Research: How Does It Start?

First-year writing · the first week

Research

How does it start?

Present from here

This reading comes at the start of the course, before any research assignment: a personal essay that turns out to be full of research.

Joan Didion (1932–2021)

“In Bed” was first published in 1968, and later collected in The White Album (1979).

Quoted here from The Art of the Personal Essay, edited by Phillip Lopate. Page numbers are from that anthology.

Present from here

Didion is best known for her essays and journalism. “In Bed” is about her migraines, and it’s short enough to read together in class. The class reads it in The Art of the Personal Essay, edited by Phillip Lopate, and every page number in this talk is from that anthology.

“I feel the sudden irrational irritation and the flush of blood into the cerebral arteries which tell me that migraine is on its way, and I take certain drugs to avert its arrival” (Didion 689).

“I used to think that I could rid myself of this error by simply denying it, character over chemistry. ‘Do you have headaches sometimes? frequently? never?’ the application forms would demand. ‘Check one’” (689).

Page numbers from The Art of the Personal Essay, edited by Phillip Lopate

Present from here

These lines come from her own experience: what a migraine feels like as it starts, and the years she spent pretending she didn’t have them.

history

“…suffered by a surprising number of women, a fair number of men (Thomas Jefferson had migraine, and so did Ulysses S. Grant, the day he accepted Lee’s surrender)” (689–690).

medical

“The amount of serotonin in the blood falls sharply at the onset of migraine, and one migraine drug, methysergide, or Sansert, seems to have some effect on serotonin” (690).

Page numbers from The Art of the Personal Essay, edited by Phillip Lopate

Present from here

These come from somewhere else. History tells her who else had migraine; medicine tells her what’s happening in her blood. She had to look these up.

What did Joan Didion likely “research”?

1. Her own medical historyI feel the sudden irrational irritation and the flush of blood into the cerebral arteries (Didion 689)
2. Her own medical documents‘Do you have headaches sometimes? frequently? never?’ the application forms would demand (689)
3. Medical journalsThe amount of serotonin in the blood falls sharply at the onset of migraine (690)
4. HistoryThomas Jefferson had migraine, and so did Ulysses S. Grant (689)

Where did each line come from? Tap one to see.

Page numbers from The Art of the Personal Essay, edited by Phillip Lopate

Present from here

Tap each line on the slide to see the source it most likely came from. That’s one way to sort them, nearest her own life first: the two inner rings she lived, and the two outer ones she had to look up. The essay needs both.

What question(s) did Didion attempt to answer?

Present from here

Students name her question in their own words. The research she did only makes sense once the question is clear.

Thanks for showing up!

Present from here