was applying to college, and under 'Activities' I saw 'Panel on Gender and Race'. I remembered back to my freshman and sophomore year: a history teacher of mine saw a passion that I had for discussion and more specifically, race and religion. I was fascinated with how race, religion and gender influenced social scenes in high school and I wanted to find more people with that same interest. The following week, I was invited to take part in a panel where students from bordering school districts representing different ethnicities and religions met to talk about high school and the role that these characteristics played in defining our lives.
We began to talk about gender roles in literature, and one girl began talking about this idea of a damsel in distress and how women are often portrayed as weak and incapable without a man. The example she used that stuck with me the most became a focal point for my research paper - Cinderella.
