What I have learned

1. By doing my research paper I have learned more about MLA citations, and have learned more about citing and how to arrange a research paper. It was very challenging for me because I tend to overthink too much and then overwhelm myself with the possible ideas and ways to go do an assignment. My understand of college-level research hasn't necessarily changed because before I did not know what to expect, but know that I have an idea of how it's suppose to go, I realize I have a very long way to go. 
2. The advice I'd tell a potential student is to get as much sources as possible, familiarize themselves with citation pages, as it is almost as challenging and important as the actual paper and break down your paper into some type of guideline. Breaking down a paper into subjects help to get the paper going, and makes it less overwhelming. Also scheduling different parts at specific times/days helps. Also in general free-writing does help the paper come along, because if the ideas are coming to you, you can just add to them with correct citations later. I'd also add that I'd tell any student if they have doubt on how their paper looks, to go to a writing center at their college, to get help.  
3.  I probably would have given myself more time for the paper, but overall I'm happy with it. I also believe I would have gone to the writing center, and utilize any available help on campus but time did not allow me. Now that I see the difference with a research paper and an opinion based paper I have a better understanding how to formulate papers in the future. I've learned that research papers work best when the topic is related to me.

Week 5 Blog

The author of my first reference is Temple Grandin, from her book named Thinking In Pictures published in 1995. It is a book source and it is important to my paper because my research paper is about Temple Grandin. It adds to the paper because it describes her sensation to touch. I talk about how some autistic people react negatively to touch, and in the movie her reaction to her mother's hug was negative. In the book Temple Grandin describes being touch like her senses being overloaded, and it caused her to want to run away like a wild animal. I chose this source because I needed a book source and out of the two book sources that I had I chose this one because it got more to the core of what I was looking for. “I always hated to be hugged. I wanted to experience the good feeling of being hugged, but it was too overwhelming. It was like a great all-engulfing tidal wave of stimulation, and I reacted like a wild animal.” (Grandin 62). 

The author of my second source is Davidson, Turkington, and Cataldo. The name of the article was called Autism and it's a source for Gale Virtual Reference. It is very important to my paper because it explains in detail what autism is. The authors argument is not really much an argument but an explanation as to what autism is. The reason I chose this source was because it was imperative that I had an encyclopedia reference plus I liked it because it was very detailed including the prognosis, the treatment, the symptoms as other pertinent facts. It had about seventy to eight percent of what I needed as far as explaining what autism is. A complex developmental disorder distinguished by difficulties with social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication, with behavioral problems as well as repetitive behaviors and narrow focus of interests (Davidson, Turkington, Cataldo 373).