With the massive interconnectivity that dominates this so-called Digital Age, it should be easier than ever to stay informed. Now, it’s just about making the effort to do so. Here are my tips:
Read something you disagree with.
Listen to National Public Radio (NPR) when you can.
Follow the people I follow on my Twitter.
Keep an open mind.
Assume you know less than you actually do.
And…that is a wrap. Thanks so much for reading! If you liked this post, you can subscribe to my newsletter or follow my Twitter for updates! If you want more, you can go read my articles on public policy on this very website. And if you thought this was helpful or useful, like/tweet/comment below, and make sure to share this page! Stay informed, stay curious.
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Hello, kind readers, and happy Christmas Eve! Today is the last day you’ll hear of me this year. I will be abroad starting tomorrow and until New Year’s Eve, so it’s safe to say that I will be inactive for the rest of this year.
Past that, I have a few changes that I want to make clear to you all.
Thank you so much for reading! Subscribe to my newsletter or follow my Twitter for updates like this one. Have a wonderful rest of the year! Stay informed, stay curious. Here it is: The Aviat's Official List of online research resources! Enjoy! Please feel free to contact me with any questions! Subscribe to my newsletter if you want updates! Read public policy articles at The Aviat! Stay informed, stay curious. Or, more accurately, how I do my research. But I'm hoping you all can learn something from my experience. Actually, I wrote a post similar to this one a while back, on research sources (which you can read here!), but this post will go more into depth on how I personally research my topics.
The Topic Finding a topic isn’t very hard. I look at the news (disregarding current presidential politics), I look at government sites, I look at current, former, and pending legislation written by Congress, whether the laws have been passed or not, and I do like addressing topics in failed bills. Then I come up with a bunch of general topics, which must be: 1) debatable, 2) relevant, and 3) pollable. The Research First, I run the topic through a news source, like New York Times, which will give me an idea of ‘is there actually research out there on this topic already’. And if there is, I run the topic through several think-tanks. My go-tos are the Cato Institute and the Brookings Institute. Then I look at the Hoover Institution and the Heritage Foundation. For things related to foreign policy or other countries, I use the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Council on Foreign Relations. For policy in the science field, I go to the Kaiser Family Foundation and Rand Corporation. For policy in government, I try to find law reviews from universities. If I want hard data or scientific research, I run some searches through Google Scholar, see if I can find some good research on there, usually from universities or PubMed. I may also look at organizations that are related to my topic for information. Writing The Article After I’ve compiled my sources, I start writing the article. I give a general introduction, with a couple of facts and figures in my What’s the deal? and What’s the status quo? sections. Then I make The Argument section, pulling data and information from my sources to support the 2-3 main points that I’ll argue for, going either for or against The Argument. And then, for the Additional Resources section, I link the articles or research that I found which I didn’t use as sources for my argument, so that you guys can take a look at…well, additional resources that are legitimate. Done Yet? And…that’s how I do it! It's the actual research takes me the longest time, since while I’m doing research, I’m also forming the points I’m going to make in my argument. They go together hand-in-hand, really. And I want to make sure I see both sides before picking one. I usually pick the one that would be more interesting to argue, but I'll admit, sometimes I pick the easier side! Maybe if I have time, I’ll go back and write another argument section going for the other side that I went previously. It sounds like fun, but I’ll only do that if I have a whole day free to write articles for The Aviat…and that’s not happening. Well, I hope you found that entertaining/informative (either one is okay)! Thank you for your continued support. Stay informed, stay curious. Ciao, kind readers! And yes, the rumors are true. I published an article! Literally right after I wrote my last blog post, I went to work on my article...and in the process I found another article I had started a while ago, but never published. It was already halfway done, so I didn't have to do much research on it, and I was able to get it done fairly quickly. So I can officially say I published an article before the new year! Yay!
Please go check it out. I think it's a pretty nice topic, it is about a program that decriminalizes drugs, called LEAD. Go read it; it's very interesting, and in my opinion, it was a well-written article (that's my pat-on-the-back for myself). Now, I will stop procrastinating on other things and get busy. But hopefully this article will generate interest for this month. Thank you so much for your continued support, really. You, kind readers, are my main motivation for writing and blogging (whether that is good or bad). Stay informed, stay curious. Hello, kind readers! My winter break starts next week, so I'm hoping that will allow me to have some time to research and write articles...which will hopefully let me publish another article before the new year. No promises.
Anyways, yes, the new year is creeping up on us, which will make today nearly three months after the day I started The Aviat. And it's been a good three months, though I really can't believe it's been that long. I don't plan on stopping blogging or writing about public policy and political science, though since my activity has recently declined, it does feel a bit that way. Yes, I am very disappointed that I don't have nearly as much time as I'd like to supplement The Aviat with a flood of public policy articles. But, I know I will eventually have that sort of time to focus properly on The Aviat (or I will make myself have the time), because The Aviat has become very important to me, even though not many people know about it. Nevertheless, I intend on going on for the foreseeable future. Thank you so very much for all of your support. Stay informed, stay curious. So my website is changing and updating and improving every single day. If you notice inconsistencies among formatting, it's because I change it so my website could improve. If there are inconsistencies among actual content, know that I will always, always note if I changed or updated my articles, so that you all know what's going on.
Also, know that I really do want to update more often and post more full articles on my Public Policies section. I've just been so swamped with work lately. I'm raring to get another article done, like I mentioned in my last post. So thank you for your patience. I have a huge list for possible article topics. Of course, I still need to do more in-depth research into them to see if they fit, if they are relevant in today's world, and if they are properly debatable. But I have plenty of topics to choose from for my 'active season' and hopefully I will publish a couple during the winter. We'll see. Thanks again for your support! Stay informed, stay curious. Hello, my lovely readers! My schedule suddenly freed up today (very unexpected), so I'm writing to you all now. And I'm proud to say that I have spent quite a bit of time this morning working on my next article. Hopefully it will be of interest to you all. Though, don't expect an article coming out very soon. I do think I have to spend a lot of time on this particular one.
Anyways, I hope to include some new things for my new articles for December (that's if I have time to finish one up) and the new 2017 year. For example, condensing the What's the deal? and What's the Status Quo? sections into one larger section, to avoid redundancy and in the interest of clarity and synthesis. Also, including pictures/graphs/infographics in my articles, just for clarity and increasing ease of reading. Hopefully these new additions will be improvements, and make it easier to understand and read for everyone. Well. Thank you for your patience and continued support! You have no idea how much it means to me. Stay informed, stay curious. Hello, kind readers! I did say I would be MIA for a while. And that's still true. But well, right now I'm trying to make up for missing the supposed weekly Saturday updates. About that, I'm moving the Saturday updates to Sunday, the reason being that Saturday is my busiest day of the week. Like I mentioned before, I'm nearly always gone traveling on Saturdays and I probably won't be able to update reliably then.
Today, I came down with a fever, so I stayed home all day to rest. And it seemed like a perfect opportunity to work on The Aviat, except I was pretty much useless the entire day. But, I got to catch up on sleep, which I have been missing lately. Well, that's all I had to say. Thank you so much for bearing with me. I look forward to your continued support! Stay informed, stay curious. Or is it many apologies? Either way, I am sorry. I have been super busy, even busier than I expected. So it really does look like I won't be posting for a while! And I'm not even sure if I can update every week, because last Saturday, I did not post as I was away traveling all day (yes, what I do requires a lot of that during the winter), and by the time I got home, I had been up for 18 hours and I could not stay awake. And it will be like that in January and February as well. Also, I have been spending a lot of time on studying and also music (seriously, I think I spent 15-17 hours just on music this week) lately. I do know that holiday break is coming up soon, but I'm gone traveling again for half of that break, so...I will still be busy. I really do miss being able to write articles and surveys but seriously I cannot do that for a while.
I hope you all understand. Thank you for bearing with me. Again, I really am sorry! Please look forward to the return of article writing in March (hopefully). At the very very latest, I will be back with full articles in April, and as you know that active period will extend into October or November. And that's for sure. It pains me a lot not to be able to focus on The Aviat for a while. But sacrifices are to be had. In the meantime, I am collecting funds for The Aviat's very own .com domain. So expect that around the same time as full articles! Lots of things to look forward to in the spring. Thank you for your continued support! Stay informed, stay curious. |
LIA R.G.The writer of The Aviat. Non-partisan and non-PC. ARCHIVES
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