After reading this book, I have found many problems that I make as a student when writing research papers, and or regular papers. I have realized how important it is to check the publication of the source, but also now understand the importance of making sure these individuals making the claims are scholarly, and or accurate for the claims being made. I now also understand that if you cannot support your claim then you need to fix your claim, this is something that I have struggled with when writing papers. I have never really thought about making sure that I can support my claim before writing a research paper, I believe that if I were to have taken this approach and advice earlier on in my college career I would not have run into this problem. One thing, that this book talks about that I am terrible at is fact-checking and being too emotionally involved in the topic one is writing about.
Being emotionally attached to your topic is important. However, you have to be able to fact-check it even If you believe what you are saying is not necessarily needing to be fact-checked. Again, this is a problem that I have run into many times, which is why I need to be sure that if I have such a strong opinion on what I believe that I am writing is correct, I need to make sure of that. When reading this book, I feel silly for not having fact-checked as the work of it being “true” or an actual “fact” is nothing but a search away.
I really enjoyed it when in the book they started talking about Wikipedia. In many situations, I feel as though from high school to college we are reminded to never use Wikipedia, but as argued here Wikipedia can be resourceful in the sense that they provide sources for what may or may not be true which will then allow you to see whether or not Wikipedia is correct, but also opens a new lens for more information on the subject you are choosing to write about.
I have also learned that you must make sure that the photos you are using, and or writing about are represented as true. I never really considered that a photo might be incorrect, and or that it might falsely be discussed and or fabricated into something that in fact is not true. One thing, I also fail at when writing my papers is making sure that the timeline is correct for the subject that I am trying to discuss, in this book they do a great job by showing you how to make sure of not making this error. Another mention in this book that is important is figuring out who runs the site of the source you are using, which again, is something that I myself never check.
Overall, I think that this book highlights many important themes that I myself need to work on, and I wish I had read this sooner, and or earlier in my career at college, as I believe it would have been beneficial to me. This information that is being displayed in this book if mentioned in the classroom is only mentioned briefly, but this information is something that all students should have to read as it will only help them in the long run.