Research Journal Entry 1- University 106

The topic that I have chosen for my research community is breast cancer and with a focus on breast cancer survivors. I was hoping to find a book that covered many aspects of breast cancer, to include: the personal struggle and support that the patients required through their journey. I initially started the search using the keyword “cancer”. I must say that was very overwhelming with 1,253 results in all! I then decided to enter the words, “breast cancer” which returned a list of many books that were primarily focused on the scientific and medical aspects of cancer. After editing my search, to “breast cancer survivors”, I was able to find far more pertinent books.

The book that I settled on was a book titled, “B.O.O.B.S. : a bunch of outrageous breast-cancer survivors tell their stories of courage, hope, & healing”, compiled & edited by Ann Kempner Fisher. I decided on this book for several reasons. First of all, I believe that so much more can be learned about breast cancer from a survivor, as opposed to learning from a medically scientific standpoint. The cover of the book also grabbed my attention because from what we can see on the cover, it appears to be a naked woman, only showing her smile and stopping just above where her breasts begin. Revealing just her bare chest, yet not exposing anything more. In the place of where the breasts should be, are the letters B O O B S, in large print spread across the picture. Also the title tells so much about the contents of the book. It is widely known that some partial success of overcoming disease is having a good mental outlook and preparing accordingly.

I felt as though my search was very worthwhile, yielding copious amounts of books, articles, journal entries, amongst other types of useful information. Since I will be studying and researching a very popular & frequently written about topic, I will need to be able to sort through many sources. Narrowing my search using effective key words will be very important. One thing that I would do differently on the next search would be to really narrow my search keywords down at the beginning, in order to save some time.

One thing that I have definitely learned through accomplishing this assignment, is that having this resource available to me will be so valuable over the course of the semester and for the rest of my college career. Anyone can research but I think it’s all about being to able to research efficiently in order to really create a productive & sound piece of writing.