Tweeting, Coffee, and Cookies

Why should my Tweet-mates have all the fun?

I tweeted:

mmmmcoffee and cookies. this late at night? yes. I foresee late night... [it's 2100h]

I'm not one to idolize research peers, but right now I <3 Mark D. Regnerus. Prolific researcher/author on religious socialization and teens.

I think I'd overlooked Regnerus for so long because of the quantitative approach of his work. I wrongly assumed he was like the rest...

... if I'd not skimmed past his work long ago I could have saved myself a lot of work.* As usual, I took the long road...

...the long road gets me to the same place as the short road, only I figure it out myself and then find the other research saying the same..

...my work is thus conveniently validated by other research publications. And I no longer feel the burden of proof. I can point to the other

<- look, see, I'm not making this stuff up. This respected researcher found the same and they are not a lowly PhD candidate like me... :P

Still, there are days I wish I'd happened upon research X months earlier before I figured it out myself. Months of unnecessary work...

...unless you consider the journey necessary. Good thing I value the journey! Or I might be bitter...and write extended Twitter posts...
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*That is not entirely true. I don't think I would have properly appreciated his work when I first encountered it. I wasn't ready. I would have seen different things in it than I do now, after this journey.
I'm finding a lot of "new" things in sources I read at the beginning of this journey... they were always there of course, but I didn't catch them, or they seemed irrelevant, or... well, you know how it is. There was so much other good stuff to learn from them. Such are some of the limitations of not having others to talk with about my research and readings. I enjoy self-guided research and learning, but there are times I long for conversation with others involved in the same research. You know, another me. Imagine me and me talking... wait, I do that often.