I warned you, right? This was pretty intense and unbelievably time-consuming, right? Reflect back on the beginning of this course – your fears, anxieties, worries, etc – and discuss how you turned these into strengths throughout this course this semester. What are your future goals as researchers? As writers? What was your proudest moment in this course? What do you think will most stick with you long after this course?
I think my work ethic differs from a lot of students. I always start out very strong and end up acting apathetic towards the end. For example, my first presentation was strong and I was prepared. My other gorup members were not. On the second presentation, they were all perpared, but I did worse the second time around.
All in all I knew this would be a lot of work. Id have to work at it majority of the week. I knew this was comming so I wasnt really nervous. That doesnt mean I didnt get irritated or frusterated throughout the course, because I did. Marlen is a professor that pushes his students to do their best. I guess I go overboard with this because I want everything I do to be really good. So when my work isnt the best I get upset. But he still keeps pushing. Having my work be perfect is definatley an issue for me and has been during this class. Its one of the reasons why I didnt have my research question until we arrived at our methods section! My final result was okay. It wasnt a masterpiece, but I think it was a good catalyst for future research. This was my first time and I know I should take it easy on myself. But Im still learning to do that.
As for future goals of research, I like to take the days one at a time. I know Ill probably go to grad school and write dissertations and all that. So now I feel a little more confident knowing what I learned here. But I still expect it to be challenging.
I think my proudest moment was continuing on with my research. When it turned out that I had only one participant I started to freak out, because I knew this wasnt good enough for a solid research paper. Well my next option was to change the focus, but I had just established a focus, I didnt want to change it again. Then I got irritated. I just wanted to screw this paper. But I calmly sat down with my paper in front of me and figured out my paper would work. Because although I had one participant, her answers were similar to the literature review I wrote. So I thought ill keep this, and write about why I kept it. So thats what I did.
What will stick with me longest? Besides that perfumes are basically blow jobs, the fact of how to write a research paper itself. There are so many elements that go into it, so many questions to ask. I feel like we took it pretty slow, but it was good becuase I understood how to combat all of this.
