To spark some ideas for tackling my second doc exams and the upcoming dissertation, I visited SimplicityArchive,  the site I created for my masters thesis (the last grad school milestone I survived).  Reading through the blog provided me with a lot insight into my thoughts at that time and made me realize how valuable it was to have that documented. Hence this post.

The Writing Thing, the dreaded writing thing. As academics, scholars, researchers, and, arguably just as a normal person, it is invaluable to document your mental processes when trying to accomplish a big thing like a dissertation. I use the word THING because really, writing a dissertation (or any project) is many things. It is writing. It is reading. Its conversations, its thoughts, its drawings, its mapping, its research. The list goes on… And even though its many many things, when going through the process of all the thing, a process that will likely take years (ah), its good and helpful to have consistent documentation of what’s going on. And, unfortunately, that documentation is typically written in some fashion.

Reading my blog posts about Stuff and Csikszentmihalyi reminds me of all those ideas that I was so close to at that time. The writing acts as a mental time capsule that seems so hard to put together but really really helps when you’re looking back and trying to remember what those people said and what you thought about their ideas. And taking 30 minutes to bang out a blog post about it will save you 30+ minutes of remembering and looking things up in the future.

So the next time I am lamenting about the Writing Thing,  Laurie from April 12, 2016 will help me remember why its so important.