Days of writing papers (3) l I want to write about valuable research topics

Doing research, no single step is easy. Just finding a research topic in the first place can take a lot of time.

Before entering the institute, I began to think about the research direction. In the first year of the master's degree, the research topic has a rough prototype (as mentioned in the previous article, from the experience of making friends on the Internet to the actual meeting). But when I was a sophomore, I started to expand my curiosity about certain topics because I started to accumulate some reading and internship experience. As a result, I started to wiggle again, wanting to try other different research themes.

 I want to do a very valuable research topic!

In the process of thinking about research topics, there are often several very real feelings: first, I really want to do a very cool topic, the kind that no one has thought about at all; second, I want to be the kind of topic that everyone A topic that will resonate very much is a paper that many people want to read just by seeing the topic; thirdly, if you want to do a research that makes a great contribution, it is a topic that will attract many people’s citation and attention in the future. . In particular, I don't plan to study for a doctoral program at the moment, and I probably don't have the energy to do research after graduating from a master's degree, so I want to write a valuable article when it may be my last contact with research.

From some perspectives, this is indeed a manifestation of satisfying vanity, because I expect my paper to capture everyone's heart and attract everyone's attention. But this can also be interpreted as a kind of ambition, which I do not deny. But what I learned later is that it doesn’t have to be a research topic that’s “cool, resonant, and looks super-contributing” to be a worthwhile paper. Moreover, the composition of the paper is not only the "title", the literature discussion, research methods, and results are all important parts to demonstrate the value of a research.

Moreover, we also need to think very pragmatically. Is there a way to complete those seemingly “valuable” topics with the current resources such as time, effort, and funds? Otherwise, if you think of a research topic that is beyond your ability, you may not be able to handle it yourself, and you will not be able to graduate on time in the end.

 What counts as a valuable research topic?

So what makes a worthwhile research topic? I'm still learning how to do it. But after this research experience, I think a thinking attitude that I can hold is: research is to expand new perspectives from everyday trivial and natural things. As long as you are curious, life is full of valuable research topics.

I research topics related to school counseling systems, and originally I wanted to interview school counselors about what they think about certain counseling systems. But then I found that someone had done a similar topic, and it was also from the teacher's point of view. But there are some challenges in developing new perspectives on a topic as old-fashioned as school counseling. After that, I thought, why not interview the students? Because students are the "experiencers" under the system, especially the existence of school counseling, mainly to help students, but no one has studied their views and feelings. Therefore, when a research object is changed, a new point of view comes out, and there is also a need for research.

Of course, there has also been such an idea that if you don’t think about an awesome research topic now, will you lose your motivation halfway through it? It is true that the topic of school counseling is not what I wanted to do most at the beginning, nor is it a research topic that I think is super cool. I did feel very unmotivated to continue writing when I was less than halfway through writing. Because it will feel that this kind of old-fashioned topic, it seems that no one will read it. Moreover, I originally wanted to take a critical route, but after discussing it with the advisor, I found that the original direction might make my thesis difficult to produce. But apart from the critical point of view, I can no longer feel the interesting part of my thesis.

But even if I can't find any fun, it seems that I can only move forward, and there is no turning back. The last state of mind is to leave everything to the interviewee. The content of their interviews determines what I can analyze, and then let the paper take me wherever I go. But then I wrote and wrote, and found that there seemed to be a little bit of interesting things to be unearthed. A scholar's patience is really an important process in writing. Because the value of the paper may really have to wait until later, it will be slowly discovered.

Of course, the matter of "value" is not the one who has the final say. Perhaps other people's ideas are also the key. Many students will tell me that my thesis topic is very meaningful. But what really gave me a sense of some value in my paper was when I heard from the interviewees that they wanted to have a voice through it. I dare not say that I will definitely be able to "help" them to speak out, but at least I feel that a master's thesis can be a channel for some people to express themselves and for some people to express their voices. This was something I hadn't thought about before I entered research.

This also subverts my thinking about "valuable papers", because "value" is not just my opinion, nor is it only a cool topic, which is the only criterion for achieving the "value" of a paper. Moreover, the value of a paper is sometimes only slowly realized after in-depth exploration.