I, the Graduating Engineering Student Turned Incidental Writer ( fourth stride) – The lessons

Foreword.
This series of articles, on the travails and torments of required writing for school term papers, thesis or dissertation, are purposely taken in the point of view of the student in the graduating or senior years. Hopefully, they reveal how much anguish and agony he goes through in every phase of the activity he is obliged to present, even to defend in front of a panel of peers, prior to receiving his much toiled-for diploma.
Previously.
The graduating student, whose subject proposal is now accepted by the English professor he used to secretly call Darth Vader, has received valuable personal tutorial from him on how to proceed with the project. Glimpses of those lessons will be seen as the student prods along.
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The very first lesson the professor taught me in that short session in his office is to forget myself as a mere student obligated to submit a requirement for graduation. He wants me rather to think of myself as an instrument of progress whose purpose is to make this a better world and given only the power to write. Pretty tall order, if I am asked; but the professor was gravely serious, so I kept my mouth shut.

After much discussion, this is what came out as the final title of my "intellectual proposal":
"A Study on the Business Process Outsourcing Industry and Its Effect on the Economies of Third World Countries and Why Its Has Resulted in a Win/Win Situation for Them and the Industrialized Nations"

Together we plotted the battle lines:
Time-table. What to do when in order to organize and make clearer still hazy aspects
Outline. Analyzing previous similar works in the same field and creating a pattern
Methodology Choosing the most suitable methods and explaining why they are effective
Research. Already half-done as evidenced by the clippings and cut-ups I have presented and some notes I have kept. Yet, the professor insists that I interview a real call-center agent for an insider point-of-view (I may have to travel, overseas perhaps!) Presumably, this extra-special step would really show me an actual human dimension of my project.

Besides these basic items, the principal bulk of our talk centered on work presentation after actual research work has been done; everything else is up to me. Furthermore, with my proposal accepted, my head is in the clouds, unable to absorb as much as it used to. I have no need to worry - I keep orderly notes.

It is usual for me to tackle the more provocative tasks ahead of the less challenging ones, so I commenced on looking for a person who has had actual experience in the industry. Luckily for me, our school has plenty of foreign exchange students from many lands and most as thoroughly at home as the locals in the numerous academic activities. With the help of another graduating student, I was introduced to one who rose from the ranks in a call center. This person gave me an understanding of how it is working as an agent, which I may have never realized otherwise.

Next: the fifth stride - call-center agent