Student: I can’t find any scholarly articles on this subject!
Me: Okay, what’s the subject?
Student: Creating a culture of sharing in west-coast technological companies.
Me: Alright, and what/where have you tried searching?
Student: I searched “creating a culture of sharing in west-coast technological companies” on the library website!
Me:
I’m still mad about this because it happens frequently. Students at all levels of education need library and research instruction–they should get it before graduating high school, they should be getting it in several different classes in college, and there should be something in grad school–seriously, there are people in my master’s program who don’t know anything besides Google.
And don’t say “they should have learned in [previous level of university education].” Do you think every person continues education within a few years of their first degree? THEY DON’T. Even if they did get a then-good introduction to research, you think nothing changed between 2008 and 2018? How about the doctoral student I met today whose last degree–and last experience with academic libraries–was in 1996? How about the guy in my master’s cohort who got his bachelor’s degree in 1987?
Because look. See that very specific topic the student wanted? There may or may not be actual scholarly articles about it. But here are a few things you can do:
First, zoom out. Start broad. Pick a few phrases or keywords, like “tech companies” and “culture.” See what comes up.
Actually, back up. First, does your library’s website search include articles, or do you have to go into a database? My library’s website searches some of our 200+ databases, but not all. And you’ll need to find (in advance search or adjustable limiters that pop up after your initial search) how to limit your search to scholarly and/or peer-reviewed articles.
What other keywords are related or relevant? For the search above, you could use a combination of “silicon valley,” “company/ies” or “organization/s,” “sharing,” “collaborative,” “workplace culture,” “social culture,” “organizational culture,” and those are just the ones I can come up with off the top of my head.
Did you find something that looks promising? Great! What kind of subjects/keywords are attached (usually to the abstract, sometimes in the description section of the online listing)? Those can give you more ideas of what to search. Does it cite any articles? Look at those! Some databases (ilu ProQuest) will also show you a selection of related/similar articles.
If you’re researching a very specific topic, you may not find any/many articles specifically about your subject. You may, for example, have to make do with some articles about west-coast tech companies’ work cultures, and different articles about creating sharing/collaborative environments.
That said, this student did the right thing: they tried what they knew to do, and then reached out for help.
They tried what they knew to do, and then reached out for help.
I get goddamn professors pulling this shit, there is not one single level in the academy where research literacy isn’t lacking.
answer this with any university-related advise you’d give someone who’s starting it soon
(Humanities) At the end of the semester, always ask professors what their main take aways from a course are. This way you can walk away with just brief snippets of the most important themes of the course.
One semester I took ancient political theory from the government department. It was a lot of Plato and Aristotle on top of Thucydides and tragedies. I didn’t think I would learn anything from studying the philosophers in the government department when I had studied them intensively in, well, the philosophy department.
At the end of the course we had an “optional” last day of class to get help on our papers and just chat. I had never asked a professor about takeaways before, but as the semester seemed discordant studying all these different pieces of classics at once, I decided to ask. And my professor said something like this:
By studying ancient political theory, we see in Thucydides how human motives, over all this time, are no different. Even today in political situations, humans react the same as they did during the Peloponnesian War. The philosophers foil the tragedies; there were some Greeks (namely philosophers) that are desperately seeking something outside of what is human, some ideal or some perfection or some means of living that just isn’t possible, but the Greek culture at large realizes their mortal fate, as reflected by the tragedies. The philosophers and the tragedies represent opposite sides of a spectrum regarding how to live, but in practice (in Thucydides), all men essentially act the same. And, we are still this way, even after millenia have passed.
This is probably one of the most fascinating ideas from a class that I walked away from, although the class wasn’t even in my department. I wouldn’t have ever been able to piece together something like this on my own so easily, and though I’ve forgotten most of the class (as you will forget the things you learn, too), I will never forget this.
Take a variety of classes, but more importantly make sure that you take something away from them.
Meera
Assorted advice in no particular order from a classics prof:
If you graduate thinking about the world the same way as when you started, something went horribly wrong [unoriginal but worth repeating]
USE A DAY PLANNER / CALENDAR
Make friends, be adventurous, try new foods
Eat some goddamned vegetables
Talk to your professors! Office hours are tools not punishments
College is not just a slightly harder version of high school
You’re not here to earn good grades you’re here to permanently improve yourselfover four years
Proofread your papers
If you don’t know something ask. If you’re too embarrassed to ask during class, do it after (either in person or via email). You’re here to learn. If you knew all of this already, you wouldn’t need a professor
by the way the funniest thing ive read all week is this post on reddit i think where somebody asked for the pros and cons of different stem majors and so this one girl responded and she said she was a software engineer i believe and then she said “ok pro #1. i never have to wait in line for the bathroom ever again. there are more female restrooms in this building than there are women”
pro #2: growing up i was surrounded by so many saras. just. saras everywhere. which sara do you want? but now, as a software engineer, I am the only sara. the eleven marks weep in jealousy.
the marks smdjdjdjdjd YEAH when i took my first compsci class the lab section had twice as many nicks than there were women
someone was complaining to me about how there are too many ryans on the team, and i said “you wanna know how to fix that? hire more women” and the only other woman sitting nearby spat out her coffee
The Society of Women In Physics at my university had a whole campaign with the tagline “More Daves than Women” which was factually true in the physics department
This seems like something everyone should know if they’re in the sciences and/or interested in reading scientific papers.
Also, many academic articles are available on http://sci-hub.tw. If you enter the DOI or the URL of the article on the publisher’s page, it will usually take you right to a PDF.
people will also upload their own publications on researchgate.net pretty regularly. you might need to register to get access but it’s free and as far as I know you don’t need an academic/industry email. It also has a “request full text” option that will send the authors a request if they have an account but haven’t added something.
We did google doc in PA school all the time for everything like OSCEs, class notes, and test review guides. We also had a class Box account to share all of our study materials together. Sharing is caring and work smarter not harder folks!
if you give me a task with no deadline i will literally never do it but if you give me a deadline i will get it done exactly 1 hour before the deadline even if the deadline is in six years
wupacing 