{"id":401,"date":"2019-11-01T11:59:21","date_gmt":"2019-11-01T09:59:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/saripiittinen.wordpress.com\/?p=401"},"modified":"2019-11-01T11:59:21","modified_gmt":"2019-11-01T09:59:21","slug":"interest-overflow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sari.piittinen.name\/?p=401","title":{"rendered":"Interest overflow"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Being a postdoc researcher so far has been quite different from being a PhD student in the sense that my research interests have been much less limited by a specific topic. This has resulted in a bit of a controlled chaos. During this fall, I have written research plans, proposals, or articles for five distinctively different topics\/projects. I&#8217;ve read and learned more about, for example:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Bakhtin&#8217;s concept of the carnivalesque<\/li>\n<li>Speedrunning video games and streamed speedrun events<\/li>\n<li>Gameplay videos and streaming (as work, especially)<\/li>\n<li>Player comments and reviews online<\/li>\n<li>Trolling<\/li>\n<li>Anti-language<\/li>\n<li>Gaming literacy<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And I&#8217;m still planning on familiarizing myself with readings on masculinity in gaming culture, although I have no idea if I will be able to prepare a chapter proposal in time on this topic that was suggested to me by a colleague. (I was also working on different topics in the spring and summer, but of those most relevant now is the collection and categorization of player comments that I&#8217;m now using in an article.)<\/p>\n<p>It seems I&#8217;m like a kid in a candy store, sampling all the different flavours of research available to me (although, in my work, still connected to games and gaming culture) &#8211; but it would be great to be able to focus on one topic properly again. Right now, it feels like I&#8217;m chasing chances to produce publications or gain funding\/employment, which means I&#8217;ll see a specific call and do the work to produce something that fits that call, even if it means starting from almost scratch. Of course, I always have some background knowledge to start with &#8211; like methodological knowledge (discourse analysis, qualitative content analysis, ethnographic work, grounded theory &#8211; I may not have done all of these specifically, but I&#8217;ve <em>prepared<\/em> to do them), and so much knowledge and experience of the gaming culture that, for example, identifying connections between typically non-gaming concepts and gaming comes to me quite naturally. That is, I can see how gaming connects to culture and society more generally, is influenced by it and influences it.<\/p>\n<p>Right now, I&#8217;m employed until the end of 2019. Gaining funding or employment would also mean gaining a specific topic area to work on, most likely one that I&#8217;ve proposed and am super motivated to work on. It would be great to have that kind of direction and not feel like I have to try to please everyone, even if I&#8217;m impressed with how many different things I&#8217;ve been able to juggle during this fall. (I have some teaching duties, too!) I&#8217;m feeling more confident about my abilities, but now I need others to recognize those abilities, too. I honestly think I could do great work (and my dissertation work is proof of that), I just need a chance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Being a postdoc researcher so far has been quite different from being a PhD student in the sense that my research interests have been much less limited by a specific topic. This has resulted in a bit of a controlled chaos. During this fall, I have written research plans, proposals, or articles for five distinctively [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sari.piittinen.name\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sari.piittinen.name\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sari.piittinen.name\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sari.piittinen.name\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sari.piittinen.name\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sari.piittinen.name\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sari.piittinen.name\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sari.piittinen.name\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sari.piittinen.name\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}