Research and Writing

It had been ten years since I'd been at uni, so I found that there was a whole lot more to online research than just Google, and also that the library had many more things than just books on the shelves. I had to find out about ePrints repository, and SuperSearch on the student portal took me into all those online databases. It took a little while to work them all out but I seem to be going fine now. I learned it's really really important to draft early. One lecturer told me, don't think about writing it all up at the end, really write from the beginning all the way through, keep writing while you're researching, and I found that really valuable advice. With academic style, I had heard a lot about the passive voice, and I wasn't quite sure what that was. It took a while to work it out. And referencing is the other thing that was really important to learn early on: when to do index citations and quotes, and I think it's probably the best way to avoid plagiarism, is to learn really solid referencing. I'd suggest that the library tour was really important for me at the beginning of the year, and learning to draft early and regularly, and finding out about all of those online databases, and feeling comfortable with them before you start assignments.