Eureka!

i may have stumbled my way (well, just a bit) to my dissertation topic!
Well....I'll be damned!

I know the general area I wanted to research and had narrowed the topic some, but it still didn't seem like a "research question", or I couldn't figure out where that question was in the topic. Still having trouble with that aspect of scholarly work.
Anyway...I was trying not to keep chasing distractions in terms of assigned work, projects, papers, etc and to focus on what I want to do, not what someone else wants, or what they need a warm body for. I'm already doing this Summer Project and want to get something 'researchy' out of it, or at least have it move me forward toward my own damn dissertation work.

And voila...now maybe it has! I'm still not completely sure if the questions I have are "research questions", but they seem worth exploring, and a way to tie into the more broad area of interest I've had the past 6 months or so (and to the Big Picture Topic I had when I started the PhD) and make the Summer Project worthwhile (well, outside its own interests...).

This came from a brainstorming talk I had with Advocate today...a sort of transition meeting to her more offical capacity as "Advisor" now. We brainstormed how this interest could potentially be researched, what kind of qualitative research to do, what to ground it in, what I will still need, and the types of contacts I need to start cultivating to get me an "in" with practitioners and subjects I would want to work with. [A bit of a major issue since this is not something I have direct experience in exactly, nor a field I came from originally. Hell, this whole PhD and MS field is new to me and not what I started my professional life in...course that's part of the whole point!! anyway...it's not like I just have some former colleagues to call up to ask if I can come study 'em...]

I feel pretty excited and pretty good. Now have to figure out how to make it happen-- both from a general, sorta philosophical point, and a nitty-gritty technical kind of thing--like, literally, what steps do I take next! Yikes.

I know this is vague as s**t but I'm still trying not to identify myself or my narrow field, or school, too much out here on the blogosphere. Treading lightly...
So this probably only makes sense in my own little head, and I hope it can remind me of my thought process and emotional state later, since I sure doubt it will much good other than that. But that's ok. I never set out to do this primarily for an audience. [and I seriously doubt I have one, thanks to my sporadic, cryptic posts and lack of links]

Hope I got all the notes down from our fast and furious bull session.
Wish me luck with taking the bull by the horns and running with it!!!
[enough metaphors mixed there, ya think?!!]