There are many lessons I learned from this project. One of the first is a very fundamental lesson. The easiest way to be successful in research is to choose a topic that grabs your imagination. I found it difficult to commit to researching Bowen when I first learned about him. The only real things I had to go on were his diary of his time in Andersonville and his muster records. However, that was enough to pique my curiosity. I suppose the lesson is to go with your instinct. I could have looked for more subjects, or researched an easier topic. I chose to go with Bowen and it only took a few hours for the story to captivate me. The lesson is that when you find a topic that excites you it becomes easy, almost to the point where you have more material than you can use.<\/p>\n
The second lesson is a bit more concrete. When researching one must be open minded. No matter how remote the possibility it is always worth pursuing a lead. In my case, at a loss for databases to search, I used google. That led me to the Pennsylvania Reserves website. Tied in to this is the need for patience and efficiency. When there is a lot of material to wade through, you need to be patient, and you need to be efficient. I was not very efficient in my research, particularly with documenting where I was learning new information as I was getting it. I got so carried away going from one source to another that I had to retrace my steps when the time came to document my sources.<\/p>\n
Research is hard, research is time consuming, and if you find a topic you like research can be fun. The trick is streamlining what parts of the process can be streamlined.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There are many lessons I learned from this project. One of the first is a very fundamental lesson. The easiest way to be successful in research is to choose a topic that grabs your imagination. I found it difficult to … Continue reading