Hope Floats

I think we're supposed to comment on past experience with Descriptive Research? I have to say I've avoided it like the plague. However, long ago and far away....during my undergrad psychology program, I was forced to take multiple statistics and SPSS classes, and psych labs where we created our own surveys and Likert scales and wrote up research proposals that would never be carried out. That was NOT the part of psychology that attracted me to the field. I also took another Master's level research class -- a good refresher, but it didn't last long. And now here I am.
Statistics make me cringe. It's not the math that has me gritting my teeth -- I can do math if I have to. It's the thought of all those living, breathing people getting transformed into faceless, inert numbers. I fear that the inability of statistics to display or interpret human expression will take the emotion and the experience right out of the ideas. Or maybe it's that I'm afraid that I'll forget who those people are. That I will forget how to display or interpret emotion.
I'm happy to say, David, Johnny and Joel went a long way towards calming my fears. They demonstrated how the numbers were just feedback and evidence, and that the relationships were still present and kept in mind. Just what I needed to hear. Particularly in David's connection to the teachers, students, and parents at his schools -- validated by their statistical approval of his work -- I found hope for myself. It is possible to employ some descriptive research methodologies, to reach those who hear nothing else, while still maintaining my emotional attatchment to the subjects and theirs to me. I can balance intuition and objectivity! The question is, do I want to?