Oh psychological journals...
This might be a little bit of a stretch when it comes to writing about some of the short stories we have read and/or discussed in class but I have a little rant on the subject of research papers. In writing my short story analysis, which I am doing over "The Yellow Wallpaper", most of the sources I need to use are from the psychological journal databases. If you have not had the joy of digging through a scientific paper, let me fill you in on what you can expect.
First, do not expect to find more than a handful of words that you will understand unless you have brushed up on your latin recently. They write using all sorts of professional, probably medical, jargon that leaves my brain spinning. So, keep you google search open because you will be doing a lot of "define:" searches.
Second, do not expect to find the information you are looking for by merely skimming the article. You may discover that what you are looking for might, possibly, maybe, sort-of be in the entry by reading the abstract they are usually kind enough to include. However, to find any sort of useful information expect to spend the next hour or so, depending on the length of the article, digging through mounds of information that you may or may not actually understand.
So in other words, if you plan on writing a paper with any sort of psychological implications, good luck.
First, do not expect to find more than a handful of words that you will understand unless you have brushed up on your latin recently. They write using all sorts of professional, probably medical, jargon that leaves my brain spinning. So, keep you google search open because you will be doing a lot of "define:" searches.
Second, do not expect to find the information you are looking for by merely skimming the article. You may discover that what you are looking for might, possibly, maybe, sort-of be in the entry by reading the abstract they are usually kind enough to include. However, to find any sort of useful information expect to spend the next hour or so, depending on the length of the article, digging through mounds of information that you may or may not actually understand.
So in other words, if you plan on writing a paper with any sort of psychological implications, good luck.