Parts

I had my dog neutered this week. I know that may sound peculiar to mention but as I desperately tried to get my research paper finished, I started to think about things that have nothing to do with research papers but that impact them greatly. I know, I know … very tangential thoughts but so too are dog park gate systems :-). I think as I felt sorry for my whining dog who gave up his parts, I considered the parts of our creativity that we give up as researchers as well. We may start off with what we consider to be creative and innovative ideas and then as the research takes off, we realize that some of those ideas really just won’t work. As we whittle off parts of a research plan, things become more evident … ideas that we thought were brilliant suddenly appear to be disconnected. I think the connections between parts of research are pretty important but funnily enough, I feel like this comprehension didn’t happen for me until the very end of the course. This is not a complaint but instead something akin to an epiphany. I feel like the connections that were made in preparing a proposal are something I can definitely take with me into other courses or other research opportunities. Like Amanda’s observations below on magic versus the transparency of methodology, I think it is important to admit or perhaps expose how unorthodox methods or just plain crazy ideas sometimes mark the beginnings of good research.