Month: March 2021

Research Paradigms 1: Positivism, Post-Positivsm, Critical Theory & Constructivism

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Guba, E. G., & Lincoln, Y. S. (1994). Competing paradigms in qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 105-117). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Today I am going to write a brief recap on paradigms and critical realism. The basis for this is an article written by Guba and Lincoln, however, there are several versions of it and I am not sure if THIS is the right source. The version that I read looks primarily at 4 different paradigms; positivist, post-positivist, critical theory and constructivist. I know, though, that there are I think newer versions of this article, which for example also talk about axiology and a participatory paradigm.

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My Journey as a PhD- Visual Snow Syndrome

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Today I am going to talk about something personal again. Last year I’ve been diagnosed with Visual Snow Syndrome (VSS) and I wanted to share my experiences.

First of all, what is VSS?

“Visual snow (VS) is a recently identified neurologic condition consisting of a constant positive visual disturbance described as uncountable tiny dots over the entire visual field. In addition to the static, patients very often report visual symptoms such as palinopsia, entoptic phenomena, photophobia, and nyctalopia”. (Puledda et al., 2020)

How I found out:

In retrospect I cannot pinpoint when exactly I GOT the symptoms of VSS, I might have had them all my life but I all of a sudden noticed them. I think I started to notice the symptoms after a quite stressful period when it became really difficult to read a certain book. Difficult is an understatement, it became impossible. The book used a particularly small, narrow font and basically no line spacing. What I saw was kind of a nervous picture, the lines and letter were kind of wobbling around and there was some sense of erratic movement that I could not pinpoint. In addition to this, things felt as if they were “burnt” into my retina. We all know this when we look at the sun too long and then look at something else, but I had it with everything that was slightly darker and in front of a mono-coloured surface. Moreover, these afterimages did not last 2-3 seconds but 30ish. I also noticed that looking at screens became difficult as if there was always something “in the way” and I tried to blink and squint but it did not help. Also, it was present 24/7, I COULD NEVER REST EVEN WHEN I CLOSED MY EYES!!

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