I'm finally facing my biggest fear, and it's not of heights

I have a confession to make.

When I was in high school, I considered myself a great poet, though it wasn’t great poetry. It was mostly a lot of rhyming crap that made people laugh, or not. I wrote poems for my basketball team and hung them up on all of our lockers, and I penned versus for my friends that documented our lives at the time. A few of my poems were even published in the school newspaper!

If I felt something, I wrote a poem to express myself, half of which I wouldn’t dare show my mom.

I thought I was a good writer because I could put my feelings into a rhyme scheme. That was the extent of my writing experience back then.

No, that is not my confession.

One day in English class we were assigned to write a research paper. I was excited about the assignment, at first. Then we were instructed to include headers and footers. WHAT? I had no clue what headers, footers and resources were, and I didn’t care to find out.

Rather than learning the APA style process, I simply didn’t write the paper and took the F.  I failed English class.

Still not my confession.

In May of 1979, when I was a high school senior, I took the U.S. Army’s job aptitude test. It’s still beyond me why the Army determined that I was best suited to be a journalist. Maybe because I scored miserably in the other sections of the test (electronics, mechanics, etc.) So, after basic training, I attended the Defense Information School (DINFOS) to learn the craft of writing news, feature and sports stories.

The writing of a journalist is different than that of a researcher. Journalists interview people in person or on the phone and simply quote them. No footnotes or scholastic resources needed. I thrived as a journalist, and earned several Journalist of the Year awards throughout my 21-year military career.

This is my confession: I have a fear of writing research papers!

Needless to say, I’ve waited until the last possible moment to write my Master’s project research proposal paper, which was due July 15. Nope, it’s not done yet, but I am relieved to report that I am almost done!  

I am finally facing my fear by writing my very first research paper! The first draft of the project proposal is nearly finished, complete with headers and resources. It’s actually not as hard as I imagined. In fact, I admit it’s a valuable learning experience that I am kind of glad I was forced to do.

So how did I do it? You’ll have to wait for my next posting to find out.