It’s hard trying to determine exactly which direction I want to go into with my qualifying exams. I’m going to be writing an exhaustive paper on a particular area and I want to make sure it’s something I can get a lot of mileage out of. In other words, my prelims are going to feed right into my dissertation and I don’t want to do a lot of editing or, worse, change my dissertation topic from what I’m doing with my prelims. This is probably the biggest challenge. I’ve been reading a lot and I see a lot of places where my research could go. I just don’t want it to be a topic I end up hating.
I know that grad school isn’t the place to try to cure cancer. It’s school: a means to an end. Therefore, I know that I am not committed for the rest of my career to what I’m studying in graduate school. However, I also know that what I study in grad school lays the foundation for the type of research I’ll be doing as a professional psychologist. I also know that though my future may vary, I am still in this thing now and I want to do something I can be interested in, at least for the next couple years.
I’ll just keep reading for now. Maybe the inspiration will come to me in a dream. Maybe it will come in a conversation. Maybe I’ll have to force it. Either way, I need to hurry up and figure it out because I’m not trying to be here forever.
