Take a Risk: Reach Out

I just want to share a little advice with my colleagues. During the process of investigating my research topic, I have made personal contact with several authors and found them to be quite accessible and willing to help. I began by emailing certain authors of journal articles that I found interesting and wanted a little more information.

Since that was quite successful, I branched out and emailed the leading researcher in LGBTQ issues who happens to be a professor at OSU. She was so wonderful and wanted to talk by phone. We had a lovely half hour conversation and she gave me great advice. I was even so bold as to ask her if she'd consider being on my dissertation committee down the road and she said she'd love to. Imagine that.

I was flying quite high after that, so I took another step and actually emailed the leading researcher in the area of writing as healing. All the other researchers in this field cite his work. He emailed me back within hours and gave me some great advice, too. He even asked me to keep him informed!

It really is a wonderful boost when these people take time out of their day to talk with you and even bother to give you some advice or a new direction. It makes all the hours sitting on your numb butt in front of the computer worthwhile :-)