Research Methods: My Way

What I said about my weaknesses in actually caring about my paper or finding a topic or putting together something of actual worth in this particular field are true. No false modesty there.

However, I discovered something during my final few semesters of university at which I am very good, and it makes paper writing go so much more quickly and effectively. And, because I am currently procrastinating my research for paper 2, I am going to tell you about it.

It's called the quotes page.

What I do when I start researching for a paper is not choose a specific topic but rather a general subject matter. For instance: researching Wilde's short stories vs. researching Wilde's views of aestheticism and Christ.

What this does is give me a much wider variety of articles to search through and heightens my chances of reaching my "scholarly sources" quota.

Then, I start the arduous process of going through all the articles which sound vaguely interesting. There is no need for them to have the same focus. Often it's better that way so that you can synthesize several different ideas into a new idea: yours.

As you riffle your way through, pull out quotes from everything you think is interesting and put it into a word document.

Here is where everything gets fun (please note the large flashing "nerd" sign above my head).

Use a specific color for all quotes from the same article, including the page numbers they were taken from and the citation. DO NOT FORGET THE CITATION OR PAGE NUMBERS. You will never be able to find that article again. It's like socks in dryers.

As you add more and more colors and article quotes, you can begin to put them into categories by topic. Put the topic headers in black and also any personal notes about the different articles in black. That way you never mistakenly cite an article for something that you actually said.

Even when you sort out by topic, you have no fear of forgetting which quote came from where. All you have to do is look back to find the citation of the same color. It's brilliant.  

When it comes to paper writing time, you have your whole outline in front of you, some parts you'll use, some parts you won't. When you insert a quote into your actual paper, you can use the strikethrough button to mark to yourself what you have and have not used or do not plan to use.

Doing this process helps you avoid clump quoting (when each paragraph uses only one source), helps lengthen papers by giving you a general idea of how many paragraphs you are working with, keeps you from being choppy and disjointed in your paragraph thoughts, avoids plagiarism, and also gives you a way to keep track of "that one perfect source that was right here oh my gosh I just had it WHERE DID IT GO?!"

Thank you for joining and happy researching to you all.