I Sound My Barbaric Yawp over the Roofs of the World: Sounding My Barbaric Yawp in Room 148 at 8:45 AM on May 17th (Week 11)

I Sound My Barbaric Yawp over the Roofs of the World: Sounding My Barbaric Yawp in Room 148 at 8:45 AM on May 17th (Week 11)

Hi everyone, welcome back to my blog! Today I’ll be discussing the paper-writing and presentation-creating process. Tomorrow is the date of my final presentation, and I hope to see you there!

Paper Writing

Writing my paper went pretty smoothly, but there are a few things I realized during the process.

First, I am not a very chronological writer, meaning that I don’t start from the introduction and write to the conclusion. I write in chunks depending on how I see it fit, which was actually very helpful in writing this paper. Below are the sections in my paper:

        1. Introduction

        2. Literature Review: Barriers to Naturalization

                2.1 Overview of the US Naturalization Process

                2.2 Financial Cost

                2.3 English Proficiency Test

                2.4 Oral Civics Exam

                2.5 Lack of Government Transparency and Support

                2.6 Conclusions

        3. Data Analysis

                3.1 Educational Attainment

                3.2 World Area of Birth

                3.3 Family Income Level

        4. Cross-Country Comparative Analysis: Canada vs. US

        5. Solutions

        6. References

For reference, please access my paper here.

I started writing with Section 2 then continued down, before finishing the writing process with the Introduction section. I had a far easier time contextualizing my writing as a result, as I knew exactly which points to introduce and bring up in the section rather than deleting and moving paragraphs around afterward. When I was taking notes during my two-part lit review, I noted down page numbers and transferred them over while writing, so citing my sources took up very little of my time. Most of my footnotes include page numbers—with exceptions if I’m discussing a more general idea from a book or journal article—so it was not at all as cumbersome as I had expected.

I decided to start my paper with an introduction to the case of Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi. On April 14, 2025, he was taken into custody during his naturalization interview in Vermont. He was mere steps away from fully obtaining US citizenship, yet he was detained and is now at risk of deportation on the grounds of organizing pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University. As a legal permanent resident in the US on a green card, Mahdawi’s case was supposed to have been handled with full due process, yet there are arguments that it was not procedurally followed. This case served as a perfect introduction to my project especially within the broader issue of citizenship being challenged in the US today.

Presentation Creating

This part was also pretty easy, as I effectively followed the sections in my paper. I had to remove certain sections though, including 2.5, 2.6, and 3.3 for the sake of time. When I first started practicing, my presentation was 27 minutes, a far cry from the maximum allotted time of 15 minutes. But not to fear—it is currently sitting at a very comfortable 14:58!

One interesting thought experiment came up when I was thinking of which questions I might receive during the Q&A portion tomorrow. I expect at least one question related to the significance of my project in the context of President Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship. I got to thinking about how to answer that—perhaps naturalization isn’t extremely relevant with respect to birthright citizenship since they are fundamentally different processes. A part of my project deals with the perception of citizenship as a right vs. a privilege in the US and Canada—I realized that, historically, naturalization has always been viewed as this sort of second-tier citizenship while birthright citizenship has been considered slightly superior. With this executive order, birthright citizenship has similarly been placed on the chopping block, interestingly equating the two more than before. I experienced a series of small periods of enlightenment like this over the duration of the past week.

Conclusions

This journey evaluating the inequities in the US naturalization system has been extremely eye-opening for me. I have acquired a multitude of knowledge over the course of my research, and I’m so glad to have had such an opportunity. If you’re reading this, I would love to see you at my presentation tomorrow at 8:45 AM in Room 148!

And with that, today’s blog post comes to an end. Thanks for reading, and see you next time for the last blog post ever :(((!

Sources

Atkins, Chloe, and Matt Lavietes. “Judge Orders Columbia Student Mohsen Mahdawi to Be Released,” April 30, 2025. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/judge-orders-columbia-student-mohsen-mahdawi-released-rcna203675.

Roy, Yash. “Mohsen Mahdawi: Palestinian Student at Columbia University Detained | CNN,” April 15, 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/14/us/mohsen-mahdawi-columbia-university-trump.