why ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ellen_fremedon is my hero
May. 3rd, 2012 10:50 am(part 74 in an occasional series)
So I have this incomplete from last semester, right. I have to dispose of it by the middle of next week. (I have recently discovered a document implying that I should actually have until September to finish it; but as I never signed an incomplete-work contract of any kind, and the professor said "end of next term" and the dean nodded when I said this was my understanding when I met with her a couple of weeks ago, I think I'm not going to push it. Plus three more months before the thing is due just gives me three more months not to do it. I want it out from over my head.) I've done all the work for it except the site-visit report, which is, as the name implies, a report of a visit to an institution; I'm to seek the answer to a research question whose answer cannot be found in books or newspapers, or online, but only using archival materials, and visit an archives in order to do so. "The research question," says the syllabus, "is merely a device to get you into an institution whose holdings include archival material."
And that's where I've been hung up. I have a hard time thinking of real research questions; it's why original research and I weren't a good fit. (It's among the reasons.) But once I've got one, I want to, you know, do the research and answer the question! Thinking of something I'm not interested in but which if I were I'd have to go to an archives to look into it? Paralyzing. And finally, after stumbling over the filling-in of a sample table in a sample database with sample data and being saved only be the insight that there is such a thing as a random name generator, I realized that what I really need is a reliable way to dodge around the purposely hypothetical and pointless, and I went crying to Ellen for help, and she came up with a workable research question in about forty-five seconds.
"That might be more work than you want to do," she said.
"Understand," I said, "that I'm not actually going to do the work. That's the point."
I owe her ice cream in a big way, is what.
So I have this incomplete from last semester, right. I have to dispose of it by the middle of next week. (I have recently discovered a document implying that I should actually have until September to finish it; but as I never signed an incomplete-work contract of any kind, and the professor said "end of next term" and the dean nodded when I said this was my understanding when I met with her a couple of weeks ago, I think I'm not going to push it. Plus three more months before the thing is due just gives me three more months not to do it. I want it out from over my head.) I've done all the work for it except the site-visit report, which is, as the name implies, a report of a visit to an institution; I'm to seek the answer to a research question whose answer cannot be found in books or newspapers, or online, but only using archival materials, and visit an archives in order to do so. "The research question," says the syllabus, "is merely a device to get you into an institution whose holdings include archival material."
And that's where I've been hung up. I have a hard time thinking of real research questions; it's why original research and I weren't a good fit. (It's among the reasons.) But once I've got one, I want to, you know, do the research and answer the question! Thinking of something I'm not interested in but which if I were I'd have to go to an archives to look into it? Paralyzing. And finally, after stumbling over the filling-in of a sample table in a sample database with sample data and being saved only be the insight that there is such a thing as a random name generator, I realized that what I really need is a reliable way to dodge around the purposely hypothetical and pointless, and I went crying to Ellen for help, and she came up with a workable research question in about forty-five seconds.
"That might be more work than you want to do," she said.
"Understand," I said, "that I'm not actually going to do the work. That's the point."
I owe her ice cream in a big way, is what.
