“Overthinking”

I have been terrified of overthinking things while in school. It’s part of why I would put off working on a paper until almost the last minute. Part of it was I never felt ready to write about the topic and would do research until I had to start working on the paper. I know that as an undergraduate, there was not the expectation of a deep dive in 6 pages. I know that. But when I got to grad school, they expected a deep dive in 25 pages.

The problem is, my brain doesn’t work that way. I can’t learn new information over the course of a semester in three different areas simultaneously and provide three different 25-page long deep dives at the end of the semester.

One of our required classes is about publication. Over the course of the semester we were to take an existing paper and revise it into a journal article and submit it to an appropriate journal. Unfortunately for me, the professor suggested I do something completely new–aka, write a journal article in the 12-weeks allotted. It didn’t work. But, it did lead to a paper that got published in a journal in another class. I thought I had finally found a formula I could follow to write a successful article.

The problem is, that paper was related to my dissertation. So it was a topic that I had been working on and researching already. I was simply lucky that I was able to find a way that it fit with that other class–especially since that class was “Global Development and Social Change” over in the School of Media and Communication.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I am working on an article that argues for the expansion of the concept of the diva, especially in popular music, to be gender neutral. I have been struggling to figure out the structure of this article to make my point but be publishable. I recently realized that while I have been overthinking that aspect to the point of losing some sight of the forest because of the trees, that’s part of my process. I have to think and think and overthink a topic or an argument and keep researching until I get to the point where the forest snaps back into focus, at a different angle, but an angle that makes a whole lot more sense.

I have been letting that formula I found be set in stone rather than the flexible guide it is meant to be. I’ve been letting it get in the way instead of helping me stay focused. I think the articles I’m working on, as well as my dissertation, are going to benefit from this greatly. Now I just need to take more time to write and a little less time to read. Balance is important!