In doing research on my topic, I got a large amount of new knowledge on each of the islands that are apart of my topic. Haiti was more fascinating to research in that I had absolutely no knowledge on the island because I have only done research on the Dominican Republic.One of the main challenges I came cross while doing research was trying to stay on topic with my research question and claim. Many times I tended to include other facts or ideas that weren't really relevant to what I was trying to research. Another trouble I had was trying to come up with some controlling ideas that would gather a lot of strong evidence once I do research. Some of the controlling ideas that I originally came up with were somewhat of dead-ends because there wasn't much you can research on it they were more like research points instead.
Some interesting facts that I came across while doing research are that Christopher Columbus is usually credited for just discovering the U.S., however Christopher Columbus actually discovered the island of Espaniola too (Haiti/Dominican Republic). The United States, for some time, owned Haiti and The Dominican Republic. The U.S. was actually the main reason that Trujillo was in power for the Dominican Republic, in which the U.S. navy trained him.For future notes, I plan to research more personal view points from both sides. I want to watch credible videos of Haitians speaking on the topic on feeling neglected by the Dominicans. Also, I want to get a view point on someone who is Dominican on why they think that Haitians are bad people in their eyes.
