Indecisiveness, Curiosity, and Research

Indecisive People

Doing research for a paper is great for indecisive people like me. Research papers are my favorite genre of writing because the sources you find help you decide on the topic you want to write about. You start off exploring a relatively broad subject and after sifting through subtopics, the more niche inquiry becomes clear. This is the opposite of a personal essay where you have to dissect foggy memories and debate on what life moments are worth writing about. 

Curious People

Research is also great for curious people which in my case goes hand-in-hand with my indecisiveness. Because I am curious about many things, from the taste of a new ice cream flavor to the behind-the-scenes of a television show, I sometimes have difficulty making a choice or delegating the time I spend. Curiosity is great when I am researching because I rarely get bored and I’m usually committed to finding answers. However, being overly immersed in research can be a problem, as highlighted in The Art of Creative Research by Phillip Gerrard, which states, “The great trap of research is that it can seduce you into spending months and years in pursuit of facts and evidence and dampen the urgency to write. Researching is great fun, and it offers lots of moments of instant gratification. Writing is hard and seems to take a long time to produce even a grudging sense of satisfaction, let alone publication, fame, and glory,” (7). Although I have not had a research project assignment where I had more than a couple of months to complete it, I can relate to this statement. I like to research a lot more than write. For our class's upcoming research assignment, I need to make sure that I balance the research parts with my writing. 

Planning for Research

Finding Curiosity

In The Curious Researcher: A Guide to Writing Research Papers by Bruce Ballenger, the author highlights the importance of well…being curious. It states, “What kept me going was my own curiosity. If your research assignment is going to be successful, you need to get curious, too,” (Ballenger 22). One thing that will be important for my research is selecting a topic that I am curious about that, of course, connects to the ZMA project. 

Sources

Another goal/strategy I want to pursue is to find lots of primary sources. A primary source “provides direct or firsthand evidence about an event, object, person, or work of art,” (Ithaca College Library). I want to find many primary sources because, in past research projects, I typically looked for secondary sources. Primary sources are also somewhat more interesting to look at, in my opinion, because they provide a direct connection to the source that is less common to come across. 

Organize

An additional goal I have is to organize my research. Doing this will help me comb the sources I want to use for my paper and also cite my sources at the end. I could use one of the software mentioned in Table 1.1 of The Curious Researcher: A Guide to Writing Research Papers like Zotero or Mendeley, or I could create my own system (Ballenger 37).  

Works Cited

Ballenger, Bruce. The Curious Researcher: A Guide to Writing Research Papers. Eighth ed., Pearson, 2015. 

Gerard, Philip. “The Art of Creative Research.” Association of Writers and Writing Programs, 2006, https://williamwolff.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/gerard-research-2006.pdf. 

Ithaca College Library. “Primary and Secondary Sources.” Ithaca College Library, https://library.ithaca.edu/r101/primary.php.