Jared L. Bleak, Sociology
The experience I had in researching and writing on the effects of employment on women’s life satisfaction and marital quality was a wonderful capstone to my education at Brigham Young University. The Research and Creative Work award I received made this experience possible. With the award I was able to decrease the number of hours I worked at my job and increase the time spent on my project. This extra time was essential in completing the research and writing the project required.
Research is hard work. I found myself spending much more time in the library than I had originally planned. The work was tedious at times, but made bearable by the flashes of insight into my subject that would come from reading and thinking about other’s work. It was also difficult to synthesize information from the numerous research articles I read into one coherent whole that applied to my project. Eventually, I was able to complete the research and to glean from it the information my project required.
From my research, I learned that scholarly work is difficult. I realized that each project a professor engages in is very demanding and time consuming. Luckily my faculty advisor, Dr. Bruce Chadwick, is an experienced researcher and was able to guide me through this process.
The task of writing and performing the statistical procedures was daunting. Testing the hypotheses went rather well with the help of Dr. Chadwick. We did not encounter any major problems. In order to complete the writing, I set aside a week when my classes did not require much of me and devoted all my time to writing the flfSt draft of the report. Writing is often a painful process for me and I experienced my share of writer’s anxiety while completing the draft. I did complete that first draft and over the course of a month and nine drafts later the project was completed to my satisfaction. Each of these drafts was critiqued by Dr. Chadwick. His help and advice was invaluable. I presented my findings on two different occasions and felt pleased with my research. It was a nice experience to contribute original research on a difficult issue.
The opportunity to do significant scholarly work does not often come to an undergraduate. Time and money constraints work against the completion of similar projects. The award I received helped me to overcome both of these constraints and to have a significant experience. I thank those responsible for this award for the education I gained through completing this project. This experience has helped me in making my career plans and made my Brigham Young University educational experience very fulfilling.