 Welcome to Inform Your Thinking, today we're going to discuss why the information you use has value. Let's get started. Now imagine this, you're at a party and you're telling a group of friends a joke. And as soon as you hit the punchline, everyone is doubled over laughing. Now later that night, you're feeling pretty good and you're walking around the party and you overhear a friend telling another group of friends your joke without giving you credit. Now that was your joke. That's something that you put time into making up that your friend just stole without giving you credit. Information works the same way. Now if you're writing a paper for a class and you use a book or a scholar of the article without citing it, that's like stealing someone's joke. But worse because you could either fail the class or be kicked out of school. Now you should absolutely find information from outside sources, but remember that the research that you're finding has value to the author. They spend a lot of time, effort, even money putting that information together. And that's why proper credit and attribution is important. So information has value, but did you know that as an OSU student you have more access to this information than most people? As a student you're privileged to the information that OSU library offers, the effort that went into writing books and journals cost time and money and publishing them cost time and money. It's not just free and much of this material can't be accessed by most people or really even can be found through Google or it's really hard to find. Do you ever wonder where the information you have access to comes from? Finding out where the information that you're using comes from can be very important. You see ads all over the internet and TV and it's very clear that they're trying to sell you something, but sometimes it's not so obvious. Now if a cookie company were funding research about whether delicious, chocolatey, baked goods led to weight loss, that information just might be biased. If the findings from that research look good from the company standpoint, that would be very valuable to the cookie company. And that's just not a problem when we're thinking about our desert options. Think about how information like that could help politicians or big corporations help in their own personal gains and think about how a lack of that kind of information could put a person at a disadvantage both financially and socially. You should look for a variety of information and expand your knowledge about the subject and think about how that information could be both valuable to you and the people who created it as well. So here's what to remember, information is a valuable resource. As a student you have access to this information and you should always check your sources and make sure you know where your information is coming from. You can use these tips and anything from writing a research paper to just sharing posts online. And that's how you inform your thinking.