One thing that I always find difficult is to somehow write something worth saying on a topic I don’t have a lot to write about. One way that can be avoided is by knowing something about what I’m writing about. I have a problem with that sometimes. If I don’t already know something going into a paper, or don’t find the readings interesting I can’t seem to bring myself to do the kind of research necessary to actually have something to say on a topic. I’m sure that there are ways around this besides just sucking it up, but I have to find some sort of motivation to either find those tactics or find the interesting pieces to read, and the problem really comes down to motivation anyway, right?

This is a problem that I would love to be able to avoid with my students, but don’t see any simple way to do so. Maybe by keeping this sort of thing in mind over the next semester in which I will undoubtedly have several papers to write I will be able to find some sort of strategy to share with students.