Niche niche niche

As a doctoral students we are told to find an issue we're passionate about, on that's not too small, or too large, too hard or too soft. Use that area of passion, that question that keeps you up at night, to help develop your niche area and therefore your area of research. Easy right? So what keeps me up at night? Lately it's trying to develop a niche.

While reading Machi & McEvoy (2009) The Literature Review i can't help but think "what a great idea" if I lived in a parallel universe. "Schedule at time with no interruptions and quiet surroundings" (p. 10). Awesome now if the family, friends and neighbor's kids will just cooperate. For those of us in my Ed.D. program who are online students with full time careers and family responsibilities the idea of taking two hour chunks everyday to do a lit review with no interruptions seems somewhat far fetched. I'm sure it's good advice but not sure my boss will go for it.

But doing a literature review requires me to have a plan. A plan which starts with a question, an idea, that Ah-Ha moment where I say, yes that's what I want to devote myself to. And I had those, and I follow that string of thought until, in the course of my work or research I come across the next Ah-Ha, no that's what I want to do. I feel like Dug in the movie Up! — squirrel!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A reason to GO to graduate school, you're surrounded by graduate students

I stumbled across a blog today via ProfHacker of The Chronicle of Higher Education entitled 100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School . The initial posting I went to go read, as my qualifying project has been on my mind this week, was Reason #60: " The Tyranny of the Dissertation ." But I ended up at #50. You are surrounded by graduate students. I was taken aback by the comment "The professor responded without the slightest hesitation: 'There is nothing to be gained from the company of graduate students.'"Is this really the reality of graduate school? I do remember having very little interaction with my fellow Master's students. Once class ended, we all went our separate ways. Now I worked a full-time job while doing my Master's degree, so by the time class was over at 10 pm I was ready to call it a day. But in truth, there was no feeling of community, and as there were only 3 required classes I rarely saw the same people from semester to semester.
Read more

Response to My Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Dissertation

Today I read an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education My Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Dissertation . As one who is currently struggling with completing the writing for her qualifying project I was hoping for some ah ha moment reading this article. In stead I ended feeling "so I'm not the only one." Confirmation that motivation and the research muse is fickle. Early on I sat down and wrote 17 pages concerning background, literature review, and identification of need. I figured that by the time I was done with the research I'd just need to go back and edit, fill in some blanks, and add the results. Oh how silly of me. Looking back at what I wrote several months ago I feel utterly disconnected from it. So now I am back to procrastinating, looking at an ever looming deadline and the hope that inspiration suddenly hits. I used to keep a notepad by the bed, as I would always seem to find solutions to issues of wording, transitions, or methodology at 2 AM. R
Read more

The Un-Educating of America

So this week the hits against education keep on coming. I am not going to claim that the education system in America is perfect and that we don't need to work on it. The high school dropout rate is too high, the college drop out rate is too high, and the number of students graduating with STEM degrees too low. Debates should be occurring concerning the role of standardized testing, school funding, teacher pay and accreditation, as well as the core curriculum; what should not be occurring is a debate concerning if our children should go to college. Now, not everyone wants to or should attend 4 year colleges, there are those with other gifts, other dreams and other paths to follow, but not going to college should be a decision based on individualized goals, not on the lack access. This week Rick Santorum claimed that "The indoctrination that is going on at the university level is a harm to our country" and that wanting students to go to college makes you a "snob."
Read more