After taking an AP English class my senior year of high school and enjoying writing in general, I tend to be very picky when it comes to the information that I use and the sources that I get that information from. Writing so many papers the past few years has made it easier to determine what sources are reliable and those that aren't. For example, Wikipedia is very helpful, however it can also be edited by any person, so therefore it isn't always truthful. Sources that come from the University library or another library's online site. In order to find the sources that I need to use I read the topic first, then decide how I'm going to write it, and what it is that I plan on writing about. From there, I usually google information on the topic and then continue my search in a more reliable search engine like university search engines or google scholar. I also look for sources that have been peer reviewed or were published by a reliable person/publisher. I usually try to write about things that I am also familiar with so that I can have my own input in the papers and not have to quote my sources throughout all of the paper.

I'm generally an organized person, so it's very important to me that my papers flow and that things go in order. So once I've found my sources and the information that I'm using I write down the specific quotes that I plan on using or highlight them on a hard copy of the source which makes it easier to decide where in the paper I plan on putting the quotes. After writing the paper I tend to go back through and check that it does flow well and my quotes and information makes sense. I like to use multiple sources so that I know the information I'm using is correct and not a skewed opinion. From there I decide which sources I used the most information from and cite every source that I use, and toss the ones that I don't. At first the WSU online library system was pretty confusing, but using to find reliable sources has gotten easier, and it really is beneficial.

In the future, to improve the reliability of the sources I use, I plan to check more into their publisher and how much peer-revision they've been given. I also plan to try to use more hard copies of sources like actual books or articles, not just pages that I've found online.