Thoughts About Freewriting Responses on 1 October 2015
I don’t recall the last time I so enjoyed reading writing from students in my course. In everyone’s answer to the prompt, “What I find hard about research is,” I found beautifully expressed and very authentic responses. Reading them all this morning revealed some common themes:
- Getting started is hard.
- Picking a topic is hard, especially if the professor has said that you can choose anything.
- Focusing your topic is challenging.
- It’s easy to find sources–sometimes it’s even overwhelming when you look at the results of a search–but it’s hard to know if they are appropriate or reliable.
- As you search, it’s easy to get distracted by irrelevant sources or to go off on completely unrelated tangents.
- Reading the sources is tough: doing so consumes lots of time; they can be challenging because the authors often assume the reader knows lots of theories and concepts already; and they can undermine what you thought you knew and leave you feeling uncertain or confused as you try to synthesize the ideas in them.
- Keeping track of your sources as you find them is hard.
- As you work on the project, finding inspiration, motivation, and even passion can be tough even though you know it’s what’s needed to make the project a success.
Great work, everyone!
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