In this section, we made outlines and did some basic research for our IRP papers. It was interesting for we needed to choose a topic for a long term research, and I decided my topic kind of easily because there are several controversial topics in biological conservation field with actions based on academic research, and they are fascinating for me. However, when I started to work on the topic, I found it was difficult to figure out the specific problems and look for a suitable organization to focus on. To make clear what is the real problem, I review the knowledge I learnt in my biology class and read the background information in several websites including Wikipedia, Britannica and some organizations’ webs. After the research, I realized that most people are not focusing on the issue of the invaded Asian carp in the lakes but the threat from the fish to the Great Lakes. Therefore, I twisted my topic to how to prevent the Great Lakes from the Asian carps’ invasion. For the organization, I struggled for a long time. At first, I chose the most authoritative organization which is a cooperation committee but its website is not in the form we want and all the actions are not introduced in detail on their web. I decided to give it up after discussed with Jin and chose one of its fellow who has a good website and provide two material based actions. After these research, I have got a big view of my paper which helped me to learn more about the topic and also guide me how to do a pre-research for a specific topic. Since the topic is related to my major and thanks for the pre-research we did during this section, I believe myself get a clear outline for the paper I will write and get more familiar to the topic.
Krisa Mie 