…or do you simply need to act on the information you already have?
Often, research is a symptom of fear. After a certain point, gathering more data is just procrastination.
It’s worth asking this question when you’re feeling anxious to start something new.
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It amazes me how much I used to enjoy certain things until I went to college. School ruined a lot of it for me.
Let me explain:
I have always had a passion for music and history. I loved them both so much I couldn’t decide between the two when I went to college, so I double-majored. I did all of my research on different historical periods and figures in music.
Interestingly enough I hated every second of it.
When I graduated, I quit researching history, and I quit researching music. I think in the back of my mind, the thought was if that’s what I was gonna have to do for a living, I wanted nothing to do with it.
I graduated five years ago and have been struggling to find my fit in a career ever since. I have had a lot of time to think, and I believe I’ve figured out the problem.
I didn’t hate the work: I hated having my hands tied.
“You can’t write about or research anything you want – you are required to tie it back to this particular point and make an argument about how it conforms to this idea.”
“It doesn’t matter that your subject has very little source material – you have to make it 30 pages (rather than making it as long as it needs to be and no longer).”
How many of you went into college to study something you had a deep passion for, only to come out the other end hating what you once loved?
I don’t think you suddenly realized you hated the subject: I think you hated being boxed into unrealistic parameters and expectations.
Nowadays, if you want to do research on a topic outside of school, you can, and you can make it as long or as short as it needs to be. Also, it can be about whatever you want it to be.
Do you want to turn it into a podcast instead of writing? GO FOR IT! Do you want to interview people and draw conclusions from their ideas? Do that.
As long as you aren’t making stuff up and deliberately lying to the rest of the world, you can do whatever it is you want to do in whatever subject you choose.
You will never have your hands tied, parameters set, or asinine expectations to meet like you had in school. You don’t hate your subject, and you don’t hate the work you thought you wanted to do. You hated being boxed in, required to do things that bored you to death or robbed you of the joy of what you once loved.
Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. If there was something you used to love doing, something about which you were insanely curious, I encourage you to pick it up again.
I don’t think you lost your love for it – I think you just got the wrong idea of what you were expected to do in the real world in your field of study.
We each have at our fingertips an unlimited amount of information that continues to grow at an unparalleled pace. This means that with each passing day, it gets harder and harder to check the validity of what we are seeing and reading.
This is especially true in today’s immensely divided political landscape, with more and more messages, rhetoric, memes, and articles being published with the sole purpose of further dividing the nation. Someone creates something or bends the truth to suit their worldview, and then it is published to the world. Then another person shares it, and another; then perhaps another person adds something or tweaks it even further, and soon you have a post that is highly biased and quite possibly untrue.
Be careful what it is that you post on your social media accounts; before you do, do just a bit of research to try and find the truth of what you are sharing.
If it becomes too hard to figure out whether or not what you are posting is true, that might be a hint that you shouldn’t post it…
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