Breakthrough in writing

I think my breakthrough in writing came when I stopped thinking in terms of words and sentences but ideas. 

There are much language rules guiding how words should be put together to form sentences but there are fewer rules guiding how ideas can interact with one another.

Hence the moment I start to understand the unit of writing as ideas rather than words, a whole new playground opened up to me. 

Another thing important for me to write is emotions. I cannot write well when I write without engaging my spirit but relegate the task to a mental exercise. I don't like to talk about the heart and mind being separate because I believe they should be one. To me, writing is an emotional act. I write best when I'm fully immersed into what I'm writing, when I can feel it, sympathize with characters in my story, imagine the impact of my writing on future generations. 

The researcher as a tool

The most humbling and remarkable thing about being a researcher, may I say more so a qualitative researcher, is that you are the tool, for data collection, for data analysis, for data reporting.

And this tool has its potential, as well as its limits. How well you train and care for this tool, determines the work that you do. If you spend the day busy with many stuff, adrenaline rushing and all, don't be surprised if you sit down and try to work and find that you have little left to give of yourself.

Research is an emotional work. How you feel determines how you think and what you write.

This truth is all at once liberating and humbling. I have control and yet no control at all.

Voices

I realized my voice is so different from my bosses' voices. I think I can identify their styles. They write so differently. I can't even inject my voice into theirs in because I interpret differently from them. 

I actually can't imagine how someone would want to steal another person's voice. I can't imagine why someone would want to plagiarize. When we can be masters of our own voice. Isn't that so much better. To have something your very own? 

Lessons learnt from grad school so far

1. No one is perfect and we all need help. 

We usually see the finished product. The completed thesis. The published article. But my time at grad school, I work on a dissertation that seems to morph with every new insight gained, new article read. My boss gave me the privilege to edit her work and other scholars work and we critique one another's work in this way. There was once I praised one of  my professor's student thesis and she told me what I saw was the finished product and it took many drafts to get there and she had scolded him a lot because he was biased and wrote like a junior college student. My pencil dropped when I heard it. So it's true that we are all working on revising works. The one who succeeds is not the one who gets it right the first time but the one who through preservering through unproductive moments and criticism from different places, hones his or her skills in the meantime and doesn't give up. 

Why? in Context

"The next question to ask is why the subject might be important to others.
Why is the subject significant?
What is the background of this subject, and why is that background important to understand?
To what else does the subject relate?
If you understand the complexities of this subject, what will be the benefit and who will obtain it?
What is the context of previous work that has been done on the subject?
How will your work build on what has been done already?

... Such reading should inform researchers of the context of the research, allow them to gain a better sense of the issue's significance and how it has been approached before, as well as reveal what is missing in the previous research. These understandings can be integrated into the various sections of the proposal and do not necessitate a separate one that sometimes reads like a book report."

- Interviewing as Qualitative Research by Irving Seidman, 3rd edition, page 33

Paint the context. Shuyi, paint the context.

Fear and Greed

I came across an advice from someone to budding scholars about how writing is about overcoming one's fear and getting help from all useful sources.

I actually have a slightly different perspective about the "greed" part.

Indeed, it must have been one of the most frightening experience for me, beginning to step into the shoes of a scholar. I stepped into a vast ocean with no boundaries, with every step I take, opening new leads. How will I know where to start? There is surely that overcoming the fear part.

And then greed takes over. You don't know when to stop. With every step you take opening new leads, you take every lead, wherever they lead. And you kinda stray from your hypothesis or you get lost and no longer know where you're headed. You want everything. You have so much ideas, you can write a few thesis. But there is no depth and no coherence. That is another unpleasant experience, where you find yourself standing on shaky ground.


I was initially surprised at the greed part. It was so real. It was mixed with pride. I felt at the top of the world. I felt powerful, that I had knowledge in my hands. I thought I could do anything and go anywhere.

Thankfully, I have my feet planted right back on the ground. I have no idea where this thesis would lead me. Who knows, I might thread another path after graduation, totally different from whatever I'm studying now. Who knows? God, He knows. And in Him I shall dig my heels firmly into the unshakeable Rock.

Courtroom

Taken from "Research to the Point" by Allan A. Metcalf, the 2nd edition of the book, published by Harcourt Brace & Company in 1995 in Florida, pages 5 and 6.

"Efficient, successful research requires the use of your judgment at every stage. You will understand the necessary attitude if you imagine yourself involved in a courtroom trial. A trial always tests a proposition, a hypothesis: that someone (or something) does or did something. Lawyers bring evidence, and witnesses offer testimony, for and against this hypothesis. The judge considers the evidence, decides for or against the hypothesis, and then writes an opinion, using the evidence to support this decision. When you write a research paper, you are the judge.

In fact, for a research paper you also have to take the part of the lawyer on both sides. You find the evidence and the witnesses and arrange for their testimony. But above all, you are the judge. As a good judge, you will consider all sides of the question. You will also rule digressions out of order and will determine the case as efficiently as possible. Your time is too valuable to waste."