I pride myself on an uncanny ability to compartmentalize pretty much anything I need to. But I've noticed that takes a bit more effort than usual with this blog. I keep a personal blog too. It's where I go to ran, rave, whine, complain and pretty much say anything that I wouldn't dream of saying outside of cyberspace. It's where I muse over battles won and loves lost. It's the space that lets me make yet another vain attempt at understanding the messy project that is my life. Knowing that, I make a conscious effort to keep my personal ramblings out of this blog. I try to keep it somewhat more academic. It's easy enough to do on prompted weeks, but open weeks? That's a whole other playing field.
At first I couldn't figure out why this is, but I think I've finally hit on it. Every time a professor, and it's happened a lot lately, asks me to talk about the first thing that comes to mind, I realize it's personal. Not in that "No. I don't want to share because it's personal" way. Rather in the way that has made me realize just how far inside my own head I am. It turns out that I'm not spending my days trying to figure an end to world hunger. I'm not looking to stop global warming. I'm certainly not entertaining any political agendas. I used to. I was a young idealist looking to change the world once. These days I'm looking to survive. If I get a free moment to think straight in my head it will probably be about whether or not my car can last the winter. What will I do if it can't? Did I remember to finish that last project at work? Is there an assignment due I'm forgetting? Because I'm always forgetting something. Of course there is always time to ruminate on why no one has managed to cure the common cold or better still, cancer, but even those are strictly personal agendas. The strange part about this revelation is I've realized I feel guilty about this.
Sitting in my Communications class where the papers being turned out are full of lofty goals and ideas for "real world changes," I'm trying to figure out how much it's going to cost me to fix my smashed bike mirrors. There has to be something wrong with that right? Even now, I'm sure this post should be about my paper. It would probably be better for me later on if I were getting some ideas down, but...I've got nothing.
Friday, September 23, 2011
Friday, September 16, 2011
Blog #3 - I Search progress
It's the funniest thing about the writing process: Just about the time you think you have a handle on something, it changes. I approached the I-Search process convinced that I would come out the other side with some burning desire to transform my Astrology I-Search, into my full length research paper. Now that I've spent some time researching the topic, I can tell you that is not the case. I wouldn't want to spend an entire semester living with this topic because there isn't enough science to back it. Not that I'm saying I need science to back everything I believe, but for an academic research paper, it's kind of important.
The flip side of that, is that I'm really getting excited about my I-Search on Tattoos. I wouldn't say that I'm completely clear on which direction it's going to take me at this point, but I think I have more options than I originally thought. One of the articles I came across in my research was talking about the ban on tattooing in NYC for 36 years because of a Hepatitis scare. Even though there wasn't a reported case of hepatitis that was linked to tattoos for more than 3 decades, the trade remained illegal, forcing artists to go underground. Many kept working, they opened shops in their apartments and drummed up business by word of mouth and recommendations from a friend of a friend of a friend. I haven't made the mental leap yet to understanding what this has to do with my original research questions: why are the stereotypes prevalent, how did they start, etc. I think it's in there though, and I also think I really want to keep exploring this ban in NYC, maybe look around and see if there was anything similar any where else and what contributed to it.
I knew when I chose this topic that I was connected to it, but I didn't expect that researching it would make me feel even more passionate about it. Just today I was talking to a friend of mine who has multiple tattoos, and I asked when he was getting his next one. He's been in the design phase for a long time. He said he doesn't know when he'll get a new one because his wife doesn't want him to get another one. Mind you, he had all of his current tattoos when they got married. I can't get my head around the idea that having tattoos is a big enough deal that he can't have more, but it wasn't a "deal breaker" when they met. It reminds me of this other guy I know who once told me that it's fine for guys to have tattoos but on a girl it's trashy. I haven't gotten my head around that yet either. Anyway, I'm rambling so I'll digress. It just bothers me that a person's personal choice of self-expression is of any matter of consequence to someone else.
My third I-Search is on Anti-Social Personality Disorder. Or, in a word, Sociopath. During last week's peer review, one of my classmates asked me why this topic. I didn't know how to answer. The truth is, it's because I know people with this disorder. If we're to believe the information my research has turned up, most of us know someone with this disorder because 4% of the population suffers from it. Even if they go undiagnosed. That's 1 out of every 25 people. Whether this disorder is caused by genetics or environment is debatable. I don't think it's an either or question. I think it's both. Maybe that's beyond the scope of my point right now though. My point now is that I know at least 2 people with this disorder. I've lived with these people. Which is why I wanted my paper to focus on any documented cases of people who have escaped, children of sociopaths particularly. Unfortunately, finding documented cases wasn't nearly as easy as I'd hoped. I'm not surprised. Every time I tell someone I know people with the disorder, and I'll be honest, I rarely tell anyone, they look at me like I've just told them I'm related to someone on the FBI's most wanted list. It's uncomfortable. I have enough issues reconciling the time I spent with these people with who I am now. It gets complicated when other people chime in, because inevitably, they always have some piece of unsolicited advice on how I should handle my "issues."
I'm rambling again. I just meant to say that I wouldn't expand the ASPD paper into a research project either for 2 main reasons. (1) I'm far too involved to do this paper with the kind of objectivity a good writer should have. I know that in a research paper, anecdotal evidence isn't usually required, but I've tried every which way to write the intro to this I-Search in an objective, unbiased manner while maintaining the honesty about why I chose this topic and...it's not there. I can't do it. Because the truth is, I chose it because I want to know if I'm the only person who has gone through this. I wanted to know if there were others and if they feel like I do. Which brings me to my 2nd reason: (2) Even if I were to throw away the rule book and include all kinds of crazy, anecdotal evidence to support my case, this isn't just my story to tell. I'm not the only person to come out of that house hold and I think I owe the others their privacy if nothing more. Besides that, in the medium of the academic paper, who would believe me? Maybe one day, when my attention span quadruples, I'll write a novel loosely based on all the craziness, but until then, I think it's better to shelve this one.
The flip side of that, is that I'm really getting excited about my I-Search on Tattoos. I wouldn't say that I'm completely clear on which direction it's going to take me at this point, but I think I have more options than I originally thought. One of the articles I came across in my research was talking about the ban on tattooing in NYC for 36 years because of a Hepatitis scare. Even though there wasn't a reported case of hepatitis that was linked to tattoos for more than 3 decades, the trade remained illegal, forcing artists to go underground. Many kept working, they opened shops in their apartments and drummed up business by word of mouth and recommendations from a friend of a friend of a friend. I haven't made the mental leap yet to understanding what this has to do with my original research questions: why are the stereotypes prevalent, how did they start, etc. I think it's in there though, and I also think I really want to keep exploring this ban in NYC, maybe look around and see if there was anything similar any where else and what contributed to it.
I knew when I chose this topic that I was connected to it, but I didn't expect that researching it would make me feel even more passionate about it. Just today I was talking to a friend of mine who has multiple tattoos, and I asked when he was getting his next one. He's been in the design phase for a long time. He said he doesn't know when he'll get a new one because his wife doesn't want him to get another one. Mind you, he had all of his current tattoos when they got married. I can't get my head around the idea that having tattoos is a big enough deal that he can't have more, but it wasn't a "deal breaker" when they met. It reminds me of this other guy I know who once told me that it's fine for guys to have tattoos but on a girl it's trashy. I haven't gotten my head around that yet either. Anyway, I'm rambling so I'll digress. It just bothers me that a person's personal choice of self-expression is of any matter of consequence to someone else.
My third I-Search is on Anti-Social Personality Disorder. Or, in a word, Sociopath. During last week's peer review, one of my classmates asked me why this topic. I didn't know how to answer. The truth is, it's because I know people with this disorder. If we're to believe the information my research has turned up, most of us know someone with this disorder because 4% of the population suffers from it. Even if they go undiagnosed. That's 1 out of every 25 people. Whether this disorder is caused by genetics or environment is debatable. I don't think it's an either or question. I think it's both. Maybe that's beyond the scope of my point right now though. My point now is that I know at least 2 people with this disorder. I've lived with these people. Which is why I wanted my paper to focus on any documented cases of people who have escaped, children of sociopaths particularly. Unfortunately, finding documented cases wasn't nearly as easy as I'd hoped. I'm not surprised. Every time I tell someone I know people with the disorder, and I'll be honest, I rarely tell anyone, they look at me like I've just told them I'm related to someone on the FBI's most wanted list. It's uncomfortable. I have enough issues reconciling the time I spent with these people with who I am now. It gets complicated when other people chime in, because inevitably, they always have some piece of unsolicited advice on how I should handle my "issues."
I'm rambling again. I just meant to say that I wouldn't expand the ASPD paper into a research project either for 2 main reasons. (1) I'm far too involved to do this paper with the kind of objectivity a good writer should have. I know that in a research paper, anecdotal evidence isn't usually required, but I've tried every which way to write the intro to this I-Search in an objective, unbiased manner while maintaining the honesty about why I chose this topic and...it's not there. I can't do it. Because the truth is, I chose it because I want to know if I'm the only person who has gone through this. I wanted to know if there were others and if they feel like I do. Which brings me to my 2nd reason: (2) Even if I were to throw away the rule book and include all kinds of crazy, anecdotal evidence to support my case, this isn't just my story to tell. I'm not the only person to come out of that house hold and I think I owe the others their privacy if nothing more. Besides that, in the medium of the academic paper, who would believe me? Maybe one day, when my attention span quadruples, I'll write a novel loosely based on all the craziness, but until then, I think it's better to shelve this one.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Focus - Blog #2
Somewhere on a certain campus, there is a yellowed paper hanging on a classroom wall, reminding us all to "Focus." The funny thing about this is that every time I see this sign, I'm inspired to do the exact opposite. I can't help wondering who climbed up there to tape this fragile little piece of paper to the wall. Did they use a chair or a ladder? Whose idea was it? Why isn't it bigger? Am I supposed to be focusing on the sign or on the class?
I know there is a point that the author of this sign wanted to make. If I'm being serious, I'm even certain that it should be interpreted as "focus on the class." The problem is, I'm a spaghetti head. A friend of mine, who is a guy, once said to me, "guys are waffle heads because we put everything in a box and only think about 1 box at a time. Women are spaghetti heads because they string all their thoughts together and one leads to the next and the next." At the time, I was annoyed with the idea, but I know he's not wrong. Someone could say "thumb tack" to me and my internal dialogue would find a way to wind those words back to some long forgotten, or even recent but ignored memory that would probably all boil down to a seemingly unimportant, unrelated pop culture reference. It's bizarre.
So what does this mean? Do I lack focus or am I just a girl who's good at multitasking? Is multitasking ever good? And does it matter if it's good or not given that society is marching forward and it doesn't look like multitasking is going to end anytime soon? I don't know. I'd like to say that I do, and I'm sure if I sat here long enough I could form an opinion on the idea, but truthfully, I don't know if that's even the point. Maybe it's less about knowing the answer and more about exploring the idea. Even if I do ramble when I free-write.
I know there is a point that the author of this sign wanted to make. If I'm being serious, I'm even certain that it should be interpreted as "focus on the class." The problem is, I'm a spaghetti head. A friend of mine, who is a guy, once said to me, "guys are waffle heads because we put everything in a box and only think about 1 box at a time. Women are spaghetti heads because they string all their thoughts together and one leads to the next and the next." At the time, I was annoyed with the idea, but I know he's not wrong. Someone could say "thumb tack" to me and my internal dialogue would find a way to wind those words back to some long forgotten, or even recent but ignored memory that would probably all boil down to a seemingly unimportant, unrelated pop culture reference. It's bizarre.
So what does this mean? Do I lack focus or am I just a girl who's good at multitasking? Is multitasking ever good? And does it matter if it's good or not given that society is marching forward and it doesn't look like multitasking is going to end anytime soon? I don't know. I'd like to say that I do, and I'm sure if I sat here long enough I could form an opinion on the idea, but truthfully, I don't know if that's even the point. Maybe it's less about knowing the answer and more about exploring the idea. Even if I do ramble when I free-write.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Interest - Blog #1
Something that has caught my interest both in class and also in Chapter 1 of The Curious Researcher is the idea that your topic doesn't have to be new, only your angle does. In previous English courses, I've had professors drum into me over and over and over again that nearly everything has been written about before. That's true, but no one ever told me it's also OK. Until now, the idea that a paper, and especially a research paper, could be exploratory never even occurred to me. For all of the English professors I've had, and there were some really good ones among them, not one mentioned this. They all talked about the dreaded research paper that would be the bane of my existence somewhere in the not to distance future. So much so that just hearing the word "research" makes me shudder a little. So, to have someone actually say "research is exploration" -- that's just a wildly new concept to me and I have to admit, I like it. I find that I put a lot of pressure on myself to have the answers, especially when I'm writing, and that's stressful. So I'm looking forward to a chance to discover something new rather than regurgitating what I already know. Maybe in the process, I'll find my angle on the subject.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)