This past year, my third year at Virginia Tech, proved to be my first year full-time in the history department. It was challenging to juggle my assistantship positions, several courses, my on-campus job, and at times exhausting job search but I have had an overwhelmingly fulfilling year. Though often plagued with stress and anxiety, I nevertheless grew as a historian, writer, and an educator. Crafting my research project proved much more difficult than I had ever anticipated but I believe that departure from my comfort zone benefited me greatly overall. Indeed, I believe I will be better able to educate my own students beginning next year, teaching them proper writing, researching and analytical skills so desperately needed. I am anxious to begin my first teaching job (wherever that may be!) but I am sad my time in Blacksburg is quickly coming to a close. With graduation rapidly approaching, I can’t quite fathom how the past three years flew by and how graduate school has changed me as a student, teacher, and individual. I am particularly grateful for my time in the history department, the interesting courses I had the opportunity to take and the excellent professors I had the privilege of working with. Thank you to everyone that helped me along the way. Virginia Tech will always hold a special place in my heart.

I thought I would dedicate this week’s post to my experiences writing my non-thesis research paper and taking the research methods course simultaneously. I will admit that at first it seemed I would not benefit from the class and I was a bit wary of having to write my paper while taking the course. It also seemed it would be a challenge when I realized that my colleagues would be working on their thesis proposals while I worked on my research project. And it was a challenge! There were times when I felt I could not really help my colleagues because I knew little of the process they were experiencing. I was surprised, however, by how much I learned in the process of giving them advice and feedback, it was much more fulfilling than I expected.

Overall, I learned a great deal in the research methods class and I believe my project benefited as a result. If I had to do it over, however, I would prefer to take the research seminar before beginning my project. At times I felt I was working backwards and I believe the blog posts overall would have been much more helpful to me last semester or last year, for example. Regardless, I have enjoyed this class and my time spent creating my research project immensely.

I thought I would dedicate a post to my overall writing and researching reflections including my thoughts on how I may use my experiences to teach my future students in my own classroom. Overall, as I have mentioned in other posts, the researching and writing process had its ups and downs for me. I have discovered that I am not a huge fan of researching, confirming my decision to not pursue history beyond my current program. This is not to suggest that I don’t love history. I do, and I am passionate about history, including the constant influx of new information and new discoveries. I suppose it is the process of researching itself that can seem arduous and tedious to me.

Indeed, I completely understand the value of researching and I hope to one day (soon) teach my own students researching skills that will allow them to undertake historic work greater than that which is typically presented in public schools. For example, most students are rarely given the opportunity to even undertake any research whatsoever. I hope to give my students such an opportunity if at all possible (if resources are available, for example). For historic researching skills can also translate to other subjects and becoming a better historical writer only improves one’s writing abilities overall. Lastly, I believe analytical skills are often overlooked in public schooling, much to the detriment of students. Analytic skills need to be introduced early and often as again, such skills translate to other disciplines as well, quite effortlessly.

Overall, I am truly grateful for the skills I have obtained these past two years in the history department. Though difficult at times, I am thrilled I was able to persevere and ultimately produce a final project that I am quite proud of.

The final version of my research paper is due on Wednesday and I am almost finished! I am currently proofreading and making minor edits, winding the process down. For this last set of edits, I had to re-work my introduction again, much to my chagrin at first. I realized, however, after making said edits that they were entirely necessary. In fact, my introduction now fits well with the rest of my paper, much more so than it did when I first wrote it. I also finally fully developed my argument and also discovered a methodology that suits my paper perfectly.

The editing process was difficult at times. If my post from last week was any indicator, I had some low points and doubts about myself as a historian and writer. And yet, despite those growing pains, I am quite proud of the (almost) finished product and I feel that I have improved tremendously, not only in my writing but also my skills as a historian. I can now write without using passive voice and this is HUGE for me. I never paid attention to passive voice versus active voice prior to beginning this project and now I see passive voice everywhere (including this post, ironically enough). Avoiding passive voice definitely makes for a much more enjoyable read.

Lastly, I have to admit that I came into this project thinking it would be a breeze. I have written tons of papers in the past and it typically is not much of a struggle for me. This project, however, pushed me out of my comfort zone and proved to be one of the most difficult challenges I have faced in graduate school. As I mentioned above, however, I truly think this process has allowed me to grow tremendously and I am grateful it pushed me the way that it did.

While attending the Living with Animals Conference at Eastern Kentucky University last month, I was able to attend a variety of talks, many of which were relevant to my research (thankfully!) I thought I would write about one here and give my opinion concerning its effectiveness (as a presentation and the information provided). This talk, by a visiting professor (from Poland, a behavioral psychologist, I believe) at EKU named Michal Piotr Pregowski, was entitled, “Dog Training as Taming, Dogs as Wild Beasts: Whispering versus Canine Science.” Dr. Pregowski quickly engaged his audience by not only being a lively speaker but also by combining pop culture and science: that is, he spoke of Cesar Milan and his dog whispering techniques alongside the science of such techniques.

Indeed, Dr. Pregowski first explored the history of dog training beginning with Prussian police commissioner, Konrad Most. His information concerning Most proved highly relevant to my research project (as mentioned in another post) and I quickly jotted down the name in hopes of adding his work to my paper. Ultimately, Most played a major role in the training of World War I military working dogs and I may not have otherwise stumbled across his name had I not attended this particular talk.

What proved most interesting about Dr. Pregowski’s talk was his analysis of Cesar Milan’s ideas and techniques along with a similar British dog trainer named Jan Fennell. Ultimately, Dr. Pregowski pointed to the fact that both Milan and Fennell were never trained in psychology and both present outdated, inaccurate or debatable concepts as facts within their books. They also both contradict themselves quite regularly. Nevertheless, Dr. Pregowski noted that this lack of accuracy or formal training does not seem to diminish their popularity. And it seems the wider public will continue to take cues from these “authority” figures when it comes to training our dogs, whether scientists agree with them or not.

As I did not have a thesis proposal draft to submit and reflect upon, I thought I would rather reflect upon the draft process for my research project now due in less than two weeks (!!). The analogy perhaps most appropriate to describe this past semester of researching and writing is that of a roller coaster: highs and lows and everything in between.

I first submitted my draft at the beginning of March, a little over a month ago. This draft was a culmination of a few months of researching and a great deal of hard work. Nevertheless, my draft was not quite up to par. Indeed, I soon discovered that I was not on the right track: too much passive voice (peppered throughout this post, ironically), too little analysis, and a bit too much historiography. Thus, in the middle of March, I began to reformulate my paper yet again, virtually starting from scratch. Fortunately, my research proved to be in place; it was my writing that needed serious work.

So began the next phase of my draft process: creating rough draft #2. This draft had far fewer issues but still needed some tweaking nevertheless. Now, down to the wire for my project’s due date, I am still in the process of creating new drafts and editing what I have already written. At this point, it feels as if my work will never be done, however, and I am eagerly awaiting the day when I will be. Until then, I am sad to admit that my previous excitement concerning dogs in World War I no longer really exists. I hope that my classmates who are writing theses do not have similar reactions to their own topic of choice, for the thesis proposal is only just the beginning!