Category Archives: Process

I’m on track to finish the research phase of Chapter 2 in four weeks (compared to Chapter 1’s six weeks). I attribute my increased efficiency to the elimination of unnecessary research methods.

• First time: I wrote out and then typed all my notes. Now: I cut and paste. I think I was overly concerned with my ability to remember everything I read last time. I’m more confident now.
• First time: I transferred the complete chapter into the dissertation template used to format theses at my school. Now: I’m writing Chapter 2’s rough draft is in the correct format.
• First time: A bit enamored with the volume of my research, I numbered each source chronologically. Now: I don’t waste time finding, assigning, and editing my “item numbers.”
• First time: I entered bibliographic information into EndNote before I started looking at a source. Now: I wait until I’ve read it and only enter sources into EndNote that I believe I will cite in the chapter.

In general, I was a bit fussy and over-serious the first time around. I got off my high horse for Chapter 2, and my work is the better for it.

“To evaluate a work of art is, among other things, to estimate its potential value for others; but while our ability to make that estimation correctly certainly increases in time with all our general and specific knowledge, it also decreases in time as we become less and less like anyone else, and thus less able to predict anyone else’s response on the basis of our own.”
–from Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory by Barbara Hernstein Smith:

At a certain phase during research, you feel the joy of special knowledge–of realizing that no one has ever looked at the material quite this way. You see something different, and you value that seeing deeply.

But being an expert can also isolate you. I remember one day when The Future Mister Doctor Jones came home from work, I was all excited about seeing a certain poet’s knees on video. And it was impossible to explain.