38 days

Looking through past exams for the 100,000th time today, and I decided that I'm not going to touch any question related to either methods/measurement or deviance. Methods, it's too bland of a subject, I don't feel that I have enough citations for any of the possible questions, and I would fall into the trap of talking about things with my own opinions instead of saying what the literature says. Deviance, it's a fun topic, but it's not a major area of interest, and I don't want to go to the trouble of remembering 10 specific citations for one possible question.

What this means is, I've gone back in and brought up two other questions that've been asked before that I can answer. One lists 10 past Presidents of the American Society of Criminology and asks why they deserved to be President. This is just a matter of looking at some of the more obscure people and adding citations to my reading list that will be valuable elsewhere. The other question is about conflict theory, which is what I was trained in at my previous university and have since completely turned my back on. I decided to revisit this literature today because a) I'm familiar with it and b) it's easy to trash it.

So, by bringing these two topics in and discarding methods and deviance completely, I'm gambling a little, because in the unlikely chance that there are 2 methods questions and 1 deviance question on the same day, then I'm totally fucked, but there's now literally no other question I'm not comfortable with. And to be honest, I can also do a little bit of methods anyway, so it's not like I'd be trying to answer a question I didn't completely understand, it's just something I'm not focusing on.

These are the questions I would answer on both days, ideally:

1) Life course
2) Gender
3) Why are people bad?
4) Nature of theory

Day 2:

1) Family
2) Peers
3) Communities
4) 5 biggest causes of delinquency

I would destroy both of those days. I can also talk several other subjects, but this is what I would absolutely love to have.

I am so hungry.