What is the hardest thing about finding info & doing research on a topic for you personally? Did this Library Research course help? In what ways? What couold be more helpful?

Doing research is usually pretty easy for me. At least I thought it was until I found out that the way I was doing my research was “wrong”. I found out that my favorite search engine, Google, is not as good a tool as I thought it was. I’ve learned about another source on Google, however, called Google Scholars and that’s a good way to look up information that is reliable instead of millions and millions of pages that could be just phony sites. The Library Research  course actually helped me a great deal. When learning about different ways to look up sources in the medical field and different medical websites that was a great help for my Health Disparities class as well. I learned about how I can look up books in the library as well from the internet. Another really important thing I learned was about plagiarism. I did not know all of the different types there were! I know now that I have to be really , really careful in order to avoid it. I’ve never paid much  attention to it before in my writing, (I’m not saying I’ve been plagiarizing my whole educational career) It’s just something that I didn’t think to look at as much. I thought it was okay to “summarize” other works by mentioning them but not giving them proper citations. In school, we have to write a lot of essays and usually only cite people when we quote them but after this class I know I can cite people for the ideas they have if I’m going to use them in my paper. This class will really help me in my future with college essays and I’m thankful to have had the chance to be in it.

:D

Thank you! <3

"Since everything is on the internet, I don't need books. . .right?"

WRONG!
The internet may be a great advance in technology, however it is not always as reliable as some people make it out to be. There are hundreds of billions of pages out there and it's hard to say if it's even a credible source for information. Sure there are good websites. A few that I've recentely learned about for Medical stuff is Medline Plus and The New York Times Health. These are credible sources. But the majority of websites aren't that reliable. I used to use Google for E V E R Y T H I N G until I learned that it wasn't as good a search engine as I thought it was. I never actually payed attention to the number of results that actually came up when i typed in something I was looking up. There are litterally millions of results for one word! How in the world can anyone choose what's true and what's fake on the internet with millions of results!?!?
Books are books for a reason. They don't just get published for being a bunch of balogna! Well informational and educational text doesn't anyways. Make believe and books for fun of course are made up :)
I just think there's something better about a book to get information than the internet. I do rely on the internet more often than not just because of the access I have to the internet is better than the access I have to books, but if I had to choose it would be books. I'd feel 100% sure about my information.

There's something just so... classy about a book versus the computer. (if that makes any sense lol) I like them 10x better.
:)

What do you think librarians do? What would be something cool for librarians to start doing? What do you think the library of the future looks like?

I think that librarians keep the library in order, keep track of books, read a lot, and help people in the library. I think that they mostly help people their find books, recomend books, and also find information on the internet or through movies and music. I can't really think of anythign cool or new librarians could start doing because I think what they do now is perfect. I  think the library of the future would be more technological. I think it will be less books and more computer research and more things like Nooks will be around in the future too.
I don't want that though... I like books :)

Question #1: What do you hope to study when you go to college and why? How is the Pre-Collegiate program helping you meet your goals?

<-------This is me :)

I'm not 100% sure what I want to study in college yet. Working at a vet clinic over the past year through my school got me really interested in veterinary medicine. I have also always wanted to be a teacher because I love sharing information with people and helping other people learn new things. I just don't know what I would teach. I think I would be a pretty cool teacher. I also have been thinking about nursing, I would really love that because of the variety of nursing positions there are. I would just be nervous because I'm not too quick with math and at the vet clinic they always say "decimals kill" because literally I could kill an animal drawing up the wrong amount of a vaccine, and I don't want to do that. I know I will get better with studying and practice but it makes me nervous. If I were to go into nursing I would want to try the different positions but the two that interest me the most would be geriatrics or neonatal.

College in general makes me nervous because it's the only thing I actually make for myself. I choose what i do with my life through my education and knowing I have that much power over this makes me so nervous.

Pre-Collegiate has and is helping me meet my goals by exposing me too all the different areas of the medical field. I get a bit of a head start with my english composition class and I'm learning a lot about college and seeing a lot of medical-related thigns that a lot of other 17 year olds just don't do. It also keeps me on point in school because I have to get good grades to stay in the program and the summer classes keep me sharp all year long. Another thing it's helped me with is meeting a lot of people. I've made a lot of friends here and the T.A's are helpful and I feel like it gives me more people I could reach out to once I've started my college  experience.

:)