tctclearningcommons

When I first started working for the Tri-County Tech’s library system, a student came to me and asked for help on how to do a citation for her assignment. Apparently, her professor told her that she could not cite from the library database from where she got the information, but instead must find the original source and cite from there. (Now we are going to put aside the fact that this was a pretty strange thing to ask considering that modern college library’s purchase specifically purchase digital resources, often in lieu of hard copy sources.) 

This student’s question got me to thinking that maybe I was a devious college student. I can honestly say if I were an undergraduate, I would have never tried to find the original source to cite from since my information source was surprisingly complete. What I would have done is simply written the source on my works-cited page as if I had found the original item and not merely gleaned the citation from the database. 

To this end, I thought it might be helpful to offer a few shortcuts that I’ve figured out in my (minorly) devious academic career.

Tie project topics together

One thing that is hard for most students is having to juggle multiple projects simultaneously. Instead of being overwhelmed by this, instead tie all your topics together. While it’s not possible to use the same topic across classes, but there are certainly multiple ways to thematize your semester: discuss food culture in Mexico for one class, health debates in Mexican medical practices for another, and research Mexican telenovelas for a third. The tighter the theme, the less research you’ll have to do. 

You bought it, use it: textbook awareness

There aren’t too many students out there that would be dedicated enough to sit down read their entire textbook, but you should at least thumb through it. For example, in one of my undergraduate Spanish Textbooks the book not only had a small Spanish to English dictionary in the back, but examples of how to do some of the exercises in the book. Textbook authors make a lot of money propping up staid information for bells and whistles to both reinforce and add value (and therefore price increases) to the concepts it describes. 

Get a friend to help (but with caution)

If you know someone who is an ace in an area, it never hurts to ask for a little guidance. However, as you take advice, remember that the tricks that work for someone where the material comes easily won’t always work if you struggle with it. There were more than a few times when I had a smart friend tell me that an instructor’s exams were easy only to find out that she meant they were easy for her! It’s not that she misled me; she honestly thought it was a breeze because she was so good in the subject.