Research Writing Made Simple

If you've ever sat among a stack of library books wondering how to will them into a cohesive essay or struggled to produce advice for a teen embarking on their first major research paper, this episode is for you! 

Research is a broad and varied collection of skills required for a multitude of academic and professional tasks. While we can't discuss all of them, in this conversation we offer simple, actionable tips to make any research project more efficient and less exhausting. 

Building on our conversation in the prewriting episode, we give advice for breaking a complex project down into manageable tasks, finding and vetting resources, and creating personalized, intuitive notetaking and outlining systems.

#NETCollective #ResearchTips#CollegeReadiness#Organization #AcademicWriting#ExecutiveFunctioning#ParentingTeens#IndexCards

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Transcript

Vinita 0:00

When I think about research writing, I think of statistics, I think of numbers, I think of hard data. How would you organize that information so that when you're going to do your research paper and do the actual writing, you got a nice structure to your notes?

Ruth 0:16

Finding sources is not, you know, a singular or static process.

Kay 0:20

Welcome to Net Collective, where we navigate everything together. From classroom to college to careers and beyond.

Vinita 0:27

I'm Kay McBrudy, career coach and founder of Waterville Partners. I'm Vanita Fattel, school psychologist in private practice.

Ruth 0:34

I'm Ruth Hayes, education professional and founder of Fultio Prep.

Kay 0:39

NetCollective. Navigating everything together, one conversation at a time. Welcome to Net Collective. This is Kay, and we are going to continue our writing series today. And who knew there were so many different elements to writing? Ruth, what are we going to talk about today?

Ruth 0:56

Yeah, there are so many different elements, and today we're going to talk about one very, very wide category of them, which is research. So research is a huge topic. You do it in a lot of different fields for a lot of different reasons, and there's no way we could have an exhaustive conversation about that today. But I do want to get into a few tips that I've found make any research project more efficient and less anxiety-inducing, because that can definitely be a factor.

Kay 1:21

Awesome. I know it it's interesting that we're on this writing series, and it dawned on me that as a career coach, I actually have been, I don't realize how much coaching I'm doing on writing activities and how many of the tips that you're giving I'm able to translate and give to my clients, whether it's cover letters or resumes, LinkedIn profiles, networking emails. There's a lot of written word that people are using at different points in their life.

Ruth 1:48

Exactly. And this is to take a brief detour, this is why I love interdisciplinarity so much, because I think the more expansive and almost synesthetic you can be about how you approach different tasks, the more you can have to bring to bear on them. So I think that's a great example. The same thing, like, you know, we're talking about for college essays, thinking about yourself as the subject of research and writing out your own narratives to then mine for something that you want to uh write about in a larger essay.

Vinita 2:14

So with that statement in mind, doesn't all types of writing require some research, whether you're looking at academic journals or you're doing some self-reflection. I mean, I I feel like all of that is research, right?

Ruth 2:30

Exactly. If you if we really want to make it broad, we can say that research is gathering the materials that you need to write something, right? Or even to make a presentation to make some kind of argument. Right. And so is this episode specifically about all types of research or are we sticking to We're gonna mostly focus on academics and satisfy what people are doing, but it all of this will be useful for anything else. And one thing I have learned just being out in the world is that all these academic skills help in your life, you know. Right. Well, I was gonna say cover letters.

Kay 2:59

I mean if you are writing a cover letter to a company, um, you need to do research to find out about the company or the person that you're writing to. And so it's a m maybe a micro version of what you're gonna share with us today, but I think some of the principles can be applied.

Ruth 3:14

Absolutely. And especially some of the things about separating out your tasks and making sure that you have time for everything, you can make the process a lot more streamlined. Okay, great. So, how do we get started with research writing? All right, so let's talk about so five tips today. First tip is to divide and conquer. Um, and this is a you said get started. We if you want to look back at our getting started episode, this is a great place to use some of those tips. Um, a research paper requires, or any kind of research project, requires a little bit more complex planning than other tasks. So I would say don't get overwhelmed by trying to overlap or combine them. And what I mean by that is don't say, okay, today I'm gonna go to the library, I'm gonna find resources, and I'm gonna take notes and I'm gonna start my outline. That's too much stuff. You know, today I'm gonna go to the library and find resources and look at them, put them together. Another time, or you know, even if it's later in the day, if you're pressed, sometimes you are. I'm gonna sit down and take notes. And then I'm gonna look back at my notes and do and if you separate it out that way, A, you give yourself a time to reflect and and pull up new things, and B, you're not so overwhelmed with trying to do different things.

Kay 4:22

Okay, quick question on research. Have you seen that change? I mean, I remember doing research and having to know the Dewey Decimal system and going to the library and in the stacks, which um and now people are doing it online, so they may not even be going to a library. Or do you see some people still going to the libraries to do research?

Ruth 4:39

So yeah, there are l a lot of books that you can't necessarily find a full text of online. And I tend to just want to have a physical book anyway. Um, and even just to go for resources. So, for example, if you want access to JSTOR or something like that, you might be able to get it institutionally, which is a big database of academic journals. Okay. Um, so you might be able to get access through a library and not want to pay, I think it's like $900 or something a month. Don't quote me on that. Whoa. Um, it is expensive. Um so yeah. Um and it's funny because I was kind of right on the cusp. They taught us the Dewey Decimal system, and there was a card catalog, but there is also like the black background computer, you know? So that was like circuit kindergarten. Okay. So use a checklist, and we've talked about this before in that getting started episode, but also in the pre-writing episode, we talked about um breaking um uh the entire project down into its component parts, listing them out, estimating how long each one's gonna take you, and checking all that off. I would add to that advice to split it up into phases. So, you know, you could do like we've talked about the pre-writing. So gathering your materials, taking notes, starting an outline. You can have the drafting, you can even have it broken up into different sections. So if you know you have to do some complex subject, you know, this is when I'm going to do the note-taking for this aspect of it. This is when I'm gonna do the outlining for that aspect of it. And set your own deadline so that you can know you're on pace.

Vinita 6:05

Yeah, and those are great executive functioning skills.

Ruth 6:08

Yeah, it always comes back to the executive functioning.

Vinita 6:10

That's how we do anything. Oh, that's right. Yeah. That I mean, they they're they're not just for writing, but it's they're life skills, right? So, but I like what you said about breaking down into different categories and allotting a certain time to when you're gonna do those steps to do your research paper or outline or whatever it is, right? So it even within that, like I even think the collecting your sources, right? That's that can even be broken down into, well, what types of sources and how to organize the the information you get just from that portion of your research paper. Can you talk a little bit more about what that would look like?

Ruth 6:53

Yeah. So one of the things you have to remember is that finding sources is not, you know, a singular or static process. You're going to gather your resources, you know. So you want to start with, you know, the most top-level information about the topic. Um, look at, and one of the things you can do, and this goes will go into the next tip a little bit, is to look at who the authors are, look at who's um publishing work about this, where they're located, um, who they're citing, right? So you can, as you're going through one resource, you can be noting down um sources that they have in their notes. And you know, that can be another step of the process where you kind of go through one layer and then you go through another another layer of resources that are suggested by that. And all of this is part of the note-taking process. So you're taking notes on absolutely everything. You have a list of, even if you're not going to use something, um, take make a note of it, say who it's by, say basic things about it because it might come up somewhere else, or you might be able to use it somewhere else. So never waste work.

Vinita 7:50

Do you recommend a system of note-taking specifically for this type of writing? You know, is there, is there, uh, is there a way, even if it if there's not a name to the system, how would you organize that information so that when you're going to do your research paper and do the actual writing, you've got a you know, like a nice structure to your notes.

Ruth 8:17

I would say, and I say this with all types of writing tasks, do the system that works for you. So something that I've learned from, you know, being in a lot of classes over the years, from helping a lot of different people with writing tasks, is that everyone is different in how they prefer to organize information. So you can, I can tell you what you need to have. So you definitely need a list of all your resources, just titles and authors. You definitely need some notes on, you know, here are some prominent authors in the field, um, notes that you can have alongside as you're reading something and marking it up, definitely go through and highlight, definitely go through and underline, and then you can be making a list of um other resource sources that are suggested. But different people do that in different ways. Some people just want to put it straight into EndNote, which is a uh software that keeps track of all your citations and like it there. I'm a very on-paper person, so I'm gonna want those notes written down. Other people might want to put them into a concept map or something like that. You wanna organize it in the way that the information is most accessible to you.

Vinita 9:16

Okay, so that part it can be negotiable, but the actual content of what you're taking notes on.

Ruth 9:24

Yeah, so you're taking notes on the resources themselves. So what are articles and books that you're finding? Who are the people who are writing them? So you can kind of look for their names. And then as you're looking through that first tranche of resources, who are their citations? Who are they referencing? Um, what are they making you think about that now you want to search? I would also recommend keeping just a running list of search terms so you can come back to it. Um, if there's anything that you think of term um nomenclature that you haven't seen before, that's all great to note down, however you like.

Vinita 9:54

And how uh recent should our sources be? I mean, I I think that there's some great research articles out there that you can use or academic or whatever sources that are out there, but but some may think, oh, they're dated. Are shouldn't we discount older sources or do they still have a place in and I know that that's it's a very general question because I think it matters on the topic. But what are your thoughts on the recent sources out there versus some that are still good but maybe older? Great question.

Ruth 10:29

And again, I'm gonna answer it depends. Um, I think that's a a part of kind of organizing your sources and thinking about it because you need to think of does how up to date does this need to be for this topic? So if you're writing something about, you know, CRISPR and gene editing, all that stuff needs to be super fresh because things are changing all the time.

Vinita 10:48

And it's a fairly new topic.

Ruth 10:49

And it's a fairly new topic. But you know, there is historical research. You know, you might need to look at archival res resources. I always think of, you know, looking at, you know, um astrology charts from thousands of years ago to say something about astronomy today. You know, it could be from any place, but I think one of the tasks is to think about um how up to date does the information need to be? Um, where does it come from and kind of what's the through line? And that's something you can think about as well as you're gathering these resources. What's the overall narrative of information that's being laid out?

unknown 11:20

Great.

Ruth 11:21

Okay.

Kay 11:21

So you've covered divide and conquer tip one.

Ruth 11:24

Tip two is to vet your sources thoroughly. And that goes back to we're talking about with the authors. This has become an even bigger problem now with AI. And I know a lot of people are using that for some of these initial phases, which is great, but you gotta double check. Um, because I've, you know, I've read stories about lawyers turning in a brief and there's, you know, fake articles in it, you know, fake journal articles, because AI just kind of comes up with something that seems plausible. So I would say definitely um look at who the people are. If you see someone, just do a quick bio search. Do they actually work the place they say they work? Are they a well-respected person in this field? Is there anything hinky about them? Um, just to make sure. And then, as we discussed before, identify a few key experts and kind of branch out from there. Who are they working with? Where are they giving presentations? What organizations are they parts of? And that can give you some good leads as well.

Vinita 12:18

I mean, this is not a narrative. These are resources, and so there has to be credibility. Exactly. Definitely check those sources. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

Ruth 12:27

Double and triple. All right. Okay, great. So, tip three, and this is a subject I'm very passionate about. Um, index cards are your friend. So even if you are putting everything in EndNote, even if you are doing all of your outlining um on the computer, I would say please, please, please use index cards. Um, you know, they're great for citations. Um, and just having a physical object can be very, very useful during this process, right? So you can use it as a bookmark. You can put it in, uh you can group them together and think about um what topics you might want to discuss at the same time. You can make one for each citation and kind of move them around and put them into groups. I think just the kind of hands-on concept mapping that you can do really, really helps. And correct me if I'm wrong, Vanita. I think if you're actually using hands-on materials, you have better recall and you can analyze better.

Vinita 13:21

Yeah, you're you're connecting the information more. There's a processing that goes on when you're writing and you're thinking at the same time. And then you're also you have an actual physical source to review, you know. And by the way, it also goes back to your first tip, which under divide and conquer, which um about organization and the pre-writing, right? So you need to be able to organize all of this data, especially for research paper. And I love, I mean, index cards, I uh they're to me, they're never gonna go out of style. Never, you know, they're never gonna go out of style. So it's a great simple resource, and you can color code if needed, right?

Ruth 14:00

Exactly. And you don't have to be beholden to a document. You don't have to, if you're me, you don't have to say, oh no, I ruined the formatting. Let me go back and do my bullet points over it. No, you can rip up an index card, put it in the recycle bin, don't do that too much. Um, but you can just kind of toss it aside. And I think that is a great way to do it, and it's a great way to avoid staring down a blank page. And you also talked about digital index cards as well, right?

Vinita 14:23

Yeah.

Ruth 14:23

And you can, there are all types of um resources if you want to go in and do that electronically, although I do really recommend having something in your hand. Physical. Okay. Physical.

unknown 14:32

Okay.

Vinita 14:32

Yeah. And for the reasons that we just talked about, like the processing issue is is really more, I think it solidifies more of that information into your brain.

Ruth 14:40

Exactly. And I think it's just less daunting than sitting down at the computer. It feels like a different thing.

unknown 14:46

Okay.

Ruth 14:47

What's next? All right. Tip four is to outline for logic, then clarity, then style. And I mean that in order of priority, not necessarily chronology. Um, as we discussed in pre-writing, again, it all builds. Um, you want to write everything down. So if you're very early in the process and you think of an amazing alliterated title, write that down. If there's a um quote or a piece of information that you know you're gonna use, get that down. If you think of a turn of phrase, jot it down. But when you're starting to outline, especially with a research paper, first and foremost, you want to think about that logical chain. Um, and I think the thing I've done in my life that's helped me with this most and just organizing thoughts and putting a narrative together is doing policy debate. I was on the debate team in high school. And so you build a case. So you want to take someone from here's what we're talking about to now you agree with me, and you have to put together all the links in that chain. So that's always where I start with the paper. So, what am I trying to convince you of? Because every you know, research paper is a persuasive paper. You're saying, here's the conclusion and here's why I reached it. So lay things out, think about the logical order that they go in, um, how you want to group things together, make sure that your argument is solid before you worry about what you're gonna write at all. And then come back and think about clarity. So you may not go through exactly in that logical order. Maybe you want to drop someone into the action and start with an anecdote, you know, or loop back to it. There are lots of different ways to structure a narrative that don't necessarily um go straight in the logical chain of thinking. So think about that next. And then you can get to style. Style does matter. Don't let anyone tell it you tell you it doesn't, no matter what kind of writing you're doing. So then once you have that organized, you know how you want to tell the story, you can sit down and start telling it. And those are all separate tasks.

Vinita 16:30

So the style piece, okay, I understand the logic, okay, when you're talking about make everything sound logical and okay, and the clarity, be real specific with what you're saying. The style, that's subjective. Or subjective. So what are the different styles for this type of writing?

Ruth 16:49

Oh, yeah. By style, I just mean making it as concise, um, as effective writing. So, you know, in those first couple of steps, I wouldn't worry too much about, you know, am I gonna use this synonym or that synonym? So when you're looking at style, you're kind of just running back through and saying, okay, did I express this as well as I could? What's in that's where you do like what we usually think of as editing that you would do for a non-research paper, right? Because you've got, you've edit all your sources, you've got all, you've you've got the logical case made, you have all your evidence in, and now we're just gonna make sure that we're doing it in the smoothest way possible.

Vinita 17:20

Okay. Would word choice go into the case? Yeah, word choice.

Ruth 17:25

Um, you know, looking for uh word overuse, something that um comes up a lot, and I'm a kind of a stickler stickler for overusing words. So if you're writing about the same topic, a lot of times the language can get repetitive. So even going through and um subbing in synonyms for you know common nouns that you're discussing or making sure that you're always switching up your sentence structure, um, which can get a little bit stale if you're doing really factual writing.

Vinita 17:49

And when I think about research writing, because I've done some of that in, you know, when I was in in grad school, I think of statistics, I think of numbers, I think of hard data, right? And so would that be more clarity and be clear and in when you're reporting a statistic in your research paper, how is that gonna show up in tip four?

Ruth 18:13

So that would be logic. So that's thinking about how I'm proving my point. So you have a piece of you have a piece of information that you want to use, you fit it into your narrative, you're explaining how you know, how you know, rainfall has increased. Here's a chart that shows how it's how it's increased. I'm going to blend it in, right? Okay. So that's why um one of the things I like to do is to kind of just slot in um piece of evidence that I know I'm gonna use and start that as kind of my outline. And then you go around and think about okay, how does each of these um topics or each of these facts lead into the next? And are there any gaps? Okay. And then once you have that, you can think about how you physically want to arrange that. Because you might start at the end of the story and go back to the beginning. You might start with, you know, an anecdote and jump back into the main story, but you have it all set up. This is how I'm I'm proving my point. If I were just gonna do bullet points and you know, give someone the bare information. That's kind of the logic. And then clarity is thinking about how you organize your narrative. So, like what order you want to do things in, how do you want to break up your sections, when you should break up your sections, um, that kind of thing.

Kay 19:16

It's interesting because I'm listening to this, thinking about it in terms of the cover letter. My mini little version. And I think that the logic, you know, what's the point of this paper, of this short note? And I think maybe applying some of these to smaller writing samples is interesting, right? Yeah. And so you want to have somebody call you back, or you want someone to schedule an interview with you so you know what the the the ask is or what the end game is, but you need to convey that and and how you do that in terms of you want to do it concisely for sure. Yes. And you want to be logical and you want to figure out what's your style. Is it is it more professional? Is it more casual? Is it more urgent? But figuring out that style piece. So, I mean, I can see some of these elements again and how they translate into non-research, you know, or traditional research topics.

Ruth 20:09

Oh, 100%. And you know, if you're gonna say, write um a one-paragraph email to, you know, a professional contact, you can go through those three steps. So you can say, okay, what is it that I want to really get across, like you said, Kay? Um, and then what's the best order to do it? So I'll, you know, should I introduce myself first? Should I introduce this person I know first? You know, how do I want to lay that out? And then did I write this the best way I could? Am I using strong direct language? Um, am I taking out anything that doesn't need to be there? Am I using um the best synonym that I could and using distinct words?

Vinita 20:42

Right. Right. Yeah. And all three of those logic, clarity, style really can go into any type of writing, right? Yeah. And I I I kind of just had a little light bulb moment. I'd say all types of writing, if not most, art have some research element to it. Oh, yeah. Even if you're writing about your favorite memory, which is narrative. Or, you know, we we talked about the college essays. That's there's a research element to that, right? Absolutely. Yeah.

Ruth 21:10

And that's why, you know, we talked about in college essays. You can separate that out. A lot of people say, okay, I'm gonna write, you know, about the summer I spent in Cambodia. Let me sit down and write. No, lay out the narrative, write down everything you can remember about it, and then go back and think about what you want to share and what you want to put together into a narrative.

Vinita 21:27

So they're all different types of research resources out there. Some may just come from our heads in the form of a memory, or some are much more structured and what's the word, professional or a library. Exactly. They're coming from a library, or you have to get into um Eric, you know, where's the it's the database for all the academic journals. So yeah, there's always that research element. I j I never thought of it in that way. Oh, yeah. Even okay, this sounds silly. This is a little, you know, like thank you notes. I think I love when I get thank you notes like in the mail, like thank you for this. I mean, even that has a little bit of research in there because they're thinking back to what they're thanking you for. Oh, 100%. One of my the biggest things stretch, but I do that.

Ruth 22:18

Like as you know, a business lady when I'm, you know, doing professional emails and things like that, I definitely approach it that way. Um, I, you know, read every email I send at least three times to make sure that I'm using, you know, the best language that I can. And a lot of times you'll find something. You know, I always the analogy I use with my students is to just keep rinsing until the water runs clear. Like keep reading it until you can't find anything that you would make better. Okay. Excellent. All right. So tip five, retype between drafts as much as possible. And so this is a one that I haven't really encountered a lot of other people talking about, but I really like, and I think it goes to that kind of rinsing until the water comes clean. Because when you're retyping, two things. One, you might catch typos that you wouldn't otherwise, because if you're just skimming something you already wrote, you know what you meant to write, right? And I've actually had students who will be reading a paper out loud to me and read something other than what they wrote. That's better. And so that's what they have in their head, but they never notice that it wasn't on the page. The second reason to do that is because you can catch edits and you can find ways to improve that you might not think of on your own, right? So you might be fine with the sentence and like copy and paste it over, but as you're like physically recreating it, you realize it could be arranged a different way, or you could use different language, or you could put it somewhere else. Or actually, do I really need this sentence? And you give yourself a chance to do that. So if you have the time, I would say do that for the entire thing, or if there's a certain section that you're struggling with, how to put it together, how to, you know, get the language right, definitely do that for at least a portion of it. I found that very helpful.

Vinita 23:50

Awesome. So there's um, I think I had a professor who said to me when you're in this might have come up in one of our previous writing episodes. Um read with two different hats on. One hat is your content, read for content or edit for content. Take that hat off, obviously, imaginary hats. And then the second imaginary hat is read for mechanics. Yes. And revise for that. This way you're not doing all of it. And remember, our brains can only handle so many things to look for and scan for at once. So go ahead and break that up. Content, mechanics, and and uh draft those as needed.

Ruth 24:35

Yes, I I absolutely agree with that. Because that goes back to we talked about in the first tip divide and conquer, not overlapping your tasks. Because those are two separate things, making sure that you have the narrative the way you want it, making sure all the information is in the same or in the right order. But then that's a separate task to go back. So a lot of times, you know, if someone's struggling with phrasing, I'll I'll tell them with, you know, just write down the information that you want to be here, just as a placeholder. And then you can always come back and and read and read.

Kay 25:04

And even I'll ask clients, they're trying to get the top of their resume, like a summary. I'm like, well, forget about trying to create that. Just talk to me. Tell me what is it that you and and after they say it out loud and try and explain it, the words come more easily. Yes. I I do this too. Yeah, yeah.

Vinita 25:22

So I think that's another thing. With that spirit in mind, can we try a little exercise here? Can we put these five tips into practice with an example research writing piece? You said that you did some policy work, some debate. I think that that's a really great way to learn is to have these strategies and then actually apply these strategies to a real or fictitious.

Ruth 25:55

Yes, that's actually a great suggestion. So we can use it as an example. The very first research paper I ever did in second grade, which was on toucans, and I was very excited about it. And I remember for the whole year, I whenever I saw Toucan Sam, I was like, I know all about you. Um so first we have to start off. We have we have the topic, we know what we're doing. You would look at um, if you're doing this for a class, you would uh look at the um at the rubric that your teacher gives you, make sure you know the entire thing. Just like you read a recipe before you start cooking, make sure you know everything that you need to do. Um I would give myself deadlines, so this is gonna be due on you know June 15th. I want to have my final draft ready to go by the 13th in case anything happens. So that means I need all my resources by, you know, and just kind of walk yourself backwards from that. So then I would think about gathering my uh my resources, vetting my sources. So I would want to look up, you know, start from very general places. This was this was back in the day, so I actually started in the physical encyclopedia. But you can start from Wikipedia, don't cite Wikipedia, but it's a good resource just to find general things. So see who are some of the names that are coming up, what you can suggest. And then, like we're talking about Venita, um, see how up to date the information needs to be. So, are there any you know recent discoveries in toucan science that we need to account for? Is there anything that's controversial? Um, and if there is, who's on either side of it and which side is credible?

Vinita 27:21

Um, and which side isn't when you say toucan, are you talking about the bird? The bird. Okay. Just wanted to make sure.

Ruth 27:28

Okay, the bird. The bird, yeah. It was super exciting. The biggest word I knew I think was interesting, and I was like, I'm gonna say this is interesting. Yes. Well, back then it was. You said you were in second grade.

unknown 27:41

Okay.

Ruth 27:42

Um and so then, you know, you get your index cards. I would make one for each of these sources just to kind of mix and match them, or you can do that in um, you know, EndNote or wherever you want to put it, um, and start taking notes. So start from those very general sources, make a note of who those main two can scientists are, um, what are some major works in the field that I should know about, and get that running list of um other resources that I might want to find. So who are, you know, who are the sources at the bottom of the Wikipedia page and who are the sources at the bottom of those articles, and just go from there.

Vinita 28:16

And you said Wikipedia is good to use.

Ruth 28:19

It's fine to use as well. I think it's fine to use as like a very because it is edited, like you again, you want to vet everything. So I wouldn't just take it at face value, but just in terms of like giving you some general resources about a topic, especially if you're going in top level, it can be a good way to do that. Aaron Powell maybe directional information as opposed to specific, citable. Exactly. Yeah. Just kind of where to go with it or something like that. I would say just start very broad. I think if you try to be too specific and too focused in your research initially, that can really hinder you because you can wind up not seeing things you should be looking at and getting overwhelmed by trying to um kind of assess the information while you're gathering it. All right. So then I would put my outline together. So what do I want to say about this? Um, you know, I'm do I want to give a history of the two can? Do I want to talk more about, you know, how they um how their habitat is now and how they're responding to um climate change? You know, what do I want the focus to be? Um and that's the um that's the logic part, right? So what do I want the focus to be? What do I want to prove about you know their habitats or something like that? What information from these resources am I gonna put together to do that? So you do that, make sure your chain of logic is airtight, you know, so we get the person from, hey, here's a toucan to now you agree with me about two can habitats. And then we go back and make sure that we know how we're telling the story. So do I wanna start off with an anecdote about, you know, a toucan encounter that really changed the scientist's life? Or do I want to jump in with something statistical or, you know, how do I want to do it? And then once you have all that down, go back and look at style. Um, and then I would again be retyping in between. This was a very short paper of second grade, so I would definitely recommend that. I think it was a one-pager. Um, but if you have the opportunity to do that, it it can really help. And if you have a you know, a one-page response paper or something like that, that can really help you get to the best level with it.

Vinita 30:13

Awesome.

Ruth 30:14

Excellent.

Vinita 30:16

Wonderful. So um thank you for that. So we've got the five tips, and they'll be on the website as well.

Ruth 30:23

Yep, I'll have a little worksheet that has some bullet points under these. You can take this and have it on the side as you do your next project.

Kay 30:29

Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. If today's conversation resonated with you, please share this episode with anyone who may need it and follow us at netcollective.org or wherever you get your podcasts so you won't miss what's next. We are Net Collective, navigating everything together, one conversation at a time. Thanks for listening.