Research
has never been my strong suit. I would always plug words into Google
and just assume the things I found would be correct. Unfortunately, this
would take me to sites that were not always reliable.
So
my husband decides to throw me a bone and points me to a website that
can help people navigate the internet. After reading a few blog posts
from a person that does this for a living, I realize I am not the only
person with this problem. In fact most people it seems cannot navigate
through the search engine correctly. And to make things more interesting
it seems most people (like me) have no idea that they are doing it
wrong. Some people say it's laziness; others would say it's a lack of
teaching. As someone afflicted with this problem, I would say it is
ignorance. I never once thought that anything I found in Google was
wrong. I never realized the difference between looking something up and
researching something. When you look up something up you want a quick,
nice answer. When you research it seems you have to dive deep into the
parts of the internet I did not know even existed.
This
world of research never crossed my mind. However, I am married to a man
who does know about the research side to the Internet. If he wants to
know more about something, he dives right in and finds everything he can
about the subject. He learned from other sites and from just doing. I
never once thought that this was a tool I needed. Then one day I
realized I wanted something, and it required me to learn about
research. I wanted to go back to school and do well.
My
husband pointed me in the right direction and told me to learn. I am
not looking forward to it, but already I have learned there are more
search engines than just Google. I also learned that Google has search
tips on their site. Research was never a fun English subject for me. I
would always dread the papers I had to write. Now I am writing a blog to
learn how to write.
It
is amazing to me that while I grew up in the age of knowledge, I have
no idea how to use it to my full advantage. And what about all those
people who don’t live with someone as knowledgeable as my husband? What
about the people like me who think that putting the words into Google
will give them all the answers?
For
now I am going to take some of my new-found knowledge and practice what
I have learned. I hope to learn even more about research and ways to
use the internet. I hope in future posts to show even more things about
research.
