Research is many things at once.
Research is valuable. It lights the way in the darkness, alerting us to our ignorance. Research, at its best, lets us understand the world in greater depth, and sometimes even lets us find levers we can use to change the world.
Research is a challenge. To make a contribution, a researcher not only has to design, implement, and analyze a project. They have to convince others that they have successfully made an argument in light of everything that earlier researchers have made known—and in the face of justifiable criticism that questions whether a claim is truly well founded or just a hot take. (There’s other criticism that isn’t so justifiable…but those are abuses we should seek to weed out.)
Research is hard. Pulling it off requires using a variety of different skills, which can include writing, design, statistics, synthesis, organization, time management, and presentation. Unlike most class assignments, which might test one or two skills at a time, research calls on the researcher to do all of them at least minimally competently.
Research is open-ended. A multiple-choice exam, or even an essay exam, usually exists within the boundaries of a single course. Those assignments test the retention or application of particular skills. Even more open-ended assignments are fundamentally bounded—by the theme of the course, by the length of the semester, by the ability of an instructor to manage feedback for however many students are enrolled. A thesis project, by contrast, relaxes those constraints. It is, in a word, real. An undergraduate thesis project might seem like another hoop, but it isn’t, really. It can become the basis for a career or a contribution to important discussions. And that isn’t hyperbole: our students have used them to do exactly that. We can’t say that about most course assignments, or even most courses.
All of these shiny attributes help explain why colleges and higher education are suddenly all-in on the idea of undergraduate research. An authentically integrated learning experience that might turbocharge students’ employability while contributing to universities’ research mission? And doing all of that while also letting the university none-too-subtly brag about how even its students are doing better work than Greendale students? Yes, please.
However, a funny thing happens the farther we get from the experience of everyday research and look only at the shiny, fun parts—the kind university media relations folks write press releases about. From that perspective, research turns into just a highlight reel of cancer-preventing, war-solving, diversity-enhancing greatest hits—bullet points in the university president’s annual address, posters around campus during alumni weekend.
But, of course, that’s not what doing research feels like.
Research is hard work. If you set your expectations for what doing research will be like by only looking at the highlights, you’re going to be utterly dejected by the fact that every research project involves a lot of hard, sometimes deeply boring work. The phrase “knowledge workers” is a little funny—research isn’t hard work in the same way that, say, landscaping or even data entry is—but rest assured it is labor, and there will be times that you will find updating a spreadsheet, washing a bottle, or double-checking an interview transcript to be the opposite of fun.
In our experience, research involves a hype cycle. It starts with a cool idea, followed by the intellectual rush of developing theory, the fun of putting together a research design, the toil of gathering data, the disappointment when the theory fails, and then the new, cool revised idea that might make sense of everything. And that’s what it’s like for us now.1 When we were starting out, there were additional steps, including confusion over what method we would use in our projects, despair over trying to master the method, and frustration with trying to get several different pieces of specialized software to work to produce what our advisers wanted from us.
For undergraduates who are starting out, there’s going to be a lot of frustration because everything will be new. At times, it feels like every check-in meeting we have with our advisees is a list of new things that they have to learn before they can proceed. That can get discouraging. After all, you get into the research biz because you want to cure cancer (or fix wars, or make society better, or whatever). And now you have to learn how to properly format datasets—or even just learn how to use hyphens and dashes correctly? (Yes, there is a difference between hyphens and dashes, and even between types of dashes, and yes you do have to learn this if you’ll be writing professionally.)
Our advice on this is to forget the highlight reel (except when you need to motivate yourself to keep going).
Here’s our mantra: Research is a craft.
What do we mean by that? Research is a set of related tools and practices that combine to help organize, produce, and broadcast knowledge. Research is, well, work. It’s not magic and it’s not a panacea. It’s certainly not just the highlights reel! Doing research well means a continuous process of learning how to do better at particular parts of the job, and then bringing those improvements back into bigger-picture planning and execution.
As a student researcher, you’re going to face some of the biggest frustrations and most of the biggest gains in your first year or two of work. You’ll learn to start breaking apart the messiness of reality and capture some essence or detail of the world in a way that lets you communicate it to others. You’ll learn how to use the tools of your trade—R, Python, Stata, Excel, Markdown, LaTeX, whatever—and you’ll learn how to learn just enough to keep going in a project. You’ll learn that research is many things but research is never perfect, and you’ll learn how to bring good-enough ideas to your adviser and, eventually, your peers. You’ll learn how to get better, and you’ll learn how to bounce back, and you’ll learn how to listen and revise. And if you’re lucky and hard-working, you’ll learn something that others will want to know, too.
The takeaway: Embrace the craft of research. Figure out what skills you need to improve on and what knowledge you need to acquire to execute your task. Don’t worry about what others are doing, but trust the process.
The practical: People talk a lot about “time management” as a part of research, but there’s also self-management. Don’t hide or ignore your feelings and fears, but don’t let them overtake you. We promise you that everyone gets frustrated and annoyed with the difficulties of research. Don’t assume that you’re doing it worse because you have those difficulties. Find ways to address those issues rather than letting them derail you.
Well, almost. These days, our batting average is a little higher but there’s also a lot more worry and anticipation regarding how the relevant public of our peers will see our work. But we’re not trying to scare you here.