Ever tried to write your way to a research question?
In some ways, that’s what I am trying to do here. I’ve always known that’s what I would try to do with a blog – continue to write down my musings on different articles and topics, until enough questions had been asked to get to the right questions. Sometimes, maybe I’d pose solutions. Other days, maybe I would back track on those solutions, but that would be ok (in my opinion) because research is forever ongoing.
When I embarked on the journey that was my Bachelor’s thesis, I was really excited. I had some ideas about questions I wanted to ask, but I would quickly find out that they weren’t quite specific enough, and the topics I was curious about didn’t have a ton of literature to draw on. Within a month, we had to have our research question – that wasn’t enough time. I settled on something to do with gun-related violence and specified it to Ireland and Germany. I was excited and intrigued, sure, but it didn’t stir my curiosity quite enough. Especially once I realized that it’s not a hot topic in those two countries like it is in the US, therefore the literature available was slim pickings.
Continuing on to my Master’s degree was, in some ways, a decision to give myself a second shot at a thesis (the actuality of the degree meant a lot more than that, in the end). I had an idea of what I wanted my Master’s thesis to focus on before saying “yes” to the opportunity, and I made sure I would have the flexibility to tackle education policy courses as a part of that degree. I used the semester prior to the thesis seminar course (when we would undergo the same process as for the Bachelor’s thesis) to explore higher education policy in Europe and the United States. This helped me get familiar with the literature. It worked out pretty well.
In thinking about the issues at hand so far in advance of when I intend to actually develop the research, I am really digging around to figure out what my resources are in addition to what my questions might be. People are a key resource. Landing a job in Career Services is teaching me as much as I need to teach and advise my students.
Writing my way to the research question this time around won’t be the sole reason I get to that final set of questions. I’m also going to listen, listen, ask more questions and listen, and hopefully I’ll talk it out, too. I can’t wait to delve into some of these conversations with people to try to figure out the best routes of going about this project, and to better understand the complex ideas I’m diving into.