One of my biggest issues, I've come to realize, in all areas of my work, is working with and truly recognizing what is actually there, not what I want to be there.

I continue to be a nervous wreck about this. I'm beginning to wonder whether there's any other way for me to be.

My dad used to have this saying about driving. It's a Cantonese saying and the best translation I can come up with is, "Act decisively, without arrogance." The basic gist was to be confident but not take unreasonable risks - if you're going to do it, don't dither about it. I'm finding this somewhat applicable to my situation - intellectual daring is something I used to do quite well, when I felt there wasn't a whole lot at stake. I wrote very convincingly at that stage (though the personal unpacking project - where I read every essay I've ever written and look at my feedback - will ultimately determine whether that is true).

For this, I need the same thing. I need to write and make decisions about this paper confidently. This is no time to dither about it. And someone will surely find me wrong. But at least they can call me out on something I'm proud of, not something I'll be the first to tear down. (Fortune favors the brave, and all of that.)

...can and will be used against you, and not just in a court of law.

One thing that's been helpful to keep in mind, is that this research report is like nothing I have ever written before. No, not even in those research classes. (Marxist analysis of the role of Nature in Diesel Jean Advertisements? No.) I can analyze just fine, but when it comes to analyzing my own data, backing it up, insisting that it's new, true, and interesting - nope, not a thing like the self-assured grand-standing I did all through years 1 through 3.

How is it different?

1. Audience. OK, this one's a bit fake. The truth is, I could write this thing and only show it to my supervisors and have that be the end of it. But I don't think anyone would think much of me if I did that. I did something with the blessing and help of a community, and it's not fair to deny you the fruits of it because I'm sheepish and horribly insecure. No, this is not a good excuse. Anyway, this is the part where I learn to take feedback. Can't be wrong if I don't put anything out there that might be right.

2. Intent. In previous classes, the intent was to finish the year. But this? I seem to have inadvertently built this up to be such a big thing. Well...it is  a big thing for me, for what I think is right and important, so I'm not feeling bad about that. It does make me uncomfortable though to be enshrining what I really think in 40 - 50 pages. Maybe that's really what it is - that it's such a solid manifestation of everything I've been obsessing over since...before 2006, but certainly encompassing most of what I've been passionate about since then.

Breathing. Really.

I have a lot more reading to do in my research textbooks, but it now appears that the problem I was having was that I asked really specific research questions, then went and did a qualitative research method that doesn't jive so well with those research questions. Hm. So now I'm at a loss whether to reformulate the questions or describe the methodology a little differently so that the questions figure less prominently...? So confuzzled.

But I'm slightly further than I was before: I have index cards with analysis points with EVIDENCE underneath it. Oh boy.

I realize that my mark will reflect not just the end product but the learning I have demonstrated in producing and presenting that product. But I don't think bloggers will be nearly so lenient. Just like they were tearing apart my survey methodology, I think I will post my final report on my blog and it will be picked apart and ransacked relentlessly for lacking rigor and critical significance.

Not if I can help it in the next ... 7 days!

Yes, somehow it's true that I've written close to 7,000 words without having settled on exactly what I want to say. It must have been all those sections where I described each and every one of my interviews...don't think that will be terribly exciting for anyone to read.

Sometimes I think to myself, how did I do this? I used to write 20 pages papers, but I know now that none of them were ever really that good. It's hard to believe, but all those good marks I got? They surely must have been pity marks - people saying, "Well, her execution could use some work, but the ideas are golden - let's give her an A." It sounds overly cynical, and while there is a slim chance that I used to just write well without needing to pay too much attention what I was doing, I find it less likely than the other explanation. I've seldom gotten really pulled-no-punches, unbiased, hard-knocks feedback on my writing - probably not since I left Mr. Knox's English 12 class. Or, another, even more likely explanation is also there - that I have received the feedback but it always came at the end of a semester when I was too exhausted to close the loop on applying it to my writing for the next semester. I'm sure I've seen someone scribble, "needs better transition" on a paper I've written.

Anyway, enough about that.

the faster it goes. Like toilet paper, right? My writing's certainly been able to pick up a bit in the last couple days, so feeling better overall about that.

I've gotten to the point where I'm actually starting to do word counts on the pages I've written. I'm downright shocked at the numbers. I did a count on some of the files I have (many of which are filled with notes and not draft-writing, mind you) and the numbers were at 4200 words yesterday. Today, I realized I left a whole bunch of files out of that query and I've added them in.

7000? What?!?! That can't be right. Maybe 5000 of it is "real", but even that estimate seems absurdly high. After all, I still have absolutely no idea what I'm writing about! I have some more ideas though...

When I was working in Toronto, one of my co-workers once told me that my brain works outwards instead of inwards. Most people get more and more detailed as they think more about a problem, but I tend to think more about what the problem is connected to. They used to call that lateral thinking. It drives me insane sometimes, because instead of writing a paragraph or two to describe the problem at hand, I end up creating another page for a different topic that I think is so related that I can't possible leave it out! Hence the re-appearance of the E-government page, which has made a successful comeback from my honours proposal after having been cast aside a month or two ago. *facepalm*

I know what this is. I'll probably end up "writing" way more than the 12,500 word (50 page) limit and then end up slicing, dicing, and sharpening the prose. My issue is that I still haven't felt that I have written much of substance that I actually really want (and need) to have in there. For instance, the methodology section is very much not complete, and I haven't even really started my analysis.

WTF? I have a week and a half to go and I haven't started my analysis? *Panic*

...You'd think with two weeks to present I'd have a better handle on this. It is much better to have this argument out loud and awake.

I've spent a lot of time reading research papers, so the urge to write like that has been strong. But I don't really know how to make my quantitative data really meaningful. I'm not dwelling on that but I'm going to look into what that means I can say about what I did.

Stumbled upon an interesting article on "elite interviewing" in conjunction with case study methodology from political science. Am pretty interested in this. Am I the only one that finds it awkward to pretend I had this all mapped out? I really didn't, and I know most people don't. I should be less afraid to say so, perhaps.

I am so glad I'm doing this now instead of with a real master's. Then I'd be toast.

OK, so let's re-cap why I'm having trouble writing (no, this isn't my personal journal, but talking myself down is still important):

• I'm worried about "doing wrong" by the community I am writing about.
• I'm worried about writing things that are wrong, untrue, etc.
• I'm worried!

Oh dear. My anxiety does make quite the fool of me. I can't believe how much more nervous I am about this than I was about Vancouver Transit Camp - granted, I had a lot of other people there helping me out on that. I'm surprised/grateful I've gone this far in life without more anxiety-related physical ailments. It helps to write down what I've thought and heard in this regard...

• The community can totally handle it. They are an incredibly resilient bunch, and also don't really care all that much about me, to be completely blunt on it. They will totally shred my methodology apart, and it's part of my task as An Academic to anticipate their questions and incorporate appropriate responses into my warrants, claims, and qualifying statements.
• I can't be wrong without saying something first. Yup. I should be so grateful to even get the chance to be wrong - because then it sparks dialogue and reflection and further insight, for not only the community in question, but for other scholars, people thinking about this stuff, etc. See, it all works out in the end!
• And that last one...that's something for the personal journal.

I'm not making no progress, but it's coming about as easily as wringing blood from a stone, or any other self-mutilation analogies you can muster. Come now, I am on Livejournal.

It's March 19th, which means I have slightly less than 3 weeks now until I present my honours research report to my supervisors. This is here so I can stop bugging my twitter stream with my senseless research ramblings.

Last week I had two very interesting conversations: one with a peer writing tutor, and one with my supervisor. The peer writing tutor came from a background in dance. Despite initial skepticism, she was incredibly qualified to advise me on my writing. ...Maybe a little too qualified, even. Her work in dance choreography meant she was very engaged with phenomenological, academic writing. And it was very exciting and engaging to think about the first person aspects of this work, because I have an awesome time at BarCamps - although I'd also need to explain that exhausted, deflated, overloaded feeling I inevitably get at the end of them too. The idea of being able to share that in my report gave me a bit of a kick in the pants, but even in the midst of that conversation, and now, I remain a little reserved. I'm a little unsure of what genre my report fits in best. The default is social science, especially since I did use quantitative methods in my research. (Goddamnit why didn't I think of this in January/November/October/September...?)

The truth is that the research classes (qualitative, documentary, qualitative) I took in my undergrad were probably the lowest grades I got in my university career. We won't talk about how that led to me doing an honours research project, mmkay? :)

Anyhow. Second conversation last week was with my supervisor, he recommended some good books for me to read that were from that first person perspective but still within the realm of social science. I will be hitting those books tonight, but it was good to get the feedback. I got even more from my second supervisor yesterday. My embeddedness is necessary in this. The research wouldn't be the research if I weren't in it.

*breathing*

Today, I started writing up the results (even though there are two last stubborn long weird file-formatted interviews to still go over). I'm still hesitant to talk about theory.

Have I mentioned my peer writing tutors have been great at kicking my ass too? They're heartless with my procrastination, exactly what I needed. At my first appointment, the lady there (yes, yet another Asian communication major) just told it off  - me looking for more resources is me looking for excuses not to go and sit down and write. Reminds me of Stephen Pressfield's The War of Art too, actually.

The reason I bring that up is that yesterday I went on a research tangent and started looking into demography in Canada. The conundrum remains: how can I *say* something like "the workforce is aging" and just throw it out there? I know where *I* know it from, but chances are it was not academically refereed, peer-reviewed, citable, etc. So much of my worrying has been based around looking for sources to back up stuff I already know, not pulling together new knowledge.

With respect to these snippets, I may have to declare that any citation will do. Google Scholar will be preferred to the journal databases in this respect. Sometimes it's that I have to "prove" that something that is said to be happening in the States is in fact happening in Canada too.

Academic rigor. Thoroughness. Linear thinking. Obviously somebody rubberstamped the rewiring of my brain to be bad at this.