I have now finished my first course in my doctoral program and I am feeling a bit better about continuing down the path. My cohort has formed a great Facebook group, and I have joined a couple of other doctoral support groups to help keep me encouraged. As I begin course number two in my doctoral journey, I was asked to share my thoughts on academic writing:
Academic writing as a whole does not intimidate me much anymore. I majored in English a hundred years ago (so it seems), so I have a good handle on grammar and mechanics. However, I like to be very concise when I write, and I feel that I have to add a lot of extra words when I am utilizing this style. The major problem I run into as I attempt to flesh out my writing is that my sentences will become awkward and confusing. Therefore, I have to then go back and clean up my syntax so it flows better. Because I recently finished a second master's degree, so I am quite familiar with APA 6 formatting. I will definitely be living in my APA 7 manual so I cite my work correctly, since there have been some major changes to formatting. The one fear I have is that I will have to revamp my dissertation if APA 8 comes out before I am finished.
One weakness I do have is that I spend way too much time trying to come up with the perfect words to express what I want to say, so I end up pushing assignments to the deadline many times. I also have to be careful not to write in first person, since I do quite a bit of blogging and reflective journaling. Another one of my weaknesses is that I can go off topic very easily. I have to really focus on my topic to avoid going off on tangents that have to be deleted later on. I do the same thing when I am researching. Although a certain amount of "squirrel chasing" is good while going down the proverbial rabbit hole, I find that I waste a lot of time chasing different perspectives and topics that don't necessarily help me support a particiular topic. One thing I do to combat this is open a word doc or Google doc and put my subject or paper topic at the top in a big font. I then copy and paste URLs or reference citations into my document and write either the word or phrase I used to find it or a few words about the article or website This helps me in two ways. First, I can compare my search words to the title of my doc to see how they relate. Second, I have other articles that I can use at a later date, if needed, for a different assignment.
Although I am a fairly decent writer, the dissertation process is VERY intimidating to me. Just the sheer length of the paper that I will ultimately produce has been the biggest deterrent for me to even
begin this journey. However, when I begin to feel overwhelmed and want to quit before I get too far, I ask myself, "How do you eat an elephant?" The answer: One bite at a time. Other people have similar mantras, but this one for some reason, resonates with my soul and helps me get moving along my path. I sort of know what my topic will be, but I just need to do some research and have some conversations with professors to either narrow it down or point me in the right direction so my academic research and action research are aligned.
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