Becker, H. S. (1986). Writing for social scientists: How to start and finish your thesis, book, or article. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Howard Becker hits the nail squarely on the head in the Preface and first chapter. His description of the course he taught brings up many issues for me. We tried to form a graduate student “writing crew” this past summer. A female classmate and I invited graduate students in the College of Education to meet once a week, Tuesdays at noon, for six weeks starting the first week in June 2010. The first meeting we had 4 members (2 plus she & I); second meeting, 2 additional but different students (plus she & I); third meeting, 1 additional but a different student (plus she & I); by the fourth meeting it was only she & I. It took three meetings before the paper I wanted everyone to read and comment upon was even looked at. She brought one chapter of her dissertation proposal which I reviewed over the course of two meetings. Not one other student brought a paper with them! And that was the only requirement for the writing crew.
Not unsurprisingly, I often find myself in situations where my artist self and my political self cannot comfortably occupy the same space publicly, though they are rarely separate in my artistic process. (Park, 2010)
Forming a writing crew, for me, was a political act, an act of reconstruction. It was an act of creating empowerment among my fellow classmates. Another purpose of our writing crew was to utilize the talents of our fellow students to improve our writing because the faculty are too thin in the College of Education, and we simply cannot get enough writing help from our advisors and committee members. I related my summer “writing crew” experience to the resistance of Becker’s students to bringing their papers to class as the only requirement for taking his course.
I related strongly to the way Becker compared undergraduate writing to graduate writing. In my education graduate courses I write papers that are too short, not on topic, not well-thought-out, and that do not meet the expectations of the Education faculty. I also write drafts and then outline the draft in order to re-organize the paper. However, my biggest obstacle just seems to be time. Last fall I tried getting up at 5am and writing something (anything!) until 7am. Although it forced me to carve out time (and go to bed earlier in order to get up earlier), the results were not satisfactory. Time is my biggest challenge.
Recently in a class discussion that felt like déjà vu from my undergraduate years, we were talking about (privileged/entitled) people writing (stealing/exploiting) other (oppressed/marginalized) people’s stories (cultural products/collective histories). The feeling of being “that” person was all too familiar—someone “radical” or “crazy” compared to the rest of the room . . . . (Park, 2010)
When I was a working scientist, I shared freely with my supervisor, and he stole my ideas. He used them as his own without giving me attribution. I was really steamed when I realized he was doing this. When I moved into my “60-day teacher education” program between a university and a school district, I was surprised by classroom teachers freely sharing their handouts, their ideas, etc. In class I brought this up only to find that classroom teachers are becoming more proprietary, less willing to share. Something has shifted in the last five years. I don’t enjoy being secretive. Our instructor verified that College of Education faculty are secretive about their ideas, their writing projects. This makes me uncomfortable.
I have several writing projects about which I’ve brainstormed (with my partner) over the summer and which may turn into books later on. These writing projects are theoretical. They set the stage for a lifetime of work. Another obstacle – and I ran into this as a mathematics undergraduate – is that my coursework does not necessarily support my scholarly interests; that is, I get assigned a paper for class, but it isn’t something that I will be able to use for my Ph.D. work. It is just another assignment. This fall I am working with both instructors to make my assignments “count” towards my dissertation research, towards a conference, and/or towards a publication that will help me get hired later on.
In Chapter 2, when Becker talks about his student who wanted her writing to be “classier” I wondered why he had done so much editing for her; instead of starting her off with her own editing. I agree that examples are good, sometimes in short supply for class papers, but this was her thesis after all. This was make it or break it time for her. Academic elitism, the principle of hierarchy offend me in that I relate it simply to White male privilege. When I was an undergraduate in animal science in the early 1970’s, I began reading papers from the Journal of Animal Science. Many of those papers were unintelligible to me, but I thought I had to read and re-read in order to get something important out of them. In my scientific writing I aimed for an undergraduate audience and to provide information that would be useful for keeping farmers and ranchers on the land. This made sense to me as an applied ecologist.
So what does an applied ecologist turned applied mathematician do in education? What is the applied persona in teacher education? Isn’t teaching an applied activity? If professors of teacher education are utilizing educational research to instruct teacher education pre-professionals, shouldn’t the writing style be for the pre-professional? Becker (1986) points out that the academic style of writing is believed to provide graduate students with “guild membership.”
What kind of writing will do that for them? Not writing plain English prose. Anyone can do that. (p. 40)
I disagree that anyone can write plain English prose well. It takes practice, practice, practice.
Chapter 3 about re-writing: we talked a lot about this in class. I became aware that (1) I re-write as I write (on a computer); (2) I rarely leave enough time before an assignment is due to re-write as well as I should; and (3) class assignments rarely provide enough face time with the instructor to truly improve effectively. Therefore, I decided, for instance, to take a paper I slaved over in 2009 and re-write it for publication. This is the paper I brought to the writing crew. It is the paper I used for my AERA proposal. I just didn’t want to leave that project in the final form from Spring 2009. I knew it had a lot more potential. We’ll see.
They [corporate marketing people] think engineers are impractical cuckoos who would just as soon bankrupt the company by pursuing perfectionist pipe dreams. (Becker, 1986, p. 122)
“Good enough for government work.” “Plenty good enough” to “get it out the door.” The above quote by Becker and the two preceding this sentence illustrate differing definitions of the finished product. When is a product finished? When is a master’s thesis done? How long does a graduate student hang around allowing the advisor to edit and refine before the thesis gets turned into the Graduate School? I faced this dilemma when it was time for me to leave Fort Collins. My 180-day temporary Graduate Research Assistantship with USDA-ARS had ended. I had rented out my house to the next occupants. I was sleeping on the floor of the 8’ X 16’ trailer hitched to my Toyota pickup parked in the street in front of the house I had occupied for three years as a master’s student at Colorado State University. The co-chair of my committee, however, wanted me to keep tweaking my thesis. I had no income; I was living in a trailer with all of my worldly possessions inside it; I was due in New Mexico; but my co-chair wanted to keep tweaking my thesis. I called a halt to his tweaking by requesting his signature so that I could turn it in. For me it was “good enough.” I probably should re-read my thesis and see what I think now.
I am actually not terrorized by the literature ( Chapter 8 ) because I thrive on library research. I wrote my first research paper in eighth grade, and I have written many, many literature reviews since 1964. As a second semester freshman at Sul Ross State University in 1970, I received 100% on the research paper I wrote on Equine Nutrition; blowing the curve for everyone else. I worked on that paper non-stop every waking moment for a semester. I continued that line of study when I transferred to Texas A&M; completing a research project as a senior. On the other hand, compressing that literature into a manageable size; synthesizing; integrating into the main arguments – these are the challenges I face. I like Becker’s final admonition: do what is easy first, then move in small steps toward the final product.
Sources:
Park, A. R. (2010). The mountains are just ahead of us. Retrieved from http://inciteblog.wordpress.com/2010/08/27/the-mountains-are-just-ahead-of-us/
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