This was SO good, Ashley! and very useful - I can remember the essays and articles or books that made a huge impact on me when I was in grad school and later as a prof - academic/research writings are a distinct genre to be sure but the problem of how to say what you want to say in the way you want to say it is still the same -- it was the ‘way’ they were written, the style/approach that mattered most (rather than the contents per se of - I was not looking for findings relevant to my topic but rather just as you say, HOW these writers organised, presented their work - and the things you selected as important in the essays you cite are EXACTLY the same things I was inspired by!
A story: when I gave my advisors what I wanted to be the first chapter of my dissertation, their response was ‘this is good... but you are not writing a novel, Jack - let’s make this first part like a normal thesis intro, ok?’ A novel... That’s when I knew I had succeeded!
This was SO good, Ashley! and very useful - I can remember the essays and articles or books that made a huge impact on me when I was in grad school and later as a prof - academic/research writings are a distinct genre to be sure but the problem of how to say what you want to say in the way you want to say it is still the same -- it was the ‘way’ they were written, the style/approach that mattered most (rather than the contents per se of - I was not looking for findings relevant to my topic but rather just as you say, HOW these writers organised, presented their work - and the things you selected as important in the essays you cite are EXACTLY the same things I was inspired by!
A story: when I gave my advisors what I wanted to be the first chapter of my dissertation, their response was ‘this is good... but you are not writing a novel, Jack - let’s make this first part like a normal thesis intro, ok?’ A novel... That’s when I knew I had succeeded!