The research part of this class made me nervous and was very intimidating to me because I have never done a research paper before. At first I found it difficult because most of the articles I found were really long but the strategy that Professor Berghof showed us made it a bit easier. I learned a a new technique which was to "eat books" in order to not take a long time trying to read all 20 pages of the 20 plus articles/ books that I used for my research papers.

Caption 1: The research part was difficult, time consuming and frustrating. Difficult because of the types of scholarly sources that I encountered which had advanced words that I myself did not know. Time consuming because I really wanted to find good sources that focused on my topic or that were similar to my topic so they could have really helped me in my HCP and Advocacy. Lastly, frustrating because finding sources for my topic was difficult at first because I did not have the proper search terms and it was frustrating as well because I was trying to keep all of the sources that i was going to use together. The screenshot above shows with these aspects. In order for the research process not to be as frustrating I would have the scholarly sources that I was using open in the same chrome window but in different tabs. This way it would facilitate my research process, which it did. When I was writing my HCP I would have all the scholarly sources that I was using open at once as well as my HCP document and I would only be clicking from tab to tab to find information in the sources. Also, doing this made the research process less time consuming because I did not have to keep searching for the scholarly articles that I wanted to use because I already had them open all together.

Caption 2: Another way that I was able to facilitate my research process and that I also found really helpful was taking notes on the articles that I read or that I was going to use on my essay. A sample of my notes is shown in the screenshot above. In the notes I wrote down bullets that indicate what the article was about, its claim, and quotes that thought were going to come in handing. In other notes from other sources I also included page numbers which contained important parts of the sources. For example, for the notes that are presented above which come from "Myth of the welfare queen" I wrote down quotes that included statistics or any other facts. Even though writing down notes of most of the articles that I used was time consuming in a way it did save me some time when I was actually trying to go back and decide which scholarly sources related more to my topic and which ones were going to be the most useful to me. 

Caption 3: The screenshot above shows the name of some of the primary sources that I used for my HCP and Advocacy essay. Going to the library was a very helpful resource that facilitated my research process and also helped me acquire valid sources that increased the credibility of research papers. In order to find theses 6 books that were on my topic, I had to use antpac which indicated me where they were. One of the advantage of the library that I discovered when I went and that I become aware of with the help of one of the worksheets that we were assigned to do was that I was able to find other books relating to my topic by just browsing around the sections where I found some of those books. I did find some of these books by browsing around the library but in order to find them I was focusing on certain terms that were related to my topic such as welfare queen, welfare recipients, social programs, government help, etc. I also took a look of their table of contexts and footnotes which also helped me obtain more search terms. 

Caption 4: In this screenshot above, I decided to include two of the most helpful primary sources that I used for my HCP and my Advocacy Project. The one on the right which says "The welfare Queen. . ." really helped me in my HCP paper because that book focused more on the term welfare queen stereotype and it gave information regarding the effect of the stereotype in Reagan's era which tied up to the multi-modal that I was going to use. I was able to quote certain parts of the texts in order for it to serve as evidence and add more support to the part of HCP that I wrote about the welfare queen stereotype and how there is similarity in how it was used in political campaigns from the past and political campaigns in present day. The book on the left was more helpful for my Advocacy paper where I addressed possible solutions. The chapter "Mother, Welfare, Welfare Recipient . . ." addressed the aspect of job opportunities that helped welfare recipients move out of welfare and gain a higher self esteem. When I read this chapter I wanted to somehow included it in my HCP but it made more sense for it to be included in my Advocacy paper since it focused on a possible solution for decreasing the effect of stereotype on African American women and helped them move out of welfare. Therefore, as I was writing my HCP this chapter lead me to a possible solution that I could actually help decrease the welfare queen stereotype problem.