Monday, October 18, 2010

I am finding it to be quite difficult to find scholarly sources to include in my research paper. Every time I try to search through the Saint Rose's online library catalog for various things, it usually tells me that the search resulted in no hits. This is getting to be depressing because I have no idea where to find these scholarly sources if not through this website. I can easily find the information I need by typing it into Google, but then I have to sort through the sites to see if there are any that would be reliable sources of information. For example, when I typed in the name of the cancer my mom had, nasopharyngeal carcinoma, a bunch of websites popped up. However, I only found one that I believe I can really use, which was cancer.gov, which is a website run by the National Cancer Institute. Would this count as one of the necessary scholarly sources, or just another source? I did find one medical journal on her cancer, which was very helpful. I have also found something using JSTOR on teenage pregnancy. I am finding it very difficult to find the statistics, though, that I wanted to include, like how many teenage mothers who dropped out of high school go back to receive their GED. I'm only finding general information, like "girls who become pregnant are far more likely to drop out than those who don't." This is annoying me, because that doesn't really sound like research. I also had another question concerning this project. I didn't know whether I should research some stuff about role models in general, and try to incorporate that into my research paper. Overall, I am looking forward to writing this paper, because I feel it is an excellent way to show my mother just how much she means to me, and how much I look up to her. However, I will admit that the research aspect is becoming far more difficult than I originally expected.

3 comments:

  1. I completely know how you feel I am writing about my father and I am running into the same problems. What I am going to do is look for anything about a father-daughter relationship and if it is in anyway useful I will either agree or disagree and try to some how get it in my paper. This is far more difficult then I thought it would be to write about my father but I think if we just get a little bit of the source in our paper we it will be enough.

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  2. I know how you feel too reguarding your dissapointment in the Saint Rose Library. I'm doing my research project on Oprah Winfrey and the books are already checked out of the library. I think that the National Cancer Institute would count as a scholarly source. I think you should incorporate charts, graphs, or some visual image in your research paper to show how the issue of cancer, nasopharyngeal carcinoma in this case, to show how detrimental it is and how strong your mother is for fighting through it. good luck on your project.

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  3. Tiffany i think your topic is very interesting and i'm sorry to hear your having trouble. I think you should deffinitly interview your mom and see what her views on topics are such as cancer and teenage pregnancy. It seems like lately on tv their are more and more shows on teenage pregnancy it would be interesting to see what she thinks of it. If she finds it to be helpful to young girls out their or if she thinks its glamourizing teen pregnancy. Good luck with your research

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