OH MY GOD… I can’t believe the 25-page heavy duty research piece I just had to endure as my first reading assignment for class. Professor Nikolaev warned us, and he was right. This piece was a DOOZY AND a SNOOZY… like that? I’m channeling my inner Sarah Palin. Hee! Took me three nights to read “Approaches to Theorizing International Communication.” I could have spent at least a week digesting each of the 30+ research theories summarized throughout the paper. I mean, this piece was such a who’s who and who-said-what about international communication theory, the authors dropped about three names per paragraph.
Then, I had to overcome my usual gripe about research material that is full of never-ending sentences and that overuses complex words and phrases. You know the ones that go on for about seven lines, that if you had 10 years to dissect and rewrite into simpler format would finally make sense. I spent at least a half hour on one complex sentence before I truly understood, and then I decided to skim-read the rest of the paper, and it still took me three nights to complete.
Oh hail ye concise and fact-driven newspaper journalism that I commit myself to completely. Oh hail ye short-form Internet writing of the present day and future. As for long-winded, over-worded research papers? I hope they go the way of the 8-track. Of course, I’ll be out of school by then!
