| Tuesday, September 20, 2005 |
| RELIEF |
I'm more or less done with my final draft of the Comm. essay. Phew. I'm quite pleased with it, I think it may even be better than my last!
Personally, I find Communcations more challenging than Psychology, because it's so abstract. There's no textbook, just a lot of articles from different authors with different, often conflicting opinions. There's hardly any right or wrong way to look at it. And you're supposed to cast a critical eye upon all this measured chaos! But it is very satisfying to realise that you understand what the author is trying to say, and the 'trackless desert' (I quote James Carey whose argument I've just completed an entire essay on) is now laced with tangible pathways.
I quite like Carey's style of writing. Honestly I think most of the writers I've read so far are quite boring and long-winded and like to use bombastic words to make things difficult for us. So I really appreciate an interesting piece. Carey's the first author I've read to use so many imaginative examples of his own to illustrate his point.
However, to be critical (heheh), I did read from a book I borrowed that Carey comes from a school of thought that is rather disdainful of scientific research and objective methods. They do do research in communications, you know. As much as I agree with Carey's arguments they do lack a certain statistical 'oomph'.
I enjoy Psychology a lot more. Actually at times when I find myself mired in lots of articles and concepts I don't understand, I wonder, oh why did I choose to take up Communications!? But now that the essay is done I am not thinking that anymore. Anyway, to get back to my point, Psych is a lot more manageable, because it's a science. Hence you are not allowed to extrapolate and fly off with your imagination; you must support anything you say with concrete examples and statistics. And at the end of the day, I am reminded that everything is really just theory. You cannot say that something confirms something else; you can only say it supports that finding/theory.
Ok I must run now or I'll be late for dinner! |
posted by esther @ 4:11 PM  |
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