Goals
My goals for this week were to find and evaluate as many sources as possible. My primary sources are due in a week and a half from now so I need to make sure that I have all my primary sources in order so that I can easily take notes and annotate them. I was able to find some fantastic articles that discussed the themes in The Call of the Wild and White Fang and I am looking forward to reading and annotating them tomorrow. My goals for the next week are to finalize my list of primary sources and work heavily on my annotations so that I am ready for the due dates the following week.
Activities
This week, I narrowed down my topics I will be writing about to Instinct and Love. In my books, the protagonists are deeply affected by both instinct and love, causing them to act differently and change. Another activity I accomplished was finding many more sources and marking them in my bibliography. I know it seems like busy work now but it will save me so much in the long run.
Problems
The biggest problem I faced this week is that I spent almost an entire class period trying to find this literary criticism that, from the summary, appeared to be perfect for my research paper. I worked with the librarians and Sarah but for some reason, the actual article could not be found. Because of this, I lost much valuable research time.
Reflection
After this second week of research, I am getting more and more of an idea of what I want to write about. I have noticed that the themes that I am writing about aren't spoken directly that much about in the literary criticisms I have been finding. This discouraged me at first but then I realized that I could still find so much about my themes in different parts of the writings. So far, I have been finding it as an arduous but rewarding process.
Solid response, Ellis. (Also, thanks for the wolves and daily puppy!) Be even more specific with your information--what sources did you find, what search terms did you use, are you looking at bibliographies in the articles you find, and so on. Same for goals. Think of the goals section as more of an "action plan" section--what will you do on any given day, how will you break down your work, and so on.
ReplyDeleteIf you find that you aren't getting article hits with the search terms you're using, you'll likely need to adjust those terms. If you include those searches here, I could give you feedback. Keep up the searching. Research can be a struggle, and it requires constant adjustment and shifting in your thinking.