Conducting researches is an inseparable part of life both academic and every day because the primary objective of any research is to gather necessary information, process it, and find responses to questions under investigation. Even though the topic of each study is differing, the process is always the same or nearly the same, as it includes several important constituents such as seeking sources, reviewing them, making decisions, and drawing conclusions.
As I started working on a new research, I recollected my earlier experiences. One of the most fascinating and challenging researches I have been involved in was the investigation of the Arab Spring in Syria. It was the part of one of my classes. Initially, the primary reasons for conducting the research were the requirement of my professor and the desire to obtain high grade to complete the course successfully. However, as I started reviewing the literature, I grew more interested in the problem. That said, personal interest has become the most significant reason for writing the paper.
I used various kinds of sources for conducting the research. I thought that the combination of primary and secondary sources would be the perfect option for reaching the necessary level of credibility and relevance of my paper. That is why I gathered information from encyclopedias, books, newspaper and scholarly articles, and articles from the Internet. Moreover, I watched videos and news reports covering the developments of the revolt and read interviews with the President of Syria and other influential leaders of the global community.
The motivation for the combination of sources was the desire to conduct an in-depth study and take into consideration the perspective of each side involved in the conflict as well as estimate the outcomes for the ordinary people living in Syria and neighboring countries. As it turned out, working with a great number of sources is compelling and, to some extent, troublesome. However, the result was worthy of efforts because the research was credible and accurate and everyone loved it. In addition to it, the presented study was comprehensive and detailed proving that personal interest and drive are the keys to excellent papers.
The decisions were made in two ways. The most significant ones, e.g. those regarding the search for information, were made after conducting some additional research. The motivation for this decision was the desire to create a unique material but have enough background information to make the report credible. Other decisions such as the flow of the paper and naming subtitles or mentioning specific details were made intuitively. This combination worked out well because the research turned out to be easy to read and understand but informative.
Conducting this research helped make several personal discoveries. First of all, I realized that conducting a research requires having a well-thought plan of actions comprising of identifying the needed sources and writing a detailed outline and getting down to writing the paper then. Moreover, I found out that the combination of various sources is always a good idea because it represents both personal and scholarly perspectives on the problem.
The same can be said about reading articles written by people living in different corners of the world because it provides local points of views affected by the authors’ ethnic background. What I learned about myself was that I could be persistent enough if I were interested in the topic under investigation. This research helped recognize that if I have an opportunity to choose the topic myself, I should select only the subject of interest to drive me.