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Hello!
I'm Charles McCall. While this is my second semester here at Brandman University, I am no stranger to college having earned my A. A. in Social Science of 20 years ago. It is no wonder that that is appropriate as my major here at Brandman is also Social Science, but with an emphasis in history. After I have earned my bachelors I intend to get my single subject teaching credential in history and even, perhaps, take it as far as earning my masters in history or even further than that should I desire as I also believe I'd like to teach some college classes one day.

I'm new to the Modesto / Central Valley area, having moved here from Reno to be here with my partner, Michele, as she and I begin a new life together. We are discovering many things together, and it was her that led me to Brandman being a Chapman alum herself. I owe her for more than just pointing Brandman out, but for the unwavering support she continues to shower me with as I continue this educational journey. I look forward to getting into the upper division work that awaits me.

A large part of that upper division work are research papers. Something which I discovered after looking through the other class I have this term, History 358. It has a signature assignment of a research paper with some very specific requirements. It's purpose is to not only have you research out your particular topic, but to get use to doing meaningful, good quality research on the topic in addition to being being able to successfully synthesize it into an original work. I find that something of a tall order in comparison to the level of papers and research I have to do in my college career up to this point. It is definitely a challenge I am up for. Even more so with this information literacy course as my second course this term.

Many of the core concepts of the Framework for Information Literacy are going to come into play in this research paper. There a couple of the concepts I am going to have to improve upon, both in this class and for the paper. I think chief among them for this particular assignment is going to be the search as strategic exploration. One of the passages in the text book I found as I was initially perusing it was to be ruthless. To me that means, get to the root of whatever source you have and find whether it not it meets your purpose as quickly as possible and if not, discard it.

Another example is going to be the authority of a particular source. A requirement for the paper is the review of not only the information I discover and it's veracity but also quality of it's source. Whether it is someone quite active and authoritative in their particular field and what their sources might be. Has the author written on the topic before or do they have personal experience with the topic.

For me, the whole being able to do quality research is directly related to my chosen path of teacher and historian. For a more specific answer, though, the concepts of research as inquiry and scholarship as conversation are quite important to me. The conversations that are possible from so many historical subjects are intriguing to say the least. One of my particular passions is Dark Age history and it is an area where a lot of specifics aren't very well known. Primarily as there very few primary sources and much of the information known is somewhat speculative and based only on physical evidence and whatever social constructs, such as mythology and specific social customs exist. To be part of that conversion is very exciting indeed.