For some reason, the hardest part of any piece of writing for me to write is always the beginning. Body paragraphs, methods sections, and analysis are all fine, with minor struggles here and there but overall success; however I could stare at a piece of paper for hours trying to figure out an introduction. As an example, it took my about ten minutes to think of an opening sentence for this blog post, and the one that appears in the post will most likely not be what appears in the final draft (Edit: I’ve changed it twice since I wrote that sentence)
Anyway, I don’t know what about the introduction makes it so hard for me but I’ve always found it difficult to complete. I think it could be because I’m trying to convince you to read my paper and that’s kind of a lot of pressure. I’ve put a lot of thought into what the paper is about and getting the results that I’ve found, but if I can’t persuade you in one or two sentences that what I have to say is relevant or interesting it won’t matter, you won’t read it and all the work I’ve put in will go to waste. You're putting yourself out there, in some respect, and that can be hard to do.
In the past, in order to try and expedite the introduction writing process, I’ve written all the other parts first and then used that to write my introduction. It definitely helps writing the middle section of the introduction where you’re supposed to “zoom in” and describe more in depth the motivation behind our experiment. When it came to the module one report, I made figures and wrote captions first, which was something that I’ve never done before but thoroughly enjoyed learning how to do. I definitely have room to improve but I feel like I’ve gained this skill and will continue to develop it in 20.109. We also wrote part of the methods, which I went to the Communication Lab to work on and got some good tips for the future.
And THEN came the introduction L Cue the scary music. Jaws theme. You know the drill. I went to a Starbucks down the street from my house, got an iced coffee, and told myself that I couldn’t get a refill until I got the job done (which embarrassingly enough is a huge motivator for me). In the past, I’ve written it from the end of the introduction to the beginning, and I tried this tactic again with mild success. It took me a while but I got the job done and submitted a version that I felt comfortable with, but definitely needed work and I looked forward to getting comments on it and improving it for the future.
As it turned out, the parts of my introduction that I had practiced writing more (the middle section) were pretty good, and I got helpful suggestions for the other parts. In the final product for my groups Module 1 Report, we ended up combining all three of ours and using different parts of each, and I’m pretty happy about the contribution that I made and how it turned out in the end. I think in the future, I might go to the Communication Lab to get help with my introduction for Module 2, but other than that if I can just feel less uncomfortable about writing the introduction it will get better. If I don’t hype it up in my head and over-stress about it I think it’ll be less of a struggle to write, and I’m hopeful that for my next report and for the future I’ll be able to complete introductions with ease.
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