So I need to know...do your expectations increase as you age in everything? Or just the things you are learning and studying to improve? Because I'm starting to notice that my writer's block increases incrementally when I know more about what I'm writing than when I know less. I know this sounds a bit nutty...but I know too much for this 10-15 page paper. I cannot fit it all in in away that sounds okay to my increasing expectations of myself. It's frustrating. When I first got to Oxford my problem was I wasn't convinced I could actually do it. I honestly questioned my abilities as a grad student and a historian. Now...I KNOW I can do it. But I can't actually do it because I know too much. Dear Lord, what's going to happen after three more years on the same topic? Or a career for that matter? Sheesharoo (a term coined by my bestie Emelia and I in high school or maybe middle?! I dunno.).
I will get this...I just need a break. And some answers. So...what's the story...expectations vs. capability? Somebody draw me a chart.
Love to all,
Elizabeth
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Hi Elizabeth!
I can sort of relate. I know that now (and of course I'm only a lowly MSt student) one of my big delaying factors in writing is the slow horror of knowing I have far too much material, and trying to pre-emptively decide what to cut. Also, there's the problem of forcing a subject to fit together in a linear way to make a flowing essay or chapter. I learn, think and plan best through spider diagrams - it's a really good way for me to start grouping my research into 'areas', but then it's absolutely appalling for me when I can no longer make links up and down and across, but instead have to make my lovely web (which is, let's face it, how information really fits together - things relate across distances, and back and forth, not onwards-ever-onwards) into continuous prose that should only go in one direction.
I don't know what the answer is, but you aren't alone, at all!
Love,
Sophie
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