hopefully something rhetorical

Today at lunch, I realized something significant. My friend is in the middle of some amount of crisis. She is trying to figure out what she wants to write her MA thesis on, and she is troubled by the fact that her interest has changed while she has been working on this particular paper. And, while I was sitting talking to her about her own paper dilemmas, I could not help but to think of my own. I believe that when you are someone that has a significant academic interest that once you have thought through the problems of your quandary that you come to a certain zen place where you don’t need to process the information anymore. There is the exact opposite of this zen place on the spectrum of study as well, however. The opposite place is when you have so much left to discover about your endeavor that you are completely stuck as to how you might begin to uncover the “answer.” Or, at least, if there is not one “the” answer, an answer that you can live with long enough to get your thoughts down on paper.

I have realized where I fall on the spectrum with the paper that I still have yet to turn in from last Spring, and I need to figure out a way to keep moving from here. How do you make yourself do it if you don’t think that it is in you? Certain blogs that I have been reading lately encourage a blind commitment to the process. Be like Nike. Just do it. So, I am going to find myself some time to just do it, and I will see if that process works for the academic endeavor as well. It will be an interesting experiment. And, if it works for this, then I can’t help but wonder what else it will work for.