The last 18 months has been an interesting journey, a foray into a sphere which I had no prior knowledge or experience of. Being trained in the sciences and research, it became increasingly difficult, yet at the same time enlightening, to delve into the qualitative world of educational, social and leadership studies. I was more comfortable with absolute numbers (faceless and clinical), rather than a myriad of words (from flesh and blood individuals) which I had to interpret and make sense of.
Such was the
pain that I had to endure. The discomfort grew even more when I finally realized and resigned to the fact that my final project had to have components of qualitative research. How was I to make sense of it all? The pain grew even more intense when to my horror, I found I had to transcribe open-ended answers into an excel sheet for analysis. The excel sheet exceeded the usual A3-paper dimensions that I was familiar with … I had to constantly distinguish between the gastric pain of skipped meals or the gastric pain induced by the stress of ‘translating’ responses into coherent conclusions – some of which I still am unconvinced of.
Like they say, ‘every cloud has its silver lining’ so every pain has its
gain. I have not only lost necessary weight in the last couple of days/weeks, but have also gained a newfound respect (surprisingly) for this aspect of qualitative research, so much so that I recently bought myself an MP3 recorder into which to speak my thoughts as they fleet into my brain. Yes, I have certainly begun to talk to myself much more nowadays, and occasionally I do also record my friends’ conversations – with and without their knowledge. You never know when it will come in useful … On a more serious note, this MEd program has indeed opened doors into "..." which I am currently exploring with "..". If they really think I have gained much from MEd, who am I to argue otherwise? We’ll see …
Would I do this
again? I guess I will miss the pain too much and have experienced much gain, that I am now considering a PhD in ".." – the topic of which is still in its gestational stage. In the meantime, I really should get down to completing the other thesis for my MCS by June 2009 …
- wrote this as part of my reflection for my final research project for the MEd (some details were left out to retain confidentiality...)
