Burke's Parlor
In my experience, I have never done an official "research essay" or written any sort of research paper. I am currently doing a research project for a developmental biology lab I am in, but it is mostly data collection and may not result in the culmination of a research paper. For papers that I have written in classes such as history or English, I don't feel that I relate to the situations that Barbara Fister describes in her article "Burke's Parlor Tricks: Introducing Research as Conversation", about using sources and not fully understanding them, or simply "harvesting" quotes from the sources they use. However, I do like the mindset that Fister came to realize--that we should think of academic writing as a conversation and how she related Burke's quote about a conversation to how we should read sources to understand the context before we jump in. While I do approach academic writing carefully and with understanding, I am going to try and apply her Burke's Parlor Tricks mindset to enhance my use of sources even better. Research is a constantly flowing conversation, like Burke's quote implies. "others have long preceded you" many things have been discovered already. "You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument" as researchers, we must adequately educate ourselves on the topic at hand before giving our own input. "And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress" the flow of research, asking questions, exploring never stops.