Worker’s diary – Facharbeit

Week 1: 15.04.-22.04.2008

First of all, I chose two of the books I have borrowed to concentrate on while writing about the first point of my structure “The life of Desmond Tutu”. These books I skimmed first and then marked the important pages and passages with post-its.

Besides, I have to add that I chose books as a basis of this subitem due to the fact that the biographical data I have found on web pages were either incomplete or false. 

So, after having worked through the books, I wrote notes on a paper concerning the issue based on the marked paragraphs. These notes helped me to formulate phrases in my own words and so I began to write the first 3/4 pages.

 

 

By now, I foresaw a problem: I realized that I write/wrote too detailed and that this will be a problem because the number of pages is limited to just 12 (!) pages. 😦

Wondering about how I should solve this problem, I decided to go on like this and to shorten the texts when I have finished the whole Facharbeit.

 

Week 2: 22.04.-29.04.2008

For one thing, I had to go to the library to prolong several books I lent weeks before. For another thing, I finished the second subitem of my structure: Apartheid in South Africa. This time, I did not use the same technique as before, but reword the important passages of my sources directly without taking notes, because this saved a lot of time.

I was glad that I had read the Spiegel article “Die Regenbogen- Nation” before; for the simple reason that it contains the most important facts concerning the historical background of apartheid compared with other material I read.

 

Phew! Obviously, almost half of the work is done. Nevertheless, I am still unsatisfied because there is still the problem that later I have to reduce a lot.

 

Week 3: 29.04-6.05.2008

This week, I glanced over some texts having to do with Tutu’s attitude towards apartheid and his efforts in the struggle against it. The passages which seemed to be important I reread more intensive and marked the most important sentences. Then, I summed up what I found and formulated it in my own words.

 

Altogether, with this technique I wrote about two and a half pages.  I’m relatively satisfied with this accomplishment because before, I have set my sights on handling 3 subitems during the weekend and fortunately I achieved this aim.

In general, I recognized that it is very useful to set objectives during the writing process because it is a great incentive.

 

Week 4: 6.05.2008-13.05.2008

This week was the most productive one during the whole time of writing process. Most of all, this has to do with the so-called “Studientage” in which school did not take place for five days (including the weekend a whole week). Intending to accomplish a lot in this week, I stood up early almost every morning in order to work on my Facharbeit. (This is very appreciable with regard to the fact that I am a total “slugabed”.)

So I wrote, with my usual technique (cf. week three), the rest of my subitems apart from the conclusion and the reflection. This was what I had planned and fortunately I reached this aim!

 

Although it sounds quite easy now, it took much time and sometimes I was even dreadfully desperate for example when I had again a writer’s block. Added to that, the weather was persisting fine during these days and unfortunately I have no laptop. 😦  But of course I granted me several breaks 😉

On the whole, I am absolutely content with my results of this week and now I can relax a bit.

 

Week 5: 13.05.2008-20.05.2008

 At the beginning of this week, I wrote the conclusion and the reflection of my Facharbeit. Particularly writing the reflection was not very difficult, because I had many impressions concerning the Facharbeit which I wanted to depict. Regrettably, I could not mention everything I wanted because the “length problem” was still current but just the most important aspects.

Now, just one thing is left to say: whooohoo! All the time-consuming writing is done!!!

The rest of the week I did, to be honest, nothing for my Facharbeit and enjoyed the free time 🙂

 

Week 6: 20.05.2008-27.05.2008

 Week number 6, I glanced over my Facharbeit and noticed that I wrote “apartheid” always with a capital “A”. First I thought that this was right because apartheid is a proper name, but then I saw that in the majority of my sources, apartheid was written just in small letters. Although it looks quite wrong, I altered all the capitals “A’s” into small ones because I think that the authors of biographies must have more notion of this than I have.

Moreover, I began to shorten my Facharbeit in this week and it was dreadfully troublesome!

I decided to put the whole part “Apartheid in South Africa” in the appendage, because otherwise there would have been no way to come to 14 pages (14 instead of 12 pages because Mr. Donath was so tolerant that he raised the limit to 14 pages). Some passages being not that important, I also put into the appendage and referred to them in the texts. Others I deleted completely because they were not essential for the understanding of the texts but just interesting.

 

While shortening my Facharbeit, I was entirely happy about every little sentence I could get rid of because most of the sentences were important for the context.

 

Eventually, I managed that my Facharbeit’s number of pages amounted to 14. To be more precise 14 1/5 pages, but this has to do with the fact that I have more endnotes than expected. I know that this will sound like a pretext, but for me it is impossible to prune the text still more!

Here the overhauled structure of my Facharbeit:

 

 

1. Introduction     

 

2. The Life of Desmond Tutu     

              2.1 Childhood and Youth   

              2.2 Entering the Priesthood                      

              2.3 Rising (inter)national profile                          

              2.4 Nobel Peace Prize 1984            

              2.5 Bishop of Johannesburg and Archbishop of Cape Town

 

3. Tutu in the struggle against apartheid

              3.1 His attitude towards apartheid               

              3.2 His efforts in the fight against apartheid                  

                                   3.2.1 As General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches 

              3.3 Changes in 1990 – the end of apartheid?               

              3.4 Truth and Reconciliation Commission 1995            

 

4. Political work and views

              4.1 Engagement for homosexuals                   

              4.2 Tutu against apartheid in Israel               

                                              4.2.1 Tutu’s mission in Gaza       

 

5. Conclusion                 

 

6. Reflection

                       

7. Endnotes                        

 

8. Bibliography

  

Week 7: 27.05.2008-3.06.2008

The last week, the cover sheet was due. I had a specific idea of what it should look like but I am not really apt concerning such image editing programs. So a friend helped me to design it and I am totally content with the result.

In addition, I reread the whole Facharbeit and corrected some typing, spelling etc. mistakes.  Afterwards, I compiled the appendage and made sure that the texts in it were chronological with regard to the references in the Facharbeit’s main part.

Finally, I printed the complete Facharbeit and brought it to a stationary shop so that it could be bound.

 

 

Ready!  😀

 

1. 

   Calvyn Goldstone Said:

   on August 15, 2008 at 9:22 pm

   Wow. That’s a big commitment and a lot of work you put in. I’m interested in reading your Facharbeit now. It’s nice to see someone so motivated and disciplined, even when the early summer’s so nice! I’ll wish to Aladdin for a laptop for you for your next big effort.

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