On Writing Research Papers and Feeling Lost

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My dissertation is written.  Finally — it definitely took long enough.  I’ve sent it to a few people to read and give me feedback.

One problem is that the dissertation is in Spanish, so my pool of potential readers is rather limited.  Mainly, it’s my family, which generally are a terrible group from whom to get objective feedback.

Another problem is that my master’s is through a university in Spain… so I can’t really pop in to my professor’s office hours to get her opinion, now can I?

Another problem is I hate research papers.  And, not counting the ones I wrote in middle school, I’ve done a grand total of three research papers in my entire life.  No, I didn’t pay someone to write them for me in college; only one class required them.  And we just wrote three.

Okay, maybe I wrote one in high school.  Which would bring my grand total up to FOUR.

You might think to yourself, “Duh, Señora, you work at a high school.  Can’t you ask any of your Spanish-teaching colleagues to read the paper for you?  Can’t you go ask any one of the bazillion English teachers on your campus to help you with the research paper aspect of it?”

Ah, there’s the rub.

Asking my colleagues is laughably out of the question.  The idea of “helping” is not a concept with which they are familiar.  Not only are they not available AT ALL after school (one coaches, the other rushes off to his second job the milisecond our contract time is up), it has been made clear to me that any extra time spent at school or with colleagues is time spent in this manner under duress, and they would not be open to this idea in the least.

I wish I were exaggerating, but I am not.

Given how kind and inviting my colleagues are, the people in my very department, why would I possibly think people at the other end of the building would want to help me out?

Yes, I know it’s likely I could get an English teacher to help me.  But I don’t even want to ask, because I feel I would be asking too much.

This attitude, being made to feel that asking a favor is a huge intrusion, is one of the reasons I am done with teaching.

Sadly, to be done with it, I need to get my bloody master’s degree so I can get a decent job outside of education.

To be honest, I don’t think the university cares that much about these dissertations.  I read some of the samples they had of past works, and I know mine is better than most of that stuff.  I don’t know about the content, but definitely the language.  So maybe it doesn’t matter than I don’t have the perfect research paper format/framework/etc… but still.  I don’t want to sent it in, and have them send it back.

Then again, they might send it back because the statute of limitations on my coursework has run out, it’s been so bloody long since I took the bloody classes…

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