Lesson 11, #1, Write about your experience summarizing the reading.

I dislike summarizing what I have finished reading because I do not enjoy it and I am not interested in it. I have been struggling to understand the articles, and I’ve been trying to understand what their concepts are. I have to search for claims, thesis ideas, and major concepts. When I finally understand what the article is about, I then start to struggle again, but this time about if I should use the information from the article or if I should not. It is a challenge to find an article that you want for the research paper. When I finally found some articles that seem interesting, I start to read it. I start to feel confused and I start to have a headache as I try to interpret the article. I try to see if it makes enough sense for the research paper and I see if I need anything from the article. I to start feel a bit overwhelmed from searching numerous amounts of sources and interpreting those. It makes me feel tired and less interested to search for more sources. I hate when that happens to me because it causes me to feel sleepy as I try to interpret the not-so-interesting source. Sometimes, I will wonder about why I choose those useless sources. I am glad that I took the Library Information and Research course last year because it has proved to be helpful and a valuable resource. It has helped me in collecting better and stronger sources. But sometimes I will find useless sources from the many search engines on the internet. I still have to learn more about search engines to improve on my research process. When I have a good article, I can understand it easier and it’s easier for me to summarize those specific articles. I can read them and look for their claims and thesis ideas. I usually start to collect information and combine it for my paper. I have noticed that most of the time when I start sketching an outline or writing out notes that I mark each article with a hi-lighter so I can keep track of it and keep it organized. I use different colored markings for the thesis ideas, claims, and opposing views. This organizational process is a way for myself to keep track of all sources and then write down what each color means on post it notes on top of the papers. I started organizing post it notes to see which sources are the ones that I want to put into my research paper. Summarizing is a good way for me to start figuring out which sources are good or not so good for the paper. I feel that I prefer summarizing on post it notes instead of write down the summary on paper because it is not an interesting process, in my opinion, and does not appeal to me. I don’t believe I’ve ever learned the proper way to summarize in a formal paragraph. I have finally learned how to process writing summaries for research papers this semester. I still have to practice more on summarizing in the future. I need to get used to summarizing and writing in the correct and formal format. I can’t wait to improve on my summarizing skills.