Doing research means to bravely battle several challenges at once: not only do you try to come to grasps with your topic, conduct a useful project, and write it all up. You also serve as crucial motivator and hardest critic. You are expected to challenge yourself enough to grow, but not enough to lose your wits. And those are only two of the countless difficult balances to keep. No wonder that especially junior researchers feel exhausting stress, encounter intellectual and emotional cramps, and sometimes seemingly turn into thoroughly drained ghosts at the end of their research journey.
If you are wary of your upcoming final academic project since you have seen how others have struggled, this book is for you. It draws together fifty useful mindsets throughout the thesis process that can help you keep your nerves together, your mind sharp, and your productivity up.
The (junior) research experience needs to improve. This book will help find ways to optimize this experience. It follows the notion to consider junior researchers first as human beings, second as citizens, and third as researchers. Researchers are not algorithms that pick and apply methodology to problems - researchers are people who seek opportunities to help solve societies' problems by growing into the ability to reliably answer questions. If you agree, then this book is for you.
Author(s): Omid Aschari, Benjamin Berghaus
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 381
City: Oxford
cover
titlepage
copyright
dedication
Foreword
Preface
Contents
The authors
Introduction
Our motivation
About this book
The contributors
Approach
Skills and the will to grow
Relevance follows audience
Rigour suggests approach
Deduce the research design
The purposeful scientific entrepreneur
Renewable research energy
Why even bother?
Preparation determines motivation
A peer called supervisor
Countless shades of supervision
Begin
Conduct a project
Follow one trajectory
Try not to build roof-down
Build well-dimensioned bridges
Impression management
Maturing your mind
Comparing with others
A researcher's humility
Theory is there to help
Castle under siege
Conduct
Growing into an expert
Help others understand you
Strange birds
Writing as modern architecture
A magnetic introduction
A contextualizing theory chapter
An instructive methodology chapter
A resolving findings chapter
A progressive discussion
A consolidating conclusion
Complete
Revise frequently
Core motivator, key critic
Frustration is a fuzzy teacher
Relaxation as a research methodology
Fear of writing
Mitigating mental overload
Write like a journey
Be kind to yourself
Necessity of ownership
Throwing off a weight
Continue afterwards
Take in your accomplishment
Feedback eats grades for breakfast
Your degree is a trusted symbol
Do good for yourself and others
Keep in touch
Career serendipity
Never consider yourself unfree
Fortify your academic skills
Grow forward
Share the fire
Index
