According to my husband, I am a bricklayer. I lay one sentence at a time. I simply cannot move from one sentence to the next, until the initial sentence is perfect. Before I move from one paragraph to the next, I reread the entire paper in its entirety, just to make sure it flows well. Essentially, it takes me a very long time to compose a paper. While this can be a bit inhibiting when I have a great idea or concept that just needs to get from my head onto the paper, I see it as a slow-moving strength.
Well, that is normally speaking. I have discovered that my “tried and true” paper writing technique of semesters past is NOT well suited to quantitative research studies. Typically, I would consider myself to be a fairly strong writer...however slow moving I might be. But this time around? I feel like I am a fish out of water. To be honest, I don’t know if I can clearly identify why this particular paper is so much harder to write. I mean, I have plenty of books and resources that have guided my way. I guess this is really the type of project that you learn by doing…multiple times. And this goes for the whole thing, from beginning to end. The more you interview, the better you get at asking good, productive questions. The more you transcribe, the more you realize it is a task best outsourced (ha!). The more you code, you develop ways to go about it more efficiently. The more you identify themes, the more easily they pop off the page.
Well, as I head back to APU, I look forward to learning more about actually synthesizing and writing up my findings. Hopefully I will learn how to a) turn the data into bricks, or b) abandon the technique that does not seem to work.
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