Today's Aha Moment comes courtesy of grappling with my dissertation...Go figure.
Sometimes in this process you forget that it is a process, a set of inter-related happenings that all works together in getting you to your ultimate goal. Yeah, like those first two years of course work, yup, they matter to these final three years of writing. I know, DUHHHHHH! But here's the thing: you bust your ass just to make it through those first two big ones. You study hard to pass those major exams and subconsciously you reduce the beginning of this whole experience to that moment when you find out you've passed and got your approval to move on to the main event: The dissertation.
I might have written somewhere in here before about the weird space you feel after all that beginning hustle and bustle is over. The last day of Comps and SIA writing your brain goes into a fog and your world freezes. You want to turn it all off for a little while because what you've just endured was some next level madness that you want to simply erase from every possible memory chamber in your physical body. It all becomes a blur...
...And then you snap back into reality, recharge your batteries and get going on figuring out your topic and writing for your life. But, sometimes, in the midst of the mad dash, you forget to connect some very important dots, like really acknowledging how all the stuff you learned is what you will need to help get you through this final monster project.
Today, as I went back to my first year research textbook and reviewed the first chapter, I remembered this important thing called the research paradigm. This paradigm includes an explanation of the framing principles that provide the foundation for the direction of my research design. I realized as I read between the lines that I had jumped so far ahead into trying to explain my ideas and justify my research design that I neglected to get solid in the foundation of the whole story. Just by stopping and articulating how the interpretivist and constructivist paradigms frame my worldview as a researcher I gave new life to my document and my revisions. Praise God!
You may not understand what all this means or you may be judging me for this brain fart, but this is truly a profound turning point in my soon-to-be dissertation history.
Simply put, I just had to go back to where it all started...and now I can move forward.
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