Determining what my specific interests actually are?

[Kevin1990]

I'm currently a junior majoring in History/International Studies who wants to go to grad school to study war & warfare. I'm having a hard time finding out what my specific interests are, which I hear is critical for grad school? Which unlike undergrad which tends to be very broad stresses specialization.

My specific interests that I've nailed down so far revolve around the history of warfare from the late 19th Century to today, the "origins of warfare", the big philosophers and thinkers on warfare(ex. Sun Tzu/Clausewitz), methodologies/analysis techniques for understanding modern warfare(to an extent), counterinsurgency, and military organizations/operations.

Now I'm having a very hard time trying to find out what my interests within these realms are. I hear regional specialization is often important and I've always had an interest in the Middle East(although one that is not exclusive). So I've decided to take Farsi for this upcoming semester since it seems like a hot language to take at this time. I have prior background of French up to an intermediate level. While people(including members of this forum) have suggested that I should take German for a variety of reasons.

However, I'm sorely lack in quantitative skills and I need to catch up badly in this area.

So my overall dilemma and one that I feel I need to solve badly at this point is define clearly what my specific interests are? If I could hear back from people on how they dealed with this issue in their academic lives and what I should do? I'd be eager to hear your advice.

Thanks again,

[surefire]

I feel compelled to reply, because I remember the feeling of trying to hyper-specialize my interests, and the task of articulating these interests to others always felt like a test that I was failing.

I'm not in History. My academic backround is Sociology, so my experience will differ from yours; but I will take your solicitation of experience from our "academic lives" as an invite to share. Hopefully some of this will help you out.

It is true that articulating your specific research interests is important in grad school. But there are some rationales/explanations behind this that I think are worth stressing.

When you do an MA/PhD, you're likely to do some form of a thesis/dissertation - a thorough, sustained conversation with the material coupled with some of your contributive insights. To produce and finish a good piece, you need to have specialized interests because you need to tackle a topic that hasn't been under academic purview/scrutiny OR you need to tackle an old topic in a new way (new theory/framwork/approach)- otherwise, why are you bothering? Consider as well, you will be taking coursework/comprehensives (depending on your program) that lend themselves to your interest area. So, you will be living with the research area/topic you pick for YEARS, you need to be focused enough to know most of the angles of your interests before you begin, so you can decide if this is an area that you would be happy to be immersed in for long periods of time, through setbacks, rewrites and frustration. As well as convincing yourself that you can have a long-term relationship with your interests, you must convince (1) the school that will admit you (2) funding bodies (where applicable) and (3) your presumptive supervisor/graduate advisor/thesis committee that you have a feasible plan to study in an academic area that you are qualified in, on a topic that is worthy of scrutiny; to inspire this confidence, you need to be specific, in order to anticipate the contributions of your research as well as the set-backs that might befall it.

That being said, you can change your mind.

In fact, you are likely to change your mind.

Profs and program heads know this. Part of the purpose of the specified planning is to show that you have the capacity to venture contributive research topics and back them up with feasible plans. You can switch/tweak areas/topics of interest, but forethought and early attempts to articulate your specialty will help to ensure that if/when you feel compelled to shift, you can leave your topic planet without abandoning your discipline/area orbit.

Are there some people that undertake/complete the research that they propose in their grad school applications? Yes, in fact, my MA topic remained quite intact (though my theoretical approach shifted wildly and I totally revamped my writing style for an interdisciplinary crowd). However, I don't think that this is the norm (unless you've got funding that obligates you to undertake the research that you proposed in your funding app, but that's a whole different kettle of fish).

Here's how it went for me. I began my undergad CONVINCED that I wanted to eventually be a prof in English Lit. I loved my coursework and started talking to profs early about my ambitions. I remember the day I decided to switch majors was the day that I asked my favourite prof what his dissertation topic was, and he said: the use of the semi-colon in Moby Dick. The use. of the semi-colon. in Moby Dick. That's an oversimplification, but the point is that it made me realize what the reality of English Lit grad studies was, and I didn't want that.

Advice #1: Speak to profs about their grad school experience. What is the academic climate like? Are there trends in topic areas with regards to writing/funding certain areas? Let them ask you about your interests and try to articulate these to them. The questions they ask will help to clarify what angles you haven't thought through yet and these conversations are always good for obtaining literature/faculty referrals to help you figure out where to go next.

I switched to Sociology and took a wide variety of courses. Of these, I enjoyed Sociology of Health, Sociology of Law and Advanced Policy. I also took advanced methods/theory/stats in anticipation of applying to grad school. It was a slow process, but I began to knit together a picture of what I wanted (or didn't want!) to do in grad school based on what I liked from these courses. As well, when it came time to articulate a topic, I had a great practical backround to draw on to distinguish what research I could feasibly carry out (for example, I found a definite preference for qualitative over quanitative methods, so that was something to keep in mind that would affect the effectiveness of my research).

Advice #2: Take many and varied and challenging courses. Don't just keep taking stuff that you already know. Take things with the word "advanced" in the course title. Avoid bird courses. Take inventory of what topics/writers really ignite your interest, and then look into the backround of these (who wrote the foundational book? is there a common analytical framework that is utilized to approach the area? is it one that you could picture yourself using?) Take inventory of the topics/writers that you just can't stand, there is something to be learned in those spaces as well as you articulate the type of researcher that you want to become.

For my MA topic, I looked at blood donation policy in Canada and the exclusion of men who have sex with men. The topic was a great marriage of health, law and policy interests, knitted together and exemplified by a very specific set of circumstances. I was inspired when I heard about the experiences of friends of mine who were excluded from the process, and then was convinced to write about it when I found myself discussing it with other people and learned that few people knew about it.

Advice #3: While keeping some of your areas of interest in mind, consider how specific events could be seen as microcosmic exemplifications of broader forces. Again, this thinking is kind of a product of Sociology, but trying to see the strange in the familiar, the general in the particular, serves to help me pick topics. You will be frustrated if you commit to an approach (or a method or a theory) and then try to force these on a topic. You will be better served (and will produce better research), if you look at an event that interests you and try to figure out why it interests you (does the event serve as an example of some of your areas of interest in action? how did/do these work together to produce the event and/or form current interpretation(s) of it?)

I think that you've made a really great start here! Give yourself some credit! And you've started early! Always good!

My biggest piece of advice is to keep talking to people, all kinds of people, about your research interests. This will help you to articulate potential areas of specialization and will assist you in visualizing what kind of academic you want to be. The day it clicked for me was the day that I realized, that I can just take my interets/passions and impose them on topics, people and essays. It's better to see a gap in academic scrutiny, a topic that needs attention, and then ask yourself WHY you saw that gap (what is it about the event/circumstances that stirs your interests and allows you to see a gap at all) and HOW can you contribute to addressing this gap. The worst and best day of a research project is the day that you admit what its limits are; once you've managed your expectations and determined what can (and cannot) be accomplished with your investigation, it helps to make peace with your specialization and exacting focus. I feel as though it's better to do a managed topic in an in-depth way than a broad topic superficially.

Good luck! I'm excited for you! If your experience is anything like mine, you can look back in a few years on this crisis of specialization and say: "how silly in retrospect! OF COURSE I ended up in the realm of specialization that I'm currently in; looking back on my academic backround and developing interests, it totally makes sense! HOW did I EVER think that I'd end up anywhere else!"