Q: What was the topic of your research paper last year?
A: I wrote mine as an examination of the fast food industry. Specifically, I argued that fast food plays a prominent on the American conscious and helps define America as a society. The primary sources I used were the movie "Supersize Me" and the book "Fast Food Nation," by Eric Schlosser.
Q: What advice would you have for beginning research?
A: Don't put yourself in a position when you have to read multiple books to gain information. You probably do not have time to fit in all of that supplemental reading. Scholarly articles are the best options for research because they encapsulate everything you need to know in a shorter length. Use any type of media you can: Movies, magazines, commercials, newspaper articles. Especially for a topic like mine, such cultural objects were immensely helpful.
Q: How did your paper evolve over the semester?
A: At first I had a very narrow scope of my topic. But as I did research, I realized the extent of fast food's impact on the country. I talked more about its medical connection to obesity than I would have thought at the beginning. In this way, a lot of my paper was devoted to America's obesity problem. One last thing: over-research! You can never have too much info, and you always want different options of direction for your paper.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Sorry to say, you may need to read multiple books on your primary source.
I am happy to say, however, that we will discuss how to use secondary sources as efficiently as possible. Indeed, scholarly articles are quite useful because they are shorter--and for other reasons as well. We'll get to those later in the semester.
Post a Comment