This is not the season of good cheer if "coursework" is looming for the next term (Jan. 2018). First of all, diversion is

not rewarded. You have to come up with what you have been taught either in class or via moodle (or whatever other platform). It seems to be the trend in linguistics that bringing in other theories or approaches, or academic input is not rewarded as it would be in modern languages. For the coursework, you need a "male" brain. Standford uni seems to supply most of the exercises which you will be tortured with - it's all very arid and there's no discussion. It was never thus - even Chomsky (read Knowledge of Language) had a "human" side, and those exercises which you are made to do are usually what takes PHD students years to unravel from the collected data. Nobody wants to know what came before, and collective amnesia prevails. Linguistics is NOT unfortunately what they showed you perhaps at an open evening/university visit - and you will fall on the sword of "science".