Research Extra Credit- Thea
Tutor
This semester, I researched two separate casefiles. The first one was
about a guy named Sidney Walker and the second was on Luella Hammer. Both of
these casefile had some interesting information that was discovered. I took
about 7-9 hours on the first one and about the same on the second. The second
one that I did was an extended research on the file. I did a peer review for 5
students and got more insight on research from their work. I also took the time
to research and understand the actual course information. I had to get used to
getting all sorts of information and not knowing what to do with it until later
on. I got the hang of it and just wrote down all sorts of things so that I had
something to look back on when I found something else the next day. At first, I
was not expecting this process to be as lengthy as it ended up being. I sat
looking at my computer for hours before I would find something important. I
really understand why Dr. Soldani had such a huge emphasis on the importance of
research at the beginning of the semester now. I never thought that I could
enjoy research until this class.
I
got access to ancestry.com which was very helpful. Looking online through old
newspapers as well as old marriage, death and birth certificates was also so
interesting. I learned how to read stuff from the olden days which I would have
never had the opportunity of doing any other way. This class was a lot of
research and a lot of time was put into the class because it is not a typical
history class. I thought this class would be memorizing names and dates like
every other history class, but I was so wrong. This class taught me so much
about how teachers should be teaching kids, especially in today’s world.
Research is what is important, not memorizing names and dates that we all
forget after the test. The reason Dr. Soldani has taught so many kids and been
successful with it is because she does not spit information at us in order of
how it happened and tell us what is important for the test. She gives us the information
kind of out of order and makes us sit down on our own time to figure it out and
make it into a story for ourselves. That is what I call learning. I have never
put more work into a class but I would not change a second of it. This class
taught me so much more than just history and how to make sense of it. I learned
how to research. I learned that in order to have successful research, you
cannot be in a rush and you cannot go into it with an expected output. You must
get lost along the way. The tests in this class were never tricks. She gave us
everything we could possibly need in order to succeed on the tests but we had
to take the time ourselves to actually understand it. American History is
actually interesting if you take the time to realize it. I never understood
that in high school because it was never made interesting and the teachers just
spat out information for us to memorize for the test the next day. Having a
professor like Dr. Soldani was something I will never forget because I do everything
differently now. I take the time to sit and understand the information to a
point where I understand it and in the case of history I relate it to life now.
Seeing how things come together from one class to another or even how history
can repeat itself 40 years later is something that is so interesting to grasp.
Research in today’s society with the amount of kids going
to school is so important because it teaches you to sit down and learn. That is
something that many students do not ever do and then they get to real life and
are told by their boss to figure something out and they have absolutely no idea
where to even begin. Having the ability to research and research well is
something that only certain teachers can actually teach and implement in their classes
and this was done by Dr. Soldani, at least for me. I trusted the process and
realized I might as well try and I really got somewhere with research. Research
is now something that I understand and want more people to get used to doing.
