Wrangling Ideas (Always Be Dissertating)

Here at the end of the first of (hopefully) four terms of dissertation research and writing, I have some notion of where I am, a (partially) clarified view of where I am going, and a confusing idea of what it will take to get there. At this point, the process is the thing. Ideas are flooding in. I’ve fourteen single-spaced pages of bibliography-to-read and I there is surely more to come. I’ve barely started gathering sources for my theological integration. That’s a ton of ideas to wrangle.

So, here at the beginning, my wrangling process has four phases.

1. Scan (and sometimes read) journal articles
2. Diagram the ideas in each article to discern key ideas in the domain.
3. Each week or so, update/modify the domain diagram, incorporating ideas from the article diagrams.
4. Once the domain diagram settles to what seems to be its essential elements, begin the write up, revisiting journal articles as needed.

Since I’m using domain immersion, I am focusing on one domain at a time. Once a rough draft is in place, I’ll move on to the next domain/topic.

I don’t know how this will work in practice, but I am hopeful.

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(C) Laura Springer

Musings of a peripatetic wannabe-sage by Laura Springer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License..