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Last night, I lay in bed thinking that I really needed to get a sanity-check from a knowledgeable third party regarding the presentation coming up in November. I know, I keep talking about this thing. But it really has been looming that large in my mind.
It may not be an exaggeration to say that I've been obsessing about it. Much like when I was feeling constantly stressed about researching grad schools as preparation for my Canada trip, I spent a significant portion of time every day thinking and worrying about my presentation. It's actually been making me fairly depressed the last couple nights in particular. I've lain in bed feeling disconnected, lonely; as though I'm losing weeks of my life. Like I couldn't play games with my family, or relax and enjoy time with my sweeties.
It's largely because I've felt like I don't really know how to put this thing together. I've taken a few stabs at it. I read some literature and wrote up some notes about concepts like organic food, local food, environmental sustainability in general and conflicting interpretations thereof. I showed them to my advisor, who commented that I need to start with the research we did here in Wisconsin, and then connect that to the literature.
I've been worried about how little I felt like there was in our material that addressed what I'd be talking about. But I read and reread the report our group created, our field notes, our interviews, and our survey data. There's actually more in there than I thought, and I wrote a couple pages of notes and ideas about our research specifically.
Those are what I've been thinking about yesterday and today. A little bit of the last couple days' worries have been about integrating our research with the more general literature, and trying to contrast local winter markets with national and international summer markets. But I think I can puzzle that out. The largest part of the stress has been coming from unease regarding the format, the length, and the construction of the total presentation.
Last night, I'd kind of decided that what I really needed to do was ask![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
danaeris whether she'd be willing to listen to me lay out, at length, all the information I had, the work I've done, what I need to produce, and the problems I was facing. I'd ask her to tell me whether (as I suspected, but couldn't convince myself) I was stressing way too much over way too little, or whether I had real cause for this level of worry.
Between classes today, I was thinking more about the presentation, as I frequently do. An idea that had somehow never come to mind before jumped into my head. I should look up an average talking speed. Then I could figure out how much I need to write. 15 minutes is about 2000 words. That was easy.
And somehow, having that highest level framework to fit what I'm doing inside of has made me feel just tremendously better. As though I suddenly know basically what I need to produce and can set about producing it. Rather than feeling nebulous and inapproachable, it feels like a defined thing that I can get a handle on.
I don't understand why this is. My brain is weird. They all are. This is one of the ways that mine is. But now I can look and say ok, I have X words in my preliminary notes and outline. I have a lot of stuff in there. Now I can start fleshing it out and getting a sense of where I am. I can find my way through the forest I was lost in. I won't be nearly so likely to spend the majority of my free time feeling like I should be working on this thing that makes me feel kind of lost.
Through my undergraduate career, I continue to learn not only how to learn, but how I need to package things for my brain to process and work with well.
I guess that sanity check came from myself. Which is promising for the future.
Now, this evening, I'm going to work on all the other reading and stuff I need to do for next week. I won't have that kind of perception of a giant-scary-amorphous project hanging over my head and I may actually be able to concentrate on other things without it distracting me. Which is good, since I have two exams on Tuesday!
It may not be an exaggeration to say that I've been obsessing about it. Much like when I was feeling constantly stressed about researching grad schools as preparation for my Canada trip, I spent a significant portion of time every day thinking and worrying about my presentation. It's actually been making me fairly depressed the last couple nights in particular. I've lain in bed feeling disconnected, lonely; as though I'm losing weeks of my life. Like I couldn't play games with my family, or relax and enjoy time with my sweeties.
It's largely because I've felt like I don't really know how to put this thing together. I've taken a few stabs at it. I read some literature and wrote up some notes about concepts like organic food, local food, environmental sustainability in general and conflicting interpretations thereof. I showed them to my advisor, who commented that I need to start with the research we did here in Wisconsin, and then connect that to the literature.
I've been worried about how little I felt like there was in our material that addressed what I'd be talking about. But I read and reread the report our group created, our field notes, our interviews, and our survey data. There's actually more in there than I thought, and I wrote a couple pages of notes and ideas about our research specifically.
Those are what I've been thinking about yesterday and today. A little bit of the last couple days' worries have been about integrating our research with the more general literature, and trying to contrast local winter markets with national and international summer markets. But I think I can puzzle that out. The largest part of the stress has been coming from unease regarding the format, the length, and the construction of the total presentation.
Last night, I'd kind of decided that what I really needed to do was ask
danaeris whether she'd be willing to listen to me lay out, at length, all the information I had, the work I've done, what I need to produce, and the problems I was facing. I'd ask her to tell me whether (as I suspected, but couldn't convince myself) I was stressing way too much over way too little, or whether I had real cause for this level of worry.Between classes today, I was thinking more about the presentation, as I frequently do. An idea that had somehow never come to mind before jumped into my head. I should look up an average talking speed. Then I could figure out how much I need to write. 15 minutes is about 2000 words. That was easy.
And somehow, having that highest level framework to fit what I'm doing inside of has made me feel just tremendously better. As though I suddenly know basically what I need to produce and can set about producing it. Rather than feeling nebulous and inapproachable, it feels like a defined thing that I can get a handle on.
I don't understand why this is. My brain is weird. They all are. This is one of the ways that mine is. But now I can look and say ok, I have X words in my preliminary notes and outline. I have a lot of stuff in there. Now I can start fleshing it out and getting a sense of where I am. I can find my way through the forest I was lost in. I won't be nearly so likely to spend the majority of my free time feeling like I should be working on this thing that makes me feel kind of lost.
Through my undergraduate career, I continue to learn not only how to learn, but how I need to package things for my brain to process and work with well.
I guess that sanity check came from myself. Which is promising for the future.
Now, this evening, I'm going to work on all the other reading and stuff I need to do for next week. I won't have that kind of perception of a giant-scary-amorphous project hanging over my head and I may actually be able to concentrate on other things without it distracting me. Which is good, since I have two exams on Tuesday!