Reflection #1: 4/12/16

Today I met with my advisor to discuss the methodology portion of my project. I’ll be working on a rhetorical analysis of a number of blogs to locate key terms, patterns, and characteristics that they all maybe share or do not share. I’m looking for markers of grief and mourning discourse within the blogs, in hopes to illustrate how the internet and writing is changing the playing field of grief coping mechanisms for many people.

It was one of the first moments when I could feel this labor of love piecing itself together. Jason would have scolded me by now and shit on my timeline by now, but he’s partly why the timeline was sabotaged so maybe I’m just being a little self loathing in that assessment. It was a great feeling knowing I will only be visiting Prof. Krause’s office maybe one last time. As much as I love campus life, I have had about enough of it.

He spent the better part of an hour with me today, which I’m really grateful for. He squeezes me into his schedule, and I appreciate that time, immensely. We browsed for blogs, looked at a few specific ones I’ve located, and ironed out what types of keys linguistic markers to look for. I was having a tough time determining precisely what a “marker” is and it’s function, so he asked me to think of genres. For example, when I think of country music songs, what types of characteristics would I look for in songs like this? This really helped me get my thoughts into perspective, and we began listing genre characteristics for my methodology.

Then he said I would need to create a spreadsheet to title the blogs, designate the markers, and tally my findings for each blog. At first I felt uncomfortable, because spreadsheets are the bane of my existence. I’d prefer to create a presentation in front of hundreds of people, instead of such a tedious task, but perhaps it’s a necessary evil here. I suppose there’s ways to make the spreadsheet my own, and not so dry and uninteresting. I’m really looking forward to this aspect, because it gives me a gateway into other grieving minds, and everyone knows misery loves company. I learn more from other people in my field than what I contribute, I can promise you that. Well, the next thing on this project list is to tighten up that literature review, attach my methodology, and the works cited….then it’s off to life in the spreadsheet.