Apart from being able to manage time and study effectively, knowing how to conduct research properly is another very important skill to have that almost all classes require. Since you are now in college, your high school style of “random searching” won’t cut it for the level of research at the post-secondary level. Many professors will test your research skills in the most common way: a research project. Conducting and writing research papers is a long and arduous process. With the usage of the right strategies and plenty of practice, however, it can be made much easier. Before any writing can be done, an analysis of the sources you are going to use must be done first. You must first analyze each source’s reliability, quality, and utility. For source reliability you must check to see if it is peer reviewed, the reputation of the publisher, the author’s credentials, and things like that. For the quality of the source you must check for source citations, the grammar of the writing, if there are any broad generalizations, and how up to date it is. For the utility of the source, you must assess how useful it will be to your research topic and if it will add to your argument. Google Scholar, university libraries, and databases are a good starting point for any research project. It is best to stay away from Wikipedia. Although it is a .org website, it is a user-editable website, which means anyone can go and make any changes whatsoever which limits the credibility of the website. With these strategies in mind, research is a very important skill that takes time to hone, but with these helpful tips it will make your first post-secondary level research project much easier and a hopeful success. Good luck!