April 10, 2010
I’m not as bad as research as I thought.
I’m working on my paper for Research Methods, of course. It’s a horrible job, and I feel like I suck at research. It’s painful, and I’m bad at it. I like reading a good theory, and I like synthesizing it into my own thought process, but the whole finding relevant works bit? I hate that shit.
Still, maybe I’m not as shit at it as I thought, at least.
I had to find some actual, physical books for this paper, so I ended up finding these two ancient tomes. One was published in 1908, with browning pages that are nearly falling out of the book. The other was published in a comically old-style cover, which promised a “modern look” at poetry. Every page has horrible purple pen underlining every paragraph. “These are so damn old,” I told myself. “I’m supposed to be writing about modern trends in research for this shit, and here I am going to be, using these ancient books. I’m awful.” However, I was on a deadline, and had to have some books, so I rented them out to use.
Later, I was looking through my research, and I was reading the many articles I printed out. I was shocked, and pleased, that nearly every modern article on the subject I’m writing on referred to at least one, if not both of those ancient books. They were very relevant to the topic at hand. People were responding to, agreeing, and disagreeing with them, and being able to read that first hand is going to make my paper seem more credible. I found the right books for the job.
This amazes me that I pulled that off. How did that happen? I suck at research. Is Research Methods actually teaching me something?
…nah, that would be crazy. At least the paper should turn out alright, though.