My high school did not really teach me how to write college papers. I was thrown to the wolves and suffered many bites and scratches. But, then I rose in their ranks and became high-in-standing among the wolf pack.
Today, I share lessons of my incredible odyssey with you.
Most of you will now be working on your first papers of the year. For this, you will have to use the library, and this can be a confusing, intimidating experience for most people. You will be confronted by so much information that putting it into anything resembling a paper might seem impossible.
You may feel like going home to your comfortable lodgings and throwing applesauce at the wall all evening in a fit of despair. Well, don’t!
The first rule is to come into the library. While you can do some work remotely on your computer, many of the articles and almost all of the books you will need are only available here. Just making that first step can put you in the right frame of mind.
The second rule is to pay attention to the dates of your sources. Unless there is some need to use old articles, restrict yourself to journal articles and books written since 1990 or so. Struggling through Colonel Percival Nedley’s 1922 account of the History of Panama isn’t worth your time.
A subset of the second rule is to pay attention to the kinds of sources you are using: most notably, government documents usually aren’t a great source for writing most kinds of papers. Stick to books and journals.
The third rule is not to neglect the reference area. We have a lot of great, up to date reference works on subjects you might not think to research here. This includes Chicano folklore, the history of radio, and Satanism.
These reference books contain concise, to the point information about your topic that will save you a lot of time!
If all else fails, talk to a reference librarian. That’s what we do – besides eat maple-iced doughnuts. Best of luck this year!

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