My Research Process, Why Lead Contamination? Why Canada? And what did I Learn?
When first introduced to this assignment I was super excited, the freedom allowed left a lot of room for creativity and to learn a lot in the process. My decision to research and write about this topic was, in all honesty, not one I thought about a lot. My original desire laid more in foreign politics but because of my own procrastination I was unable to come up with a suitable central question in time about these topics. My interest was sparked by an article sent to me by my dad from AP News about the lead contamination crisis in Canada. I chose it because not only did I have an adequate amount of knowledge on lead contamination, because of the struggles of Flint, Michigan, but the crisis revolves heavily on the incompetence of the Canadian government and that interested me.
My initial research question was as follows. "How is the discovery of wide spread lead contamination in Canada's tap water being solved, and how successful have decontamination efforts been?". After the first day spent on research my working thesis stated the following, "Despite extensive investigation yielding definite results, Canada continues to lack an adequate solution to solving lead contamination. Efforts to implement federal guidelines have been welcomed and accepted but result in little improvement because Canada lacks a nation wide requirement." This is undoubtedly pretty wordy and included evidence in itself. Through revision my thesis became "It is crucial for Canada to take this investigation and turn it into action for the well being of Canada and movement towards a permanent solution to lead contamination."
After these few steps, the rest of writing my essay was a debacle. I very quickly learned that water contamination is not nearly as awe inspiring as I expected. Not only this but I also came to realization that despite the fact there were numerous articles on the topic, they might as well have been verbatim, many were even written by the same journalists. This made finding a variety of sources hard and I found myself getting stuck in a kind of cycle, I could not find a lot of things that sparked my need to argue an opinion. I believe this was because its safe to say most people have similar views on water contamination, and what should be done about it. Everybody wants clean water, and they also know the only solution will come from physical renovation and stronger regulation. Another very unexpected conflict was that I found myself getting almost annoyed with accounts from citizens being affected. After reading quote after quote from Canadian citizens describing their discontent with their water I just wanted them to be quiet and buy a pack of water bottles. At this time I realized I was being ridiculous and needed to step away from the mainstream information on this problem. My solution feeling was going on to do some research on how this has effected lower class citizens as well as a large population of indigenous communities.
When I completed my research I felt pretty good about the knowledge I had gained, and overall was pretty satisfied with my final draft. I realized I was wrong when I received my essay back. Not only did my essay lack a strong opinion or argument but I couldn't find my own thesis. I think this was the product of simply getting a little lost in the repetition of this material and the fact I wasn't very passionate and lacked a strong individual opinion. As I've started to revise my essay I have made it a goal to keep an open mind and find more material that sparks my interest. I never really explored the thing I was most excited about in my essay which was the political aspect to the water crisis. My plan is to come to a conclusion on how I feel and create a new strong thesis that highlights both an initial problem, a solution and a focus on the Canadian government.
In the weeks after my research no major changes in improvements have been made. Water contamination continues too be a problem in first world countries, and despite overwhelming desire for a sustainable management little has been done nationally besides acknowledging the crisis. I'm interested to see how the solution progresses and if the Canadian government can come together to agree on a fix to lead water contamination.
My initial research question was as follows. "How is the discovery of wide spread lead contamination in Canada's tap water being solved, and how successful have decontamination efforts been?". After the first day spent on research my working thesis stated the following, "Despite extensive investigation yielding definite results, Canada continues to lack an adequate solution to solving lead contamination. Efforts to implement federal guidelines have been welcomed and accepted but result in little improvement because Canada lacks a nation wide requirement." This is undoubtedly pretty wordy and included evidence in itself. Through revision my thesis became "It is crucial for Canada to take this investigation and turn it into action for the well being of Canada and movement towards a permanent solution to lead contamination."
After these few steps, the rest of writing my essay was a debacle. I very quickly learned that water contamination is not nearly as awe inspiring as I expected. Not only this but I also came to realization that despite the fact there were numerous articles on the topic, they might as well have been verbatim, many were even written by the same journalists. This made finding a variety of sources hard and I found myself getting stuck in a kind of cycle, I could not find a lot of things that sparked my need to argue an opinion. I believe this was because its safe to say most people have similar views on water contamination, and what should be done about it. Everybody wants clean water, and they also know the only solution will come from physical renovation and stronger regulation. Another very unexpected conflict was that I found myself getting almost annoyed with accounts from citizens being affected. After reading quote after quote from Canadian citizens describing their discontent with their water I just wanted them to be quiet and buy a pack of water bottles. At this time I realized I was being ridiculous and needed to step away from the mainstream information on this problem. My solution feeling was going on to do some research on how this has effected lower class citizens as well as a large population of indigenous communities.
When I completed my research I felt pretty good about the knowledge I had gained, and overall was pretty satisfied with my final draft. I realized I was wrong when I received my essay back. Not only did my essay lack a strong opinion or argument but I couldn't find my own thesis. I think this was the product of simply getting a little lost in the repetition of this material and the fact I wasn't very passionate and lacked a strong individual opinion. As I've started to revise my essay I have made it a goal to keep an open mind and find more material that sparks my interest. I never really explored the thing I was most excited about in my essay which was the political aspect to the water crisis. My plan is to come to a conclusion on how I feel and create a new strong thesis that highlights both an initial problem, a solution and a focus on the Canadian government.
In the weeks after my research no major changes in improvements have been made. Water contamination continues too be a problem in first world countries, and despite overwhelming desire for a sustainable management little has been done nationally besides acknowledging the crisis. I'm interested to see how the solution progresses and if the Canadian government can come together to agree on a fix to lead water contamination.