Making connections-Dr Who to making bread
It is interesting how your brain makes connections.
Starting the synthesis from my first round of research conversations, I am drawn to the word synthesis. Where I did I hear it this week, but in a different context? It is Dr Who’s 60th anniversary and it was a radio programme about the creation of the original theme music. The theme has not changed hugely over the years, the classic “woooweewooo” bit was first generated by turning a dial on an oscillator (a piece of lab equipment).
From this, I then made a leap back to using an oscillator as part of sound wave experiments back in the school where I taught. As the school science lab was then more in the forefront of my head, it was easy for my brain to make the leap from my friends loaf of bread in an upturned glass casserole dish, heath-robins-style Dutch oven, to a bell jar experiment.
Where am I going with all of this? I suppose what I want to say is that my brain has been making subliminal connections to my experiences and some things I am focusing on at this current time are influencing other areas of thought.
This week I have been questioning whether a heightened awareness of certain things is influencing how I progress with my research or, whether that indeed is just my brain synthesising what it has heard over the course of my research conversations and automatically coming up with common themes and opinions.
The scientific part of my brain would love this research to be objective and involve numerical outcomes, and yes, I have tried to include some percentages and figures in this project, but when it comes down to it, a huge part of this is subjective research. Even where people are addressing similar questions the answers, although similar, are significantly different that they cannot have a numerical analysis placed on them. This also makes it hard to synthesis as there are so many different thoughts and opinions.
Yes, I want to be unbiased in my research and my synthesis, and my awareness of my brain making links is at least, hopefully, acting as a monitor on making sure I am not influencing the outcomes. Having a research assistant alongside me is also helping, although she too recognises that she also will have biases in what she thinks are important points to draw from all of the research conversations.
Sometimes, you just have to get on with the next step whilst keeping the knowledge of the potential biases in the back of your head. Oh, and occasionally, you have to hide behind the sofa with a slice of freshly baked bread.
