The process for doing academic research since the beginning of this school year (Fall 2021) has changed dramatically. At first, I would go through the database and key in what I was looking for without typing in key words. For example, if I were to want to know how far away the Earth is from the Sun, I would type “distance from the Sun to the Earth” instead of typing “”Earth” and “distance from” and “Sun”” which would give me a more narrow answer to my question. After keying these keywords, I would then have to analyze whether or not the source is credible or not and I would do this by searching who the author is and I would also only try to use sources from my school’s database or from Google Scholar and would steer clear from magazine articles as well as sources that end in “.com”. For my final assignment, I added sources after turning in my annotated bibliography because I wanted to get a bit more info for a subject in my paper and I also wanted to use a source that was a bit clearer on the topic I was discussing. When doing research for my assignments in my Sociology 345 class, the challenge I encountered at first was that I could not access my school’s database for a while. I could also sometimes not find more recent articles in another database I had used, which made me worry because I wanted to ensure I had the most recent information/ data. Over the course of this semester, I have become more confident about doing research because I now know how to do proper research as well as how to find data that could help my case. From the research that I have done, I personally believe that stepping out of one’s comfort zones as well as having the mindset that no amount of research/data is too much is what it means to “think like a researcher.” In other words, the more research and data available, the better.