Discovering Digital Scholarship

I think the most enjoyable part of this experience is the research itself. This is for purely selfish reasons – I just like to research fun and interesting topics that I know little about. In the research phase of writing a review, there isn’t anything that I have to produce, and no one is evaluating my research skills. I also don’t have to organize my thoughts just yet – I’m able to freely explore a site without explaining my thought process. When I start writing the review, it’s sometimes difficult to wind my way back to the beginning of my journey. I think in the future, I should take notes as I research sites and resources. While this may break up my fluid flow through a website, I think it will make the review writing easier if I can remind myself how I felt about a site element at the moment I was using it.

Work was difficult during the COVID pandemic. I discovered very quickly that the space I worked in was, and is, extremely important to my work ethic. Unfortunately, there was little I could do about the situation at the time. Now that the pandemic is over, I have the ability to choose where I do my school work, personal work, and professional work. I am fairly sure I’ve finally found the best place for all three: professional work at my office, personal work at my home desktop, and, so far, I’ve been able to best concentrate on my school work at the dining room table on my new Chromebook. Because it doesn’t have any of my entertainment and communication software, it’s less likely to distract me. It’s also nice that I can remove the screen from the keyboard and use it like a tablet, which sometimes makes navigating a site more fluid with less to think about. This may not work if I want to start taking notes as I browse, but I think I can find some kind of middle ground!