Student Life – Finding and using sources

I’m a writer.
I always have a story
somewhere in me.
I would feel like I
was missing a limb
if I didn’t write.
I’m married;
I’ve got two children:
one daughter
who’s about to turn ten,
and my son who’s eight,
and I live in a house
full of animals.
I like writing
because it works round me
and I can do it when I want to.
It works round
the children as well so
if they’re at home in the evening,
I don’t write.
I get up about
half past six, seven o’clock,
get the kids up and fed,
get them to school,
come back,
have a cup of tea,
take the dog for a walk,
stick the washing on the line.
I actually started doing
my degree about ten years ago
when I was pregnant with my daughter,
but through a problematic pregnancy
I sort of shoved it to
one side for a bit, and came
back to it about three years ago.
The last assignment was
discussing the prominence
of the English language
and the resistance of the
prominence of English language.
We had to use an academic text.
I did do a lot of searching
on the university website.
They have a library that lists
all the approved academic texts,
but I did do a lot of Googling.
Finding the academic text was
the hardest part of
finding source material.
So I found
two or three
that I thought would
be quite good and I read
each text about two or three
times and highlighted the bits
that I thought might be useful
and then decided which one
would have the most highlighter on it:
I used that one.
I ended up with far too much stuff:
it was quite difficult actually
trying to condense it down
to within the word count.
I did use paraphrasing,
summarising and quoting
throughout my essay.
There were times when
it was just easier to quote –
you’d come across something that –
yeah, that’s exactly what
I want to say and
there is no other way to say it.
When I first started
doing my degree,
I really struggled with referencing.
By last year though
I had found a guide
to Harvard referencing,
and every time I was
trying to reference,
I went back to that guide
to make sure that it was
done in the correct order.
I think I have got better
at finding source material.
I now know which sources are unreliable
and which sources are reliable.
If you’re struggling to
find source material,
don’t panic.
There’s plenty of stuff out there.
The books that my university gave me were
really comprehensive –
everything I needed was in there.
My advice to anyone who’s struggling
to quote, paraphrase or summarise
is just speak to your tutor.
If in doubt, leave it out.
I think I’ve always written short stories
for friends, but it’s
only been in the past
sort of five or six years that I actually
wanted to make it a career,
and then when I was pregnant
with my daughter I sort of
had the time to sit down
and decide what I really
wanted to do: writing,
so English courses
sort of seemed to be the
next natural step.
I’ve got one more year
left to do with university.
I’m still playing with the idea
of then doing a Masters’
or maybe doing my PGCE.
I do love learning,
I do love learning a new skill,
a new language, anything really.
Go the distance.