Discovery through writing
1Sunday, October 21, 2012 by Jesse
Thoughts on writing a mock SSHRC proposal
I think I remember Luker discussing in one
of the early chapters of her book about using writing to discover your research
interests and questions. In my experience, I need to know what I am going to do
before I start researching and writing. However, working on the mock SSHRC proposal
was completely different. I still had
not completely formulated by research questions or methods when I sat down to
write the SSHRC, but as I worked on it the threads of my interests started to
come together and eventually and idea for a research project emerged. I also found that it made more sense to draw
on academic areas that I have already explored in other classes, rather than
starting from scratch with a new idea. I felt like the amount of new research
and literature review that would be necessary to be able to speak knowledgeably
enough in the SSHRC proposal would be daunting. The more I worked on the SSHRC
proposal the more enthusiasm I felt and the more significant and worthwhile the
research proposal felt. I also started
to feel a lot more focused. I guess sometimes, you just have to jump in and
start doing it, learning and discovering as you go.
I had a very similar experience - the prospect of writing this daunting paper seemed so insurmountable when I started; having no real research experience (except for some conversation analysis via linguistics in my undergraduate, and with that I was more of a transcriber than an actual researcher), I felt so lost and directionless. I had a chosen topic but not a research question, and after spending days finding what was out there already, I was still directionless.
ReplyDeleteAt some point I realized I would simply have to start writing, and as you referenced Luker's argument that writing is the early phase of research, that is exactly what happened. By halfway through my first draft, I suddenly became focused. A direction that I hadn't even perceived was made considerably clearer through writing. After a little editing, it seemed almost credible.
The weirdest thing about this entire experience for me was how invested I became after a direction was found. I entered the iSchool with no intention of research (tangentially, I actually chose this faculty because I could avoid research altogether - something that would have been impossible if I'd entered into a master's program in linguistics), but I've actually become pretty interested in the topic and I'd honestly be really fascinated to see it carried out. It seems Luker may have been onto something about writing...