It was a Thursday afternoon; I was perched up in the corner of my favorite local coffee shop with a back-pack full of books that teetered somewhere between impressive and embarrassing. I was in the middle of what I refer to as the “gathering” stage of research for an upcoming writing project. In this tedious stage of the academic process, I aim to collect and organize the pertinent literature concerning my topic at hand. Usually, this stage begins by me scouring far too many electronic databases for all peer-reviewed articles dealing with my topic or corollary topics. Over a few months, I will work through the collection of articles with an eye towards further arguments or sources of which I am ignorant. Of course, this gathering period of my research process typically leads to something of an avalanche of both primary and secondary literature.
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