The Paradigm Path can be as muddy as catching frogs!

The way in which I have opted to conduct research and look at the ways to ask the questions and reach the goals, have been a little murky lately. With the discussion of all the different paradigms and ways to look at research, truth, reality and the resulting experiments, seem to muddy at times.

There are many choices, many directions and many points of view, now I just need to figure out what I am comfortable with and what is going to work best for my goals?

I didn’t start off planning to go into science, but science and the natural world were always around me, always calling to me and constantly distracting me. I was an artist, painting murals for clients and loving creating art. I couldn’t stop being outdoors, catching frogs and snakes as a little kid, and always looking for something wanting to cross the road once I had a license. Once I had kids, they started chasing the animals with me, and my youngest son was bringing me frogs he caught while crawling as a toddler. That kid that would catch everything in his path, is currently working on a degree in forestry and focusing a lot of time on zoology classes. We take trips to the Everglades, Snake Road and other fun places to see & catch frogs, snakes, lizards and turtles, when permitted.

Sometimes chasing the little frogs, is just life’s way of teaching you to chase the little things. Slowly hopping your way into what you are really meant to be doing. Sure, I waited until my kids were college age to go back to school myself, so I may have been chasing life at a tortoise pace and not a frog, but I eventually figured it out. Sometimes having the questions laid out in front of you all nice and clean, organized and routine is comfortable way to go. In the natural sciences, using the Positivist Paradigm is the safe route, the straight path, organized and cookie cutter. We know which way this frog is hopping every time and we can feel safe in this design. There are other times when asking questions, lead to more questions and more frustrations, that lead you down an unexpected path, kind of like working with the Pragmatic Paradigm. There is a lot to be said about jumping around in the design set ups, multiple questions, multiple ways to set up controls and most importantly using both quantitative and qualitative data in analysis.

I truly feel like a turtle sunning on skinny log, not sure exactly what way will be the best way to fall today, but it sure is nice to have multiple options to format the experiments hopping forward. I feel I may end up a snake slithering back and forth between paradigms, not quite falling into one category, and not following the norms. Then again, that’s basically been my life story, do everything out of order, raise the kids weird, have way to much fun thinking way outside the box and constantly ask questions that lead to so many more questions. Being a mom to a crazy kid that runs into the mud in his brand new shoes to catch a pile of water snakes, that is the pure joy behind the reason I am a scientist!