Well, we’re back from Spring Break, which for grad students doesn’t mean living it up on a Florida Beach. It probably meant checking on your lab mosquitoes, editing a thesis chapter, catching up on grading student essays, or trying (we repeat, trying, not necessarily succeeding) to get ahead on class readings. But we hope you did something fun, too; like getting In N’ Out or a massage or reading for fun. Don’t think about how lame that makes you sound.
Our final series for the semester begins this week. Last year, Assistant Dean Beth Barr did an interview with Christianity Today entitled “How and Where I Write.” You can check out the interview here. We thought it was a fun idea, and since she’s one of our deans we thought we’d plagiarize all the interview questions and do our own series. đ Not that we advocate for unethical scholarship, of course, but the editors here at BearTracks would argue that we have some limited copyright access to Dr. Barr’s material. It’s definitely in her contract somewhere.
So be on the lookout. Starting next week, we’ll be posting interviews with various professors and graduate students from across the disciplines, asking them a number of questions about their ideal writing conditions, their growth as writers, and some embarrassing writing/reading admissions. And it won’t just be from an academic standpoint, either. We have a number of students and faculty who publish outside of the realm of academia, and in the current job market, we thought you’d like to hear from them too. We’ll still have the occasional post on time-sensitive resources, awards, and opportunities here at Baylor, but we look forward to sharing writing stories with you for the rest of the semester.
Drop a comment below and let us know some questions you’d love to hear put to faculty and/or graduate student writers!
This post was originally published on the Baylor Graduate School blog, BearTracks, and can be found here.
Bonnie Friedman is a novelist. From the very first pages of this book, itâs apparent she has spent countless hours living in this creative headspace. Her descriptions bloom into metaphors, and those metaphors are rife with brilliant, complicated allegorical truths of writers and the difficulty of writing. Itâs all very literary, if you please.
But what Bonnie speaks to with utmost clarity is that writing is nuanced. It is hard. It can make you question your sanity not only as a professional but as a human being. Through this book, Bonnie anchors these challenges in a way that makes you feel connected with all writers, no matter their proficiency or discipline. That we are not alone in this process.
Here are the main takeaways from this text:
First: Writing is terrifying, even to those who love it. In my undergraduate (and even graduate) coursework, writing was a task I studiously avoided at all costs. I felt that because I was not one of the blessed (i.e., an English major), I was not qualified or gifted enough to write with any authority. Bonnie takes this twisted, albeit common mentality and slaps it out of the air. âWe are afraid of writing, even those who love it. And there are parts of it we hate. The necessary mess, the loss of control, its ability to betray us, as well as the possibility that what we write may be lousy, it might just stinkâŠâ (pg. 15). In this, Bonnie assures all who come to the altar of writing that each of us will face barriers and challenges. The fact that we hate parts of the process does not make us any less of a writer or devalue our work.
Second: Accolades and theoretical frameworks count for nothing in the face of a writing deadline. Writing doesnât care how many post-nominal letters follow after your name. Writing doesnât care how many classes youâve taught as a TA. Writing doesnât care how brilliant your theoretical framework is and how it perfectly situates your research questions within your qualitative study. It is the Great Equalizer. âPhi Beta Kappa counted for nothing here. One of the finest writers was a shaggy man without college who said he slept in a tent pitched in his living room⊠He spoke his stories into a tape and he paid a secretary to type themâ (p. 51).
Third: More words do not equal a better manuscript. This is a particularly hard pill to swallow. When you finally dip your toe into the writing waters and are surrounded by more experienced, bigger fish, all you hear are âwriting sprintsâ, âword count checksâ, or âhitting your daily word goalsâ. It seems obvious that better writing is synonymous with more words. False, cries Bonnie, who also fell prey to this addictive mindset: âI wrote the same thing over and over because I didnât trust it had communicated. And I thought, the more words the better. People read because they enjoy reading. Wouldnât they enjoy reading more words?â (pg. 50). This hits at the crux of the issue: trusting in yourself as a communicator and trusting that your words do the job justice.
At times, this book can be difficult to get through as an academic. While Bonnieâs writing is beautiful and fragile and lyrical, this is not the traditional academic way. After all, arenât we expected to present our writing with a prodigious level of conciseness, wrapped with a bow of footnotes, in-text citations, and proper indentations? Get to the point. What is the problem? Who is your audience? Too much fluff here. Take these four sentences and say them with one.
However, Bonnie would encourage you to step outside your academic context and see writing for what it truly is: the effort of humanity to communicate with one another despite fear, envy, or doubt. Embrace the imperfections, and let go of the all-consuming inner narrative that tells you youâre not good enough.
Trigger warning: If you spent weeks trying to find the âright instrumentâ only to find out it doesnât exist (like me), then this may induce feelings of anxiousness. đ«
Letâs set the stage: You are typing away into the night to develop your purpose and problem statements for your dissertation and decide that the magic answer to your research design question is, âYes, absolutely! This is going to be a quantitative study.â Awesome! You meet with your advisor and tell them the news and you think youâre going to just create your own because what you want to measure doesnât quite exist already and youâre sure you can validate an instrument, because, to quote Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, âWhat, like, it’s hard?â Youâre already knee-deep into your rigorous doctoral program and feel confident in your abilities. While meeting with your advisor, they explain that creating an instrument is in and of itself a âcompletely separate dissertation.â
By this point, you are feeling slightly defeated, but as we know, academia is a series of high and low points, and this too shall pass. So, where does one find an instrument? Good thing we have the Baylor library and expert librarians!
First, you need to determine what exactly you want to measure. This may seem simplistic in nature, but it is necessary. In the Ed.D program, we are encouraged to select an instrument before tackling other portions of our paper because it is central to the data design and data collection. In some respects, the instrument frames your entire dissertation. It can be helpful to see what other researchers used the same test or instrument in determining how you will apply it to your own.
There isnât a formal process for finding the âperfect instrument.â However, the library commonly recommends two databases as starting points, which are APA Psych and Education Resources Information Center (ERIC). The easiest way to find these databases is by searching by keyword under the databases tab on the Baylor University Library Website.
It is best to start with a broad topic and narrow it as you continue. Interestingly, there are three different versions of ERIC, but EBSCOHOST has advanced features and is education related. After scrolling down the page on the right-hand side there is a box titled âpublication typeâ, and as you scroll you will see âtest/questionnaire.â Or, under EBSCOHOST you can put the name of the test in quotation marks with no other limitation and the exact name will be searched in all metadata.
Yes, you can use OneSearch to investigate journals, dissertations, books, e-books, etc., but there are less advanced searches with this path. It is your choice, though!
According to Amy James, the Director of Information and Instruction at the Baylor Library, âMany times, students know the name of the test in an article but canât find the actual instrument, which is vital to your research. It is not enough to find an article that mentions your instrument of choice.â In the Appendices, you will have to include a copy of the real thing. It is rare, occurring only three times in three years, but if the instrument isnât found internally then Dr. James goes to Google to hunt it down. Sometimes, the author will let you use their instrument for a small fee or ask that you attend accreditation training. There are benefits to this avenue if you plan on conducting additional research in the future. Also, it looks really cool on your CV and LinkedIn profile, right?!
I asked James if the reason why the instrument canât be found is if the original author wants to make a profit or the instrument is just very new. She said, âit could be because the instrument is new, or it isnât part of the current library paid package.â Again, while this is atypical, it is still good to know all the possible outcomes.
Know that you can always place a request with OSOFast, the interlibrary loan request system, which will search other institutions. The sky is the limit. OSOFast requests are sometimes addressed internationally too.
The moral is, donât panic if you donât know how to find an instrument. Now, you have some basic first steps and an entire library ready and willing to help you with your research goals, including finding the best instrument or test.
