If you're an early career academic like me, you likely have multiple research projects going on at any given moment. And a spreadsheet with dozens of more ideas stored on your computer. I never feel I have enough time to pursue all of the projects my mind thinks up. And one thing I tend to struggle with mightily is putting those finishing touches on a project to get it off my plate.
Writing up the results and submitting them for publication is the least fun part of my research. I thoroughly enjoy coming up with and executing ideas. Manipulating variables and seeing the results are so exciting to me. But I'm not a natural-born writer. It is something I have always struggled with. Even though my doctoral advisor told me early in my doc program that "you are now a professional writer", I have yet to fully embrace that idea.
For example, I have two projects that are in the final stages of the process. One is about math anxiety in young learners. We tested timed versus untimed math fluency sprints and then also included covert versus overt timing methods. We discovered that when students were able to choose their preferred method of assessment, they did better. And I am still trying to finish writing this one up for publication. Some would say the hard work is done. I'm not convinced implementation is the hard work. At least not in my case.
I also have another project that is at the pointy end. This one involved assessing B.F. Skinner's novel Walden Two for possible use as a supplementary text in an introductory applied behavior analysis course. My graduate assistant found a lot of overlap in basic terminology used in plain language within the novel that might help students understand what can be complicated language in textbooks. This was a bit of a passion project that required a lot of textual analysis. I'm glad it is nearly finished and I've actually presented the preliminary data. But I just need to get it out of the door.
It isn't that I'm anti-writing. When it flows well, I can write a lot. My problem is that I can't say "no" to service opportunities that seem to take up more and more of my time. As I progress in my career, I am asked to take on more responsibility within the department and university. And although I am happy to do it, it does take away from my research activity. With the three pillars of academic life (scholarship, teaching, service), the time spent in each one is affected by time spent in the others. Teaching has to go on, so service and scholarship are the highly correlated ones.
Now, I know what you're thinking. Why are you writing a blog post about this instead of actually working on those projects? Believe it or not, this is used as a primer for me to return to working on those. In a funny way, it gets my creative juices flowing so that I can write for a while on those meaningful projects. But I really only do this when I'm struggling to find some motivation. There was a pretty long gap in my blog posts. I had forgotten how helpful it had been to do this type of writing. But now, I'm back at it. And I'm working hard at saying "no" to the many requests I continually receive. As an early career academic, it can be hard to say "no" because of the pressure for promotion. Fortunately, I'm at the stage where I've done all I can on that front and can take a step back. This should allow me to quickly finish up these two projects and move on to the vast spreadsheet of opportunities that await.
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