Research Reflection!

Whenever I used to hear that a research paper was going to be assigned, my initial reaction was to get filled with dread, anxiety and slight nausea, haha. Research papers in the past have been a source of frustration; I just wanted to write without having to worry about finding scholarly sources or about citing everything in a right format. I was never officially/thoroughly taught how to find proper sources or how to confirm that a piece of writing was reliable, therefore I used a lot of guesswork and ended up just hoping my paper qualified as a true “research” paper.

This research paper and the subsequent activities in class that taught what real research papers consist of has really changed my perspective on these types of writing assignments. Learning about ways to find articles, journals and books via online sources that relate to the relevant topic was extremely helpful. While I was shown in the past how to do so, this was the first instance I took the time to figure the online library system all out; it was much easier than I thought it would be and this greatly reduced my anxiety about writing my whole paper. In fact, I was able to find awesome sources that covered exactly what I wanted to highlight. Giving the whole research part of writing a paper a more patient and fair chance was certainly my biggest triumph for this assignment.

Still, finding so many excellent sources also presented the challenge of figuring out a way to integrate them neatly and concisely in my paper. I ended up finding about four solid sources and using three of them for my rough draft. There were many quotes that I wanted to use, but I realized after going over an early draft that my paper was becoming far too packed with words that weren't mine, haha. I had to go over all the quotes I picked and choose the ones that were most relevant/conducive to my paper topic. Overall, this was a bit tiresome and frustrating, yet I've come to realize that a few really good quotes are better for a paper than an abundance of them. Too many quotes and citations within a paper can be distracting sometimes; my early rough draft, in retrospect, was definitely too crammed with quotes and my own voice was somewhat lost.

In conclusion, this research paper assignment gave me the patience and skills to do proper research. I also (re)learned how to do comprehensive and effective research that yields sources that end up being very beneficial for the paper. Like I wrote earlier, I always dreaded research papers because I was so used to writing papers about just one book or writing opinion papers with a few online sources. This assignment has shown me that research papers don’t have to make me nauseous, haha; they simply require a bit more time for research and integrating the sources within the paper itself. This little extra work pays off with a well-rounded paper supplemented with stellar quotes. I’m glad I've given research a second shot, haha.