Ok, so when tasked with the daunting task of finding a research article, I turned to the library.

Source: Giphy

The main question was: what did I want my article to be about. Well, this whole quarter I have been focusing on elections, and I still would like to know more about it, so I decided to research articles about elections. Particularly, I wanted to find an article about the accessibility of voting.

However, research was not that simple. I happened to be in Utah for a lacrosse trip, so the library was not accessible to me. Instead, I found online newspaper articles about voting.

The biggest roadblock was that I needed to make sure my newspaper articles were not too biased.

In order to prevent this problem, I decided to find the same type of articles about the same topic (elections) but from different newspapers.

By doing this, I was able to prevent at least some bias from slipping in.

I am going to be honest, I do not know many student’s who, when assigned with a research essay, scream for joy. Instead the reaction is more likely this:

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But why do most students despise research essays so much? To help me answer this question, I turn to Margaret Kantz.

Miss Kantz creates in her article “Helping Students Use Textual Sources Persuasively”  a fictional college sophomore named Shirley. Shirley has all the skills that would make her a good writer, however when it comes to research papers, Shirley did not do well.

Miss Kantz points out 3 difficulties that students, like Shirley often have:

1. Many students like Shirley misunderstand sources because they read them as stories.
2. Many students expect their sources to tell the truth; hence, they equate persuasive writing in this context with making things up.
3. Many students do not understand that facts are a kind of claim and are often used persuasively in so-called objective writing to create an impression.

I find these problems very realistic and real. When I am writing a research paper, I often summarize what my sources are saying, thinking that I am making my own original claim. However, this is not the case. I am then simply telling a narrative, which is not the point.

Instead, Alice (another fictional character Miss Kantz made up) tells Shirley that in order to make a research paper original, the writer must ask why.

source: http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/jonw.gif

Why are these sources disagreeing or agreeing? Why are different authors saying different things?

These questions can help turn a research paper from a narrative to a unique paper!

One of my favorite ways to get information is from articles. Lately, I’ve been reading TheSkimm. Basically, this company sends daily emails about what happened in the news. It keeps me current and updated; I love it.However, when I brought it up that I read The Skimm to a colleague, her response was that The Skimm was very biased.

While I was at first indignant about that, that comment got me thinking, of course it is biased; Everything is biased! No matter what article you read, there is going to be a small bias.

But then that leaves the question: Ok, so how am I supposed to find information? I think the best solution is getting multiple sources.

Here’s an example: President Trump did not attend the White House Correspondents dinner. But, liberal and conservative newspapers headlines were vastly different. A left leaning newspaper’s headline was:

Trump’s Absence Loomed Large At Annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner

While a conservative leaning newspaper’s tweet was:

“President Trump was too smart to fall for showing up at the hateful Establishment Media Leftist rally known as the White House Correspondents’ Dinner”

Clearly, these two news sources interpreted President Trump’s absence very differently. However, by reading both articles and getting both perspectives, I become more knowledgable. While I might disagree with one side, I at least can understand where they are coming from. Once I am educated, then I can rightfully disagree.

Sorry, really thinking about the changes that happen when people go to college. Coming home for the first time in 4 months is weird. Everything is the same, but also everything is different.

Obviously the first thing I do when I come home is open the fridge.

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While we still get the normal milk (Smith Brothers thank you), there are foods that I don’t remember us ever having (since when do we get orange juice with pulp?). The pantry also has foods that I never remember us having, like Tim Tams and Smoked Salmon. While this doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, these difference are so small, that they kind of make a difference.

Then, I’ll be walking around, and suddenly I’ll see something. Wait a minute, there used to be a painting right next to my room, now where is it? (my mom had moved it to her room)

https://i1.wp.com/www.jen-goes-zen.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Phoebe_stop_the_madness.gif

I think the reason why these differences are so weird to me is that everything in my life has changed (living in a dorm, going to school in a different states, new friends), but I counted on home staying the same. However, I can’t expect life at home to standstill. Everything changes with time, and these changes are good (the painting was actually ugly, i really didn’t like it).

However, my relationship with my family didn’t change, and that is the most important thing.

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Hi readers,

I know I have been talking a lot about research lately, but I wanted to switch gears a little bit. Currently, I am home in Seattle. My parents wanted to see me, so I took the quick flight up and came home for the weekend.

Anyways, as I sit here, my brother (a sophomore in high school) is doing homework, and it got me thinking about the differences of doing homework in high school and doing homework in college.

Let’s go back to high school…

After a long day at school (consecutive classes starting at 8:25 and ending at 2:50), I would   pull out my planner and look at all I had to do. Physics test, math homework, english questions, Chinese essay. As I worked on my physics homework, I had my teacher’s powerpoint in front of me, using the equations. For Chinese, Google Translate was open, ready to be used. History reading took the shortest amount of time, and math homework only took about an hour.

Physics!

If I got done with my immediate homework, I would sometimes go look ahead, or I would just go to bed early.

Differences in college:

I find there are some differences between doing homework in high school and doing homework in college.

1. In college, there are always people around- I like to do my homework in the library, but that usually means I am sitting with a friend at a table. While I enjoy being with friends, this also causes more distraction.
2. More collaboration in college- on the flip side, because I am usually with people doing my homework, I can also use them as resources. If I get stuck on a math problem, I can find someone pretty easily to help me. In high school, I would usually wait until seconds before the homework is due so my friends could help me before class.
3. In college, the time to do homework is less linear- In high school, I knew from the time I got home to the time I went to bed was the time I would do homework. However, in college, going to class isn’t in such a huge chunk of time. What I mean to say, is that I do my math homework in college in the hour that I have before my math class. I know I can do my english homework in the morning because I don’t start class until 12:10. My time to do homework is more broken up in college.

I can’t say which one I like better, but they are different. Comment below and tell me which one you prefer.

Ok, ok. I get it. Research does not have the most interesting connotation.

Source: Giphy

The only thing is, research doesn’t have to be the boring process many people think it is. Michael Kleine, a research researching about research (i know, inception), talks about going to a library and knowing right away that the students were writing a research paper because “the students… were transcribing sections of encyclopedia text into the text of their own writing, into notebooks”.

I often find that when I am doing research, it is simply me getting information and then trying to find another way to phrase it. Mr. Kleine also had that problem, which is why he tried to find a solution.

source: Giphy

He came up with a hunter/gatherer strategy. He found that many people just find information and don’t know how to actually use it. In his words: “A hunter finds what he is looking for; a gatherer discovers that which might be of use”.

I find this a really great analogy. Research is an extensive process, and one find a lot of stuff (which is the hunter), but that research also must be relevant (which is the gatherers job).

This research method is a good solution to just the normal “linear process”. While I have yet to try it out, I have a research paper in English due soon, so readers, I will try it out and get back to you 🙂

Well readers, I survived the dark, cobwebbed corner of the library called the Archives.

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I’m just kidding. The archives at Santa Clara are actually on the third floor of the library, in a well lit room (lots of natural light) and no cobwebs (that I could see).

The curators of the archives nicely laid out different archives, sorted by category on the table. I went to the table that had newspaper laid out from the 60’s. Since I wanted to study the history of women at Santa Clara, I decided that the year that women were introduced (1961) was a good place to start.

However, the archives is not like google where you can just search something and all the results will pop up. No, I had to flip through old newspapers, trying to find anything related to women. Instead, I came across an article about the lack of participation in elections. While not related to my original topic, this article interested me.

Source: Tenor

I decided to run with this idea about the lack of participation and passion at Santa Clara. I was in a political club in high school called Junior Statesman of America, and its slogan was “fight apathy”. Well, that’s what I wanted to explore: the apathy at Santa Clara.

While this had nothing to do with my original topic I had thought of, I am actually more interested in the complacency of the student body. This is a side effect that I didn’t realize would happen when I journeyed into the archives. While I set out to do one thing, I found a different, more engaging topic for myself.

This Tuesday, my English class is going to my school’s archives.

Source: Tenor

We have a research paper about something we find in the archives of Santa Clara.

Honestly, I have no idea what I am going to find because I have never been to an archive. The word archive brings a dark room with cobwebs covering the books to mind for me.

https://openreflections.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/city-archives-then1.jpg

However, I read an article written by Lynée Lewis Gaillet and she prepared me more about what I would find in an archive. She gave me tips of how I should approach going to an archive (such as selecting a topic and doing preliminary research before visiting the archive) to how I should handle objects in the archive (don’t hold the materials while reading, put them on a reading desk). The most important thing that I learned though was the purpose of visiting an archive. She quotes Kathleen A. Welsch who says:

It is the historian’s responsibility to teach us a variety of ways to read the past, to engage in historical debate, to position narratives in relation to each other so as to gain critical perspective, to draw conclusions on and consider the implications of opposing historical projects and to create constructive tension that moves us forward in our inquiry

In other words, we have to become “scholarly storytellers”.

Now that I (somewhat) know what an archive was, I need to create a research question. This part, for me, is easy.

In the news, there have been a lot of women-empowerment movements (women’s march  is a great example). I want to see how the women’s movement progressed at Santa Clara. Specifically, I am going to do this by looking at the women-orientated clubs and the history of those clubs at my school.

I myself am part of a couple women’s clubs (SWE- society of women engineers, HeforShe, and my sorority). I hope to examine the history of clubs that centered around women and how they correlated to the women’s movement.

Source- Giphy

I’ll let you know what I find 🙂

In my English class, we have been talking a lot about research. And let me tell you, this takes me back. In my high school, I participated in a program called International Baccalaureate. This program consisted of taking six IB classes (3 higher level and 3 lower level) that all lasted for 2 years. Within each of these classes, I would have internal assessments, presentations and papers all cumulating to the tests at the end of my senior year.

This program was hard. Just look up “IB memes” on google and pages and pages will come up.

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The worst part about IB was the extended essay. Let me set the scene.

The extended essay is a research paper that an IB diploma candidate must complete in order to get her diploma. A grueling 4,000 word paper in a subject of the candidate’s choosing. While all of the advisors encouraged my class to start this essay at the end of my junior year (it’s due in March in the end of my senior year), let’s be honest, no one did.

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So, its second semester senior year, I had already turned in all of my applications, heard back from a few schools, and I have to write a 4,000 word paper on the Cold War.

I knew the first part of this process was research. However, I thought this part was going to be the easiest part. Look up a few online scholarly articles, find a few books in the library then… done!

Boy, was I wrong. Research for this paper took days. I would find a book about the Cold War, and then a subtopic that I wanted to research, then I would search for another book about that subtopic, which would lead me to yet another subtopic. The process kept going. While I was learning a lot about the Cold War, my research was not focused around my actual essay (analyzing Detente and its role in the end of the Cold War).

Once I stopped going down so many rabbit holes, I began to focus on my essay topic, which proved much more valuable and time-efficient. The moral of this story is:

1. Don’t take IB
2. Start your extended essay earlier
3. When doing research, have a clear and focused idea of your actual topic is, and research with your topic/thesis always in mind.

When given the task of any essay or assignment that requires research, my heart is immediately filled with dread.

The thought of combing through sources, wondering if they are reliable or not, is not my ideal day.

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However, after the plethora of research assignments given to me in high school, I have a strategy of how I start.

First, I go on Wikipedia. I know, Wikipedia!  The horror! This site is such a taboo site for research. I think every teacher I’ve had has said “Don’t use Wikipedia as a source”. BUT Wikipedia is extremely helpful for background information. If I am given a topic that I know nothing about, I use Wikipedia to understand what my topic is.

After I have a good sense of my topic, I then go an research different sub-topics, finding reliable sources that are not Wikipedia.

BEAM (Background Sources, Exhibits, Arguments and Methods) are the different sources that a writer can use. In an article by Joseph Bizup, he says