Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Infinite Regress
Time is running out for my summer...and more importantly for my summer research at the archive. The long and short of it is that my archive is likely to start packing up its materials by August, which means that any thing I want to get out of there had better be done soon because who knows when I'll get the chance to see it again.
So I've been going to the archive from 9 to 6 most days of the week and photographing approximately 1000 pages of material a day, backing it up onto an external hard drive for perusal later. Most of this consists of laboratory notebooks from people involved in the research project that is the center of my dissertation. The problem is that the more I photograph, the more I realize how much more I should be photographing.
Consider the following:
1. In this industrial lab, every page of your notebook was supposed to be witnessed in the event of intellectual property claims.
2. Even people who were not directly involved in a project could serve as witnesses.
3. These people also kept notebooks and may have written down things that were relevant to my research. Possibly. I don't know. Some people liked writing down things like "Had meeting with X where we discussed Y. And oh yeah Z showed me something awesome...and relevant to Ben's dissertation project. Who's Ben? Oh he's a future graduate student who in 40 years will be trying to figure out the complexities of a project well beyond his technical acumen."
4. The only way to know this, however, is to photograph more notebooks. The project just keeps expanding.
It's like this when I interview people too. Every person I interview mentions two more people whose perspectives may be relevant and/or alive. When does it end? Can it ever end? I mean it's finite...eventually I'll reach the limit of everyone who was involved, but how far down do I go? How can I write anything when I can't collect everything?!?
When do I get to stop? I feel like if I don't do everything I can than I'm basically just leaving myself open to criticism from my advisor, my dissertation committee, whatever readers I find among friends and colleagues, and because they're still alive, my historical actors! I have to read everything. I have to take notes on everything. I have to talk to everyone...except the dead, in which case I still may have to contact their families. And I can't waste time because the archive is closing, the people are getting older and dying, and I'm about to move and start a fellowship where they expect me to know what I'm talking about even though I've only scratched the surface of my subject.
Despite my best efforts to pick a contained research project, one limited to a single company and and a single project, everything about my dissertation keeps getting bigger and more overwhelming. When is it OK to draw a line and start writing? How will I know I'm ready?
Oh crap, I didn't even think about the secondary literature. You know, the stuff that other historians have written about related topics to mine? The stuff that my advisor said I should be reading when I get home from the archive each day? I have barely touched the list of over 150 books and articles that I made in the spring! When the hell do I get to read that? How closely do I have to read? I'm supposed to be the new expert. I need to know everything...but I'm not sure I can.
I want to do this right. I want to earn my Ph.D. and become a professor so that I can teach undergraduates about a subject I like. I want to make my family and my colleagues proud. I want to make sure that the important story I'm researching gets told and told well. But this dissertation process is beginning to hurt, and from the look of things I don't think it's going to get any easier anytime soon.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to try to transcribe a 15 minute interview from 1970 that I borrowed from a library in North Dakota that may have valuable information for my work.
No, that's not a joke.
It's my life now.
Get it?
Time is running out for my summer...and more importantly for my summer research at the archive. The long and short of it is that my archive is likely to start packing up its materials by August, which means that any thing I want to get out of there had better be done soon because who knows when I'll get the chance to see it again.
So I've been going to the archive from 9 to 6 most days of the week and photographing approximately 1000 pages of material a day, backing it up onto an external hard drive for perusal later. Most of this consists of laboratory notebooks from people involved in the research project that is the center of my dissertation. The problem is that the more I photograph, the more I realize how much more I should be photographing.
Consider the following:
1. In this industrial lab, every page of your notebook was supposed to be witnessed in the event of intellectual property claims.
2. Even people who were not directly involved in a project could serve as witnesses.
3. These people also kept notebooks and may have written down things that were relevant to my research. Possibly. I don't know. Some people liked writing down things like "Had meeting with X where we discussed Y. And oh yeah Z showed me something awesome...and relevant to Ben's dissertation project. Who's Ben? Oh he's a future graduate student who in 40 years will be trying to figure out the complexities of a project well beyond his technical acumen."
4. The only way to know this, however, is to photograph more notebooks. The project just keeps expanding.
It's like this when I interview people too. Every person I interview mentions two more people whose perspectives may be relevant and/or alive. When does it end? Can it ever end? I mean it's finite...eventually I'll reach the limit of everyone who was involved, but how far down do I go? How can I write anything when I can't collect everything?!?
When do I get to stop? I feel like if I don't do everything I can than I'm basically just leaving myself open to criticism from my advisor, my dissertation committee, whatever readers I find among friends and colleagues, and because they're still alive, my historical actors! I have to read everything. I have to take notes on everything. I have to talk to everyone...except the dead, in which case I still may have to contact their families. And I can't waste time because the archive is closing, the people are getting older and dying, and I'm about to move and start a fellowship where they expect me to know what I'm talking about even though I've only scratched the surface of my subject.
Despite my best efforts to pick a contained research project, one limited to a single company and and a single project, everything about my dissertation keeps getting bigger and more overwhelming. When is it OK to draw a line and start writing? How will I know I'm ready?
Oh crap, I didn't even think about the secondary literature. You know, the stuff that other historians have written about related topics to mine? The stuff that my advisor said I should be reading when I get home from the archive each day? I have barely touched the list of over 150 books and articles that I made in the spring! When the hell do I get to read that? How closely do I have to read? I'm supposed to be the new expert. I need to know everything...but I'm not sure I can.
I want to do this right. I want to earn my Ph.D. and become a professor so that I can teach undergraduates about a subject I like. I want to make my family and my colleagues proud. I want to make sure that the important story I'm researching gets told and told well. But this dissertation process is beginning to hurt, and from the look of things I don't think it's going to get any easier anytime soon.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to try to transcribe a 15 minute interview from 1970 that I borrowed from a library in North Dakota that may have valuable information for my work.
No, that's not a joke.
It's my life now.
Get it?
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