The importance of staying focused

I found the Luker readings this week resonant with my struggle of forming a research question in undergraduate years. Usually I had many research interests that I wanted to learn about and no clue where to start. In an ideal state, I wanted to keep an idea/interest fresh and expected the research process to be intuitive and explorative. However, the way I was taught how to do research, or at least the impression I got about research was somewhat canonical. And once I started to form a research question, I could only see my interest reduced to simple independent and dependent variables, which depletes the richness and complexity of the original idea and, of course is far from what I wanted to conduct. At that time, I turned to journal articles looking for directions and learning more about this topic and related issues. This method, as Luker referred to as the “dirty socks”, made me even more disoriented. I was left with a bunch of new interesting topics and a wider range of related issues I wanted to look into, but no deeper understandings of any of them. I was very confused and started to question whether my initial idea was valid. I also got caught up in the question of how thorough my literature review was, got carried away by different articles, and end up being swamped in a large quantity of material I wanted to read but never had time to. I spent most of the time struggling to get a hold of the topic. In the end I came up with a research question at the last minute that I was not completely satisfied. It was a frustrating experience and I’m glad that I survived. I learned that it is very dangerous to not have a sense of direction. 

Luker suggested that a research question always emerge at the end, yet I also agree with Knight that having your question formed early on. I think he means to have a question in your mind, let it lead the research and put the ideas in the frame of the question. And meanwhile allow it to transform and evolve, eventually it will mature and bloom as Luker suggested.

An important strategy I learned from Luker is “Harverding”. I feel obligated to read every word in an article, or a book cover to cover, otherwise I could miss something really important, even though I know it is impossible and the worry is totally irrational. And because English is not my mother tongue, I always think it is me if I have difficulty understanding something. So it is reassuring to have someone like Luker to say it out loud that it is all right read judicially. I have the same feeling as Claire towards digital materials that an article is seen as an individual entity rather than a part of a journal. I always think it is because the layout of digital files is so different from physical books. Maybe I should start to see journal articles in a more systematic way. It will help me to have a fresh look of how articles are related in terms of themes and topics.