Learning how to research

I always thought I knew the easiest way to find information on a topic, turns out I was wrong. I usually just type in the topic in question into google and use what comes upon the first page, and occasionally venture out onto the second page. However I have learnt that there are much easier, accurate and reliable ways of finding information.

The most useful way of finding information that I have found, is through using the Massey online library. For assignment one, I have chosen the topic, “Possum and/or stoat control programmes are ethically justifiable”. I found it easiest to break down the topic into two parts and then research each part separately. This helped me form an opinion on the topic as I had no idea to which way I was leaning towards before I started this assignment. The two parts which I broke the topic into were:

1.      1. Researching the possum and stoat control programmes that we have in New Zealand and the consequences they have.                                                                                                                    

2. Researching what it means to be “ethically justifiable.”

I used a few general rules to expand my search results while keeping the search precise and relevant to the topic. These rules included adding an * to the end of the word, allowing other versions of the word to be included in the search, for example control* would also allow controlled to come up in the results. Another rule which I used quite often was adding quotation marks around words which I wanted to stay together as a phrase when been searched. To quickly find information on the webpage I often held down Ctrl and F, typed in a keyword and was able to find the words without having to go through the entire webpage. This was especially useful when reading large reports, where large parts of it were not relevant. 

Welcome to my life

At the age of four, I moved out of the city and into the country, and this is where my love of animals began. I owned and cared for cats, dogs, frogs, calves, and every other animal imaginable. From this young age I decided that I would work with animals in my future career, and I was right.

Hi, my name is Emma, I’m eighteen years old and I have lived in Hamilton my whole life, up until the beginning of this year. I now live in Palmerston North as I am a student at Massey University. I started semester one of this year doing pre-vet, semester two doing a Bachelor of Animal Science and now am changing to Veterinary Technology next year. I have chosen to study Veterinary Technology as I am interested in many different aspects of animal health and well being, including animal behavior and welfare.

I confirmed my interest in animal welfare and behavior when I began fostering and volunteering at the SPCA about four years ago, by seeing the transformation that the animals went through after being rescued. My latest rescue dog which I adopted from the pound caused my interest to grow in animal behavior. He was abused and starved and as a result he was afraid of everything. By doing obedience and agility training with him, he has turned into a completely different dog, who is full of confidence and is loving life.

My ambitions for the future after becoming a vet tech, is to contribute to the welfare and quality of life for many animals. I plan to do this in two ways. The first is to help rehabilitate injured and orphaned wild animals, in places like Africa and South America so that they can be released back into the wild. The other way is to open a vet clinic alongside an animal shelter for stray animals, in the hope they can be re-homed and gain a second chance in life.

From this course I expect to gain and improve on my communication skills, both written and oral, which will be beneficial in my future career as a vet tech. I hope to gain a clear understanding of how to communicate correctly and concisely while also gaining good grades. I  feel that this course will help me to some degree in my future career, but will vary depending upon the specific path I take as a Vet Tech. An aspects where this paper will help me, will be when be communicating with co-workers and pet owner, which is very important as these are likely to be two of the largest communication areas in my future job.

As a communicator my largest strength would be writing position styled papers as I am confident in researching a topic, looking at both sides and then forming an opinion. I enjoy researching topics which I am unfamiliar with, as I enjoy expanding my knowledge as much as possible in many different areas. I am unfamiliar with all of the topics in this paper, so am excited to begin this course. My greatest weakness as a communicator would be the lack of precision in my writing. I tend to use a lot more words than are needed when explaining something, and I will try and improve on this throughout the course.