I Give Up. Amanda you got me.
These three things I know for certain about outdoor recreation research:
1. After this course, my main take away that I am certain about is how vital research is within the field of outdoor recreation. Without constant research taking place in this field, the outdoor industry would never grow or expand to be even better or reach out to more people.
2. However, one thing I did realise is that collecting good accurate research is a lengthy process and requires a lot of patience.
3. How important qualitative and quantitative data is. I learnt about these key terms in school but never realised how central they were to everything research, or that a full textbook could focus on these two words.
Three things I am still confused by:
1. How you know when research is accurate – no matter how big sample is it will never be able to generalise to everyone as the human population is so vast and complex.
2. How far you can take one research question and how many angles you can take it.
3. Why theses seem unnecessarily long and often confusing. To me it seems like only people that understand the lingo gain knowledge from the thesises. Why don’t they tailor it more so everyone can understand what is being talked about? Also not everyone may have to patience to read through 20 pages of very small words.
Three things I know for certain about me as an outdoor recreation researcher:
1. I prefer talking to people and gaining qualitative data over quantitative as you learn so much more about a person that way and humans are super intersting to listen to rather than looking at numbers.
2. However i understand privileged I am to have access to education here and have the opportunities if I want them to conduct research that is of interest to me.
3. That if i can’t write a simple blog like this one there is no way that i would be able to be anywhere near a good enough researcher.
Three areas I need to spend time developing/learning in order to feel more confident in my skills:
1. Asking and wording the right questions in the best way (i.e to not appear leading)
2. Spend more time researching areas by reading articles and books, watching films and having discussions with people to learn everything I can about areas in the field that are of interest to me and gain lots of different perspectives. Most importantly develop my comprehension and analytical skills so I am ready if I do decide in the future that I want to become a researcher.
3. Finally, work on believing in myself and having confidence in my abilities as a researcher to take action. This i do not have currently.
I’m just submitting what I have, I know this final blog sucks but I already know I’m going to fail and I can’t do it anymore. I keep reading blogs that others have submitted and comparing myself to those that have 18 references or are really funny and cleverly written and I can’t compete. I know I can do better than this however as of right now I’m burntout, my brain is blank, and the hours and hours of looking at these blogs this past week and staying up till 3 am every night trying to write them has already caused me enough stress. I don’t know why I can’t do it but I feel very stupid, incredibly frustrated with myself and not worthy of being at university so I’m sorry.

















