Critical Commentary

Well I have to say that on the whole this module has not been to bad if you can get your head around what it entails when I first embarked on this journey I felt very de-motivated at times and thought to myself I cannot do this, I felt I was not properly equipped to handle this module and thought that I was being thrown into the deep end. I remember feeling how much problems am I going to have to tackle and if they occur how will I solve them everything about this module seemed very overwhelming.

After slowly getting to grips with this module I began to feel like everything was going to be ok I guess having these blogs really helped as majority of the class are on here and you can look at some of their points and perhaps understand better bits you were stuck because another student would write a point in an easier way that you tutor perhaps explained in a harder way, especially with distance learning having this sort of support even though it is in a different form has really helped me understand what I am meant to be doing hearing other people's thoughts or people venting their frustrations makes you feel like you are not alone.

With this module I feel like I went back to basics starting from the very beginning I say this because I had to learn how to research from scratch basically only because this type of research needs alot of time and effort put into to achieve your results/findings. I feel better though I really feel like I have learnt how to properly research and probably without knowing I will be using this skill for future project or even in everyday life such searching for a job , researching the pro's/con's of this job what is expected of me?, is it right for me?, you would not think that research has much to do with little things like that but yet I will probably end up applying this skill in the future.

I have to say that although I was not looking forward to this module and I was very hesitant towards it in the sense of what does this have to do with performing arts?, I thoroughly enjoyed it as I was understanding what I had to I felt myself getting more and more into it to the point where my word count was well over the limit and deciding which sentences I could do without ect was hard, but yet when I first started I did not think I would end up writing anything or that I would get my head around what I do to do.

I feel like I have now come out the other side and not am I only looking forward to researching my chosen topic I feel more at ease with what I have to do I feel I am ready and equipped to do so.

Learning Diary 5:

I felt so much more secure now that I had a title to aim my writing at and felt that I could actually get through this module in one piece, so now this is where the hard work begins. I would need to plan out everything that I wanted to write about and to make sure that what I was writing was relevant to my title.

I knew that this was going to be a long journey for me as I had not researched in this way before however I was looking forward to it because I knew it was going to help me in future projects. From here I knew that looking back on my notes was going to benefit me more than ever right now and i do not just mean the few campus sessions that we had-had on this module but from everything that we had learnt from the beginning of the course this included most importantly the writing styles we had to do for one of our previous modules I now understand all the work our tutors had us do beforehand was all to help us with this module and our dissertations, you see our very first module where we had to research about various subjects such as ourselves, or people that inspire us now I see can help me during this module because without knowing I had already picked up some skills about the way I research how much depth I need for a project when researching. The different styles of writing aided us to correctly write depending on how our questions are aimed or what it is I am trying to research. I did not realise at the time why I was doing these types of exercises but as I am doing this module I can see clearly how I am going to incorporate it. Now the tricky bit of finding out which types of research where going to benefit my project as there are a quite a few out there and to narrow it down to a few that I can will help me is going to be hard and I know could change at any given point depending on how my research is going for now though I am very keen to conduct interviews with past dancers that had been injured to even present dancers today, the reason that I feel this is important to my research is because it is based on real life experiences of how these dancers felt at the time the injury occurred I can see and hear very clearly their points and facts as they have been through it themselves. I know that although I do not have any ethical issues arising at the moment as I am not working with any minors or a company I still need to be careful on how I proceed and conduct the interview so I do not break any rules or codes or guides. I think that setting a boundary between yourself and the interviewee is vital as you are stating what is expected from yourself and the interviewee and both parties know where they stand and it can prevent mis- trust within the people involved and make the parities involved more comfortable with what is about to take place gaining their respect and understanding of the nature or my project for instance, My idea is not to go bully anyone into saying the perfect answers but to understand and find out the relevant answers needed for my project. Another research method I would like to use is going to be Qualitative Research this is because I feel that this type of method is suited to my project as it really is about the emotions, attitudes these dancers had when being injured this is important for me as it helps me get into the mind of these dancers and understand how hard it was for them to perhaps pull out of a show due to their injury, how they felt at the time see how the maintained themselves in order to get back to dancing, understand that they must have beliefs for them to get themselves motivated and to change their attitudes from maybe being depressed because of their injury to becoming elated as they reach their goal to dance again. I know that as I go along like I have said before I will probably include more research methods but for now I would like to concentrate on two and do them well enough as they are quite in depth research methods and I think it relates to my project more if my findings are incorrect I will then have to find different approaches and research methods in order to find out my results.

Learning Diary 4:

Ok so now I feel ready to tackle this module hands on and I am actually looking forward to picking up new skills such as researching sounds silly I know but when you have never done it in the way we are asked for this module and so in depth it becomes something new that you have learnt. With this in mind I wanted to just get stuck into it while everything was fresh in my mind so I began working on titles for my project and felt I was going round in circles I mean I was thinking about when I was I working at Pineapple Studio's and when I was working at Super Kids a voluntary scheme to help the children learn new skills through acting, I remember thinking what do I want to write about ?, what is standing out to me whilst observing these children?. Nothing I was going round and round in my head thinking why is nothing standing out for me to write about. As much as I thought that this was going to get easier I realised it was only going to get easier once I had my title because then I would have something to aim my writing at.

One afternoon I was watching the program Pineapple Studios and thought to myself how much do I actually miss dancing I looked down at my knee and felt that because of a small injury I had incurred during my dancing days I had stopped completely but why?, I am still very passionate about dance and I am gutted that I was not able to return but I made a promise that I would one day return to dancing I do not know how yet and when exactly but I knew from that point that i was going back one day, and that is when I decided to write about dancing but not just dance I wanted to research how an injury can effect a professional dancer and how effective are the treatments are out there to get you back to your best. That was it, that was my title and this was what I was going to research for my next module.

Learning Diary 3:

After much thought about how I was going to tackle this module I started to just note down anything that would come to my mind because any little note I made could potentially trigger a topic to write about. Even though I thought this was a good idea I still felt insecure that I was not going to be able to tackle all the things asked of me for this module and this scared me as I do not want to fail.

After speaking to Peter one of my tutors, relating all my concerns and all my fears he sat down with me and went through each point until I understood what I had to do, he sort of broke it down in a way of comparing a science experiment, he said to me that once I have my title I have to include an introduction of what I plan to write about, he said that would be followed by an aim of what I plan to get out of my research and to explain how I would go about achieving this. This can be compared to writing a method in a science project however in science I always did the experiment first and then wrote the method so once Peter had told me that I knew I was going to have to rely on the research methods being taught to us by our tutors. Finally Peter then said to me I will have to write up a conclusion on my findings from the research I had gathered, to me I thought that this could be my final thoughts on how I did and how I go the results I was looking for.

I felt so much more secure knowing that it was actually simpler than I expected and that I was putting a lot of pressure on myself making it harder for myself but when Peter broke it down for me the way he did it made complete sense to me on what I had to do. Now I was actually looking forward to getting stuck into the module and hopefully creating some good work.

Learning Diary 2:

After resting my brain I was still nervous about how I was going to pick a title to write about as I am the type of person who takes a little time to get motivated and inspired once I have that inspiration I am fine I can write, write forever I just need to learn to find it faster for the time space I have been given. Looking back over the notes I had taken from the last campus session I thought to myself which direction am I going to take when it comes to research as there are so many methods and do I need to find a title so soon. After speaking to a few people in the class I could see everybody was stuck and thought how are we all going to get through this but realising that these blogs were going to be a bigger help than I anticipated I felt that I could get through this module.

What I decided to do was have a little brainstorm of simple topics that I could write about such as Dance however there are so many things you could write about when it comes to a topic as broad as that, there are so many avenues to go down and which research method would it suit again I could feel myself panicking again but I told myself to slow down as this is the beginning stages of the process and as I go along everything will be come clearer I hope .

I want to find a topic that someone would be interested to read I mean there is nothing like reading a book that is completely boring or does not get to the point but I felt that is was quite overwhelming to find a topic that would interest everyone I knew this was going to be challenging but I guess I did not know how much of a challenge it would actually be.

Hi

Hey Bloggers,

Been a little while I know had a few set backs which added a lot of stress to me coping with our final modules, however just because I have not been on here in a little while does not mean that I am not working hard researching and making notes i just hope that I am doing it right lol, I have have read a few of you profiles and i can defiantly see how hard everybody is working to achieve their last module because I know how hard this has been for everyone no matter what levels we are at. So I am going to start putting my thoughts on here as much as I can as I know that I can gain much support from all of you here.

Learning Diary:

As soon as I sat in my chair ready for our lecture to begin I was thinking to myself I wonder what sort of work or how much work these last few modules would entail, as soon as I was told it was about researching/planning for our final project my brain started to go into overdrive "RESEARCH????" my brain was thinking oh my god I do not know how to research properly, how did our tutors expect us to do this, after slowly realizing that I was probably not the only panicking I became calm again to listen to what this module would entail. Our tutor had told us to start thinking of a topic that we would like to discuss in a form of writing that we would eventually being researching in depth for our dissertation, At this point I felt overwhelmed as I was interested in to many topics, I thought how will I ever be able to just pick one, I remember looking round the seminar room and seeing the all my fellow classmates looking just as worried as me. I had a feeling this was going to be a very hard end towards my degree, I felt that I was not ready or equipped to research in what was asked of me but yet again I was not alone in this feeling after speaking to a few people I took comfort in the fact that we were all in the same boat so to speak and knew that everyone was going to support one another throughout this whole process.

As soon as Peter one of our tutors explained that the campus sessions were going to help get through this I started to relax as I realised that they were not going to just "Throw us in the deep end" but were going to guide us and teach us how to research properly suddenly it had felt that a weight had been taken off my shoulders. I felt ready to face the challenges that were about to hit me.

Sitting down at home it began to play on my mind as to what would interest me enough to want to right about it, I was nervous because I wanted it be something good that nobody would find boring but something substantial so that I could get/ gather in depth research. So many subjects and topics where hitting my brain I did not know where to start I mean I love Music, I love Dance, I love Drama, I love Fashion even so where do I start how am I going to tackle this, I was starting to feel stressed again but I decided that I was going to have to rest my brain switch off and relax so that I could gear my brain the next day into finding a topic or have a basis of a subject I wanted to right about.