Journals...............

Journals. That terrifying component of a research paper. How I dread the “must include at least one journal article” requirement. It sounds absolutely frightening to me. So Badke's warning in his book Research Strategies urging me to “be prepared for frustration (85)” was already duly noted. I was already frustrated and I had not even started searching yet.

This posting, however, is not a tragedy. I did managed to gain some confidence in searching for journals thanks to the guidance Badke both in the lecture as well as in his book. I learned that searching for journals is quite a bit different from searching on google or even in the library catalog. My main problem had been that I was treating them the same. After following the various examples given to me I was able to successfully find the journal articles that I wanted. I may still be a little frustrated with journal articles, but I have a lot more confidence facing the journal database.

What surprised me the greatest in my search for journals is how helpful the journals actually were when I did manage to find them. Unlike books I can access them right from my computer most of the time. They, also, tended to be more directly related to my topic then most of the books I could get. Knowing how to manage the world of journals will definitely help me in my academic life.