I met with Professor Field on February 23^rd for about thirty minutes. I was still grappling with my case selection. I had followed Professor Hardig’s advice and researched cases where there was increased persecution and where there was not. My cases, though, were all over the world and, as Professor Field noted, it would be very hard to justify such case selection without it looking like I simply cherry picked the results I wanted. She suggested that I focus my cases regionally in order to control for other variables. Since my original focus was in the Middle East, she suggested I focus there, with about four cases that had different outcomes on the dependent variable. She also noted the importance of the minority group I was proposing to research, as persecution levels could differ between ethnic or religious minorities. I ultimately decided to focus only on religious minorities so as to control for variance among the persecution of different groups. She really helped to me outline my project, what I was hoping to achieve with my research, and all the factors that I had to control for, or at the very least, note in my research.