It's about the questions, not the details of the answers...

Writing to inquire is both intriguing as well as daunting.  I enjoyed being able to write about my own experiences and thoughts in a unique context.  I liked writing about ideas and questions that I wonder about but never explicitly express.

However, I continue to be a bit overwhelmed with this task of writing to inquire.  I am struggling to integrate so many ideas and sources into a coherent and meaningful whole.  It helped that my interview with Dr. Sonnega brought up some ideas that I have been thinking about as well.  However, I am finding it very difficult to try and capture these complex and vague concepts and translate them into language.

Writing to inquire is definitely a new challenge as I have never attempted, or even considered this type of writing.  This is likely part of the challenge because I have nothing to compare to or refer back to.  I'm not sure if I will have to use this type of writing in my other courses or career just due to the abstract nature of the writing.  Scientific courses and careers are usually very objective and writing is meant to bring about discussion through results but not necessarily thoughts.  However, the scientific process is a process of inquiry, it is just approached in a different way.  Maybe writing to inquire would be beneficial to use in scientific contexts as a way to stimulate ideas and discussion.  Maybe writing to inquire has the potential to bridge the gap between the scientific realm and the community.

Ok hold on with me for a minute as I go out on a limb.  This may be a stretch as I try to link everything back to this theme of a more open communication from the scientific community, but I think it is worth thinking about.   What if normal citizens wrote inquiries and shared them with the scientific community.  Not superficial questions that could be answered with a Wikipedia search, but complex or insightful questions that they think should have an answer.  Some of these inquiries would make it to the scientists in the appropriate field and they could write responses if they had an answer and if they didn't, it would give them bit of perspective into a relevant issue.  This discourse could be published somewhere and available to scientists and citizens alike.

There are obviously flaws and problems with this proposal but it would be an interesting experiment.  Sometimes all it takes is an outside perspective to change the momentum of thinking about a problem.  However, this would only work if people wrote thoughtful inquiries that were not politically motivated but instead curiously or practically motivated.

Ok that is enough stretching.  I admit that this would probably be not well received but it is an interesting concept.  But the beautiful thing about inquiry is it is about the questions, and not necessarily the details of the answers.

Kaitlyn