Sunday, December 13, 2009

About Learning

I wish I could have a better attitude about learning, but when you've been doing something for more than a year and a half, and you find that you still haven't learned what you were supposed to learn, it's time to hold down the shift key on your keyboard and randomly hit some keys along the number row. For example:

#@!&^$%

Anyway, today, I realized that I did not read Barney's section on "memoing" very well. In a way, it's not my fault. His writing is dense and hard for a novice to follow. Nevertheless, it was a smack-myself-on-the-forehead realization (from the help of a couple of classic GT experts) that I am supposed to memo right from the start.

Memo. Right. From. The. Start.

"Memos lead, naturally to abstraction or ideation. Memoing is a constant process that begins when first coding data [emphasis added], and continues through reading memos or literature, sorting and writing papers or monograph to the very end" (Glaser, 1978, p.83).

I've read this. I swear, I've read this. Several times, in fact. But for the life of me, I didn't memo from the beginning of coding. And I don't know why.

Maybe its because I thought Corbin & Strauss (2008) did it in a non-classic way when she (Corbin) explained how to do it? Maybe I thought her memoing method was preconceiving?

Whatever.

(Yes, my attitude sucks right now. But I feel like I have a right. After all, this realization makes me think that I may very well not be ready to submit my dissertation for a conference scholarship next week.)

No comments: