{"id":118,"date":"2017-05-16T16:12:32","date_gmt":"2017-05-16T16:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/apearce\/?p=118"},"modified":"2017-05-16T16:12:32","modified_gmt":"2017-05-16T16:12:32","slug":"why-telling-a-story-isnt-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/apearce\/2017\/05\/16\/why-telling-a-story-isnt-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Telling a Story Isn’t Research"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not everyone is good at storytelling. \u00a0My sister, for example, remembers the most random and irrelevant details of events and pieces them together in a way that only makes sense to her. \u00a0And if it is a funny story, you can pretty much forget about anticipating the punchline.<\/p>\n

Now, piecing information together to write an essay is kind of like storytelling… except that it is not. \u00a0For research, you can’t just simply weave the ideas of your sources together and expect to create something that is original or\u00a0thought provoking. \u00a0If you just quilt together the information you’ve read, you might as well just turn in a list of sources or Works Cited page and tell your professor to read that instead.<\/p>\n

Research is telling your own story. \u00a0If you like the quilting analogy, think of your sources as the thread and the material you sew together is something you’ve created yourself. \u00a0For my writing class we had to read an article by Margret Krantz <\/a>that said just that… research is all about using your sources persuasively.<\/p>\n

But wait! Persuasive doesn’t mean right or wrong, nor does it mean for or against. \u00a0Rather, like the quilt, it means arguing something that you’ve made, arguing your own original ideas. \u00a0Krantz points out you can’t just take information from sources\u00a0as the truth because context\u00a0<\/em>is so important. \u00a0Ask yourself; Who is the author speaking to? Why are they writing this? \u00a0These questions help uncover a lot of the context of your article.<\/p>\n

A great activity my writing class did one day was look at two different sources\u00a0and discern which was bullshit and which was a respectable option for a theoretical Works Cited page. \u00a0The most shocking was two webpages\u00a0about Martin Luther King Jr. \u00a0One<\/a>\u00a0was titled “Marin Luther King: A True Historical Examination” and the other was Wikipedia<\/a>. \u00a0All my classmates and I originally hated on Wikipedia and decided there would be no way we would put that on our Works Cited page… Let’s just say sorry Wikipedia.<\/strong> \u00a0Accidentally citing a KKK website for your research article on MLK might be the biggest faux pas to ever happen.\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

After looking at my own sources, although none of them are sponsored by the KKK,<\/em>\u00a0they all pretty much come from the same place: a scholarly journal writing to other scholars. \u00a0This realization sucks for me \ud83d\ude41 because I am pretty much getting the same perspective. \u00a0My database<\/a> aimed at research, I just failed myself by not looking into other options to find my sources.<\/p>\n

Here we go<\/strong> – source hunting round 2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not everyone is good at storytelling. \u00a0My sister, for example, remembers the most random and irrelevant details of events and pieces them together in a way that only makes sense to her. \u00a0And if it is a funny story, you … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1915,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"qubely_global_settings":"","qubely_interactions":"","kk_blocks_editor_width":"","_kiokenblocks_attr":"","_kiokenblocks_dimensions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"gutentor_comment":1,"qubely_featured_image_url":null,"qubely_author":{"display_name":"apearce","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/apearce\/author\/apearce\/"},"qubely_comment":1,"qubely_category":"Uncategorized<\/a>","qubely_excerpt":"Not everyone is good at storytelling. \u00a0My sister, for example, remembers the most random and irrelevant details of events and pieces them together in a way that only makes sense to her. \u00a0And if it is a funny story, you … Continue reading →","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/apearce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/apearce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/apearce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/apearce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1915"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/apearce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/apearce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/apearce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions\/120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/apearce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/apearce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/apearce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}