Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Second thoughts

After weeks of gathering information and months of mentally planning my ASLE paper, today I sat down to actually start writing the thing--but first, I took a look at the abstract I submitted with the paper proposal to see what I said I was planning to say, and my first response was, "What was I thinking?!"

Of course it's quite obvious what I was thinking because the abstract explains very clearly what I was thinking. The problem is that in the months since I wrote the abstract, my thinking has veered off toward a slightly different conclusion, one that would require focusing on a very different aspect of the works from what I promised in my abstract.

What do I do now?

I always hate showing up to hear a conference paper on what sounds like a fascinating topic only to hear the presenter state, "I had planned to discuss [the topic you're all eager to hear about], but instead I've decided to focus on [some other topic only vaguely related to the original fascinating idea, and probably a self-indulgent topic at that]." I don't want to do that.

So instead I've spent the morning twisting together my current strand of thinking with the strand I stated in my abstract, and I think I've come up with a workable solution that will make the finished project even stronger. It certainly provides more room for expansion when I turn the short conference paper into a journal article, and it dovetails nicely with my larger research project, of which this paper will eventually form an important chapter.

Now I just need to start writing.

1 comment:

Joe said...

It sounds like you're doing the right thing. After a half second of "hmmm . . .disappointed" most panel auditors will prefer that you speak on what you honestly believe to be your strongest points. So, your talk will fail and exceed expectations at the same time.