Epistemographer

So, after a good day and a half of writing, revising, discarding, rewriting, shutting my laptop in frustration, pondering, tossing and turning, writing some more, discarding some more and generally just trying to get the thoughts careening around in my head to calm down long enough to focus, I think I’ve finally got the first sentences of my dissertation set:

“I was born in 1976, less than a year after the Sony Betamax consumer videocassette recorder first appeared in American stores, and a VCR has sat atop my television set for as long as I can remember. I grew up in a world of videotapes and took for granted easy access to thousands of movies, each available for a few dollars and a quick trip to one of my two favorite places in town, the local video store.”

You wouldn’t think that this would be so hard, really, but in the past 24 hours I’ve worked through and discarded a baker’s dozen ways of structuring my introduction, none of which worked, which meant that I didn’t know how to start the introduction since I didn’t know where it was going. I’m only finally satisfied with the above sentences because I know exctly what they set up, where they’re going to take the introduction, and the introduction as a whole only works because I know exactly what I’m trying to set up in the dissertation itself…it’s like putting the top level on an elaborate house of cards, which will only be stable if every card in the lower levels is precisely placed.

Or, maybe I’m really tired and not thinking straight, in which case this isn’t going to make nearly as much sense when I wake up. Right now, I’m going to sleep for a bit…

This entry was posted on Friday, March 26th, 2004 at 12:08 pm and is filed under Dissertation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.