Blog 5

Research papers are incredibly daunting to me. I am the type of person who doesn’t even really like to write in general, much less for academics, so research papers are one of my least favorite things ever. Besides just the general amount of work they take, my least favorite part of research papers is starting them and getting a good enough idea and enough material to make it good. I personally think starting is the hardest part of writing anything because in the beginning, there is nothing there and you have nothing to work with. The options are so broad that it becomes difficult to even begin. For the few research papers I have written, I personally believe the most helpful thing is to brainstorm. I often brainstorm by writing out all my possible topics and then underneath them, writing the specific topics I could hit on relating to the overall topic. This way I can see what topic would be the easiest, or what topic would give me the most to write about and be the most interesting. My method is very like the tip the Bedford Book of Genre gives when they say to make a “mind map.” I think doing that or something along those lines is very beneficial when beginning a research paper, let alone any paper.