I continue to be surprised, and pleased, at how practical both Luker and Knight are when it comes to addressing the "how" of doing research - not only in terms of communicating the steps of formulating a research question and doing a literature review, but in terms of understanding the emotions that go along with trying to do research (especially for the first time). It may be that I am just a really big research wimp, but I find Luker's frequent "it's going to be okay, I know this sounds overwhelming but you can do it" types of comments (followed by actual, usable advice) so helpful. I can't think of any other instance where class readings have given me permission to feel a certain way about doing academic work. 

This week, I was especially fond of Luker's "Harvarding" technique. I regularly fall into the trap of feeling like I need to thoroughly read every single thing in every single article I am assigned - this ends in me being overwhelmed and, often, avoiding doing readings altogether because the idea of trying to read everything as thoroughly as seems necessary is just too much. I could so relate to Luker's statement that, "Often enough, confronted with such a huge pile [of books], I just took a nap" (94). Story of my life. 

So the idea of Harvarding is pretty exciting. Giving myself only twenty minutes trying to get useful information from a book will, I hope, greatly change my current nap-to-reading ratio. The ideas of making a book "earn more of [my] precious time," and of thinking, "If I'm not getting it, it's [the author's] fault," are pretty new to me, but are a big relief. It has never occurred to me that I could think that way (because the authors are the experts and the professionals, and I am not), but it's true that in my experience, academic writing is often not written in a way that seems mindful of its audience of readers. The idea that what I think, what I am interested in, and how I understand certain scholarly materials is actually significant - and not just as a sign of some deficiency in my brain that makes me incapable of understanding the points of articles - is a freeing one.