Backroom Research

Luker’s book is thankfully easy to digest, and many of the points she makes are quite useful. “Here’s a quick tip to see if you have a real research question or are still in the realm of the research interest. When you tell someone else about your work, does the conversation include something being explained and perhaps something explaining it? (The first part is critical; the second part is gravy at this point.) Even more fundamentally, when you say out loud what you are interest in, is there a question mark audible at the end?” (Luker, p.53) This tip immediately stood out to me as true and useful to keep in mind. In my previous MA degree I was required to come up with an original research topic and complete a major research paper as the thesis component of my degree. Coming up with an original (and DOABLE!) topic was quite the journey, but I found the most useful thing to do was TALK about my research interests with people. Looking back, I now realize I probably bored a lot of acquaintances as that annoyingly earnest young grad student I once was… but it really was the best tool for organizing my thoughts. There I would be, yammering on about some obscure Sanskrit text and I would actually often find myself stopping mid-conversation and writing down what I had just said. Finally my thoughts were making so much more sense and coming together in a (semi) coherent manner after being said aloud and explained to my unsuspecting “conversation” partner. In this same way I can see this blog being helpful for all of us. We may not be earnest and enthusiastically willing to bore everyone we meet with our dreams of becoming the next Marshall McLuhan. Yet we can use this blog as a platform to “discuss” our research interests “out loud.” The medium of the internet message is also beneficial to our audience since we can ignore each other if deemed too boring ;) So here’s to a semester of mutual musings. Jackie Barber