Conducting a research is a challenging experience. As I am involved in the research project, I have discovered several peculiarities about the process and myself as a researcher. There are some lessons I have learned during the last few weeks and I would like to share my new knowledge with future students taking this course and everyone involved in pursuing researches.
First of all, as I started working on the project, I had nothing but motivation because I was driven by the strong interest in the right to the Second Amendment and its practical implications as well as societal and scholarly views on the topic. Basically, I had no clearly stated and developed objectives of the research or research question. In fact, I just started reading every bit of information I could find without understanding the purpose of the study.
If I had an opportunity to go back in time, I would advise myself to start with a plan of the research process. That said, I would have crafted a research question and research objectives breaking the whole process in smaller tasks and setting a deadline for completing each of them. It is what I have done once I realized that my initial plan was ineffective, and this strategy turned out to be productive and helpful. However, I cannot return the wasted time even though I have read loads of valuable information on the Second Amendment.
Moreover, I have realized that it is always better to set complex tasks and strive for reaching complicated objectives. It is another fruitful strategy helping in achieving better outcomes and gaining more knowledge. In addition to it, I have noticed that the complexity of the task determines the drive and motivation. That said, the harder it was to achieve the stated objective, the more driven and motivated I was to complete the step and proceed with the next ones. Furthermore, I have discovered that planning the fulfillment of more complex goals at the beginning of the process turned out effective in my case leading to less stress and higher speed of work during the subsequent stages of the research.
There are some things I have learned about myself as a researcher. First of all, I have found that I should be driven with the topic and complex tasks to work fruitfully and become completely involved in the project because it is helpful for avoiding procrastination. Moreover, I realized that I might be a little disorganized in the initial stages of the project, especially when the subject of the research is of significant interest to me, because I want to get familiar with numerous details and get acquainted with vast volumes of information on the topic under investigation even if it will not be included in the final report.
Finally, I have some recommendations for students, who will take this course in the future. Always have a detailed plan of actions and study the topic you are interested in to guarantee the flawlessness of the research projects and avoid concentration on unnecessary information. Most importantly, even if you are involved in the project related to numerous societal controversies, give preference to surveys and scholarly papers as primary sources of information and always consider a variety of arguments and views on the topic in order to avoid bias and make your paper look comprehensive.