How to find my research interests and niche in grad school?

[klader]

Hey everyone, 

I just finished my first semester of my MA program (comp/rhet) and am getting ready for my second one. I did well enough my first semester -- got As in my courses, got decent-to-good teaching evaluations, presented at a national conference, got into the QRN at Cs, and really learned up on my rhetorical theory. 

However, I still don't know if I've found my heart's desire re: specialization. And it scares me because I still don't know what I want. It all seems so daunting! The PhD students are doing such awesome, groundbreaking work and here I am with vague writing center interest and fascination with classical rhetoric and its influence on our modern-day practices. I don't know if any of this (and the scent work I've done) is all that important to study and present/publish on. I like it, but I don't know if the things I researched for my courses truly MATTER in the field and don't know how to join all the conversations happening around me. It matters to me, but I don't quite know how to frame it and sell it, or how to get myself in these conversations to show the connections I've made. 

Will this get easier? I know I don't have to worry about specializing and publishing until my PhD years, but how can I figure out what it is I want to study in intricate detail and attach my name to? My biggest fear is that I'll never figure it out and that I'll flunk out since I won't be able to publish. 

Any thoughts, advice, anecdotes, etc. would be very helpful! Thanks. 

Edited January 7, 2017 by klader

[jungThug]

I would recommend that you discuss this issue with a prof that you get along with and enjoy speaking to. I would have never settled on my specialization on post-45 African diasporic lit, had not been for my mentor who specializes in the same field. I realized that if I'm truly going to enjoy my work I need to learn from a teacher that I find inspiring, whom I look forward to talking to, whose criticism energizes me in ways that spark bold new lines of thought. Once you've found your teacher, try and build a strong community of fellow students within whom you can write and debate. Graduate school has a way of instilling abjection. We're all unsure about our scholarship, our careers, our romantic lives, our families. By creating a postitive eprit de corps we can counter this universal feeling of degradation and fear with pride and fellowship. I have found that being with people -- my mentor, my friends, my interlocutors -- helps more than anything. So, "will this get easier"? It can, if you find a supportive yet challenging community. 

[rising_star]

I've been meaning to reply to this post for about a week. So, here goes in a nutshell. (TLDR version is to relax, don't panic, you're right where you should be.)

I would NOT worry too much about not knowing what your specialization is going to be just yet. You're a first semester MA student! You'll figure it out more as you take more classes, begin doing more research on your own, and work on your MA thesis. My own story is that I actually studied two pretty different things (think apples and orangutans) for my MA and PhD and it was fine. The background theory I learned during my MA served me well when I did my PhD even though the topics (and really, the subfield) were different. 

As for whether or not something matters, some of that might be up to you. There are people in my discipline who don't think that my topic "orangutans" really matters but, I see it as part of my job as a researcher to show them how and why it matters through the research I do. Some of that comes from the specific things I highlight in my research and some of it comes from placing my research in the appropriate broader context. Learning the big(ger) picture now as a MA student will help you do that in the future, regardless of the topic you choose. 

And, can I just be honest for a minute? If all of the "hot topic" convos in your discipline aren't ones you're super interested in, don't force yourself to do a project involving them. A PhD is enough of a slog that you shouldn't also do it on a topic you aren't passionate about. If you're passionate about multiple things, then you have options. You can try to do several and link them with some sort of connecting thread (theoretical, topical, temporal, etc.). Alternately, you can make one the focus of your thesis/dissertation and leave the other ideas for class/conference papers (or, as you advance in your thinking in these areas, for collaboration with other grad students or faculty with similar interests). That said, it does make sense to stay abreast of the current trends/discussions in the field (which you can do by skimming ToC and abstracts of journals) so that you can find ways to connect what you are doing to these bigger and broader discussions.

Finally, don't compare yourself to the PhD students. Assuming they've done a master's, they've got at least a couple of years of graduate training on you! You're not in the same place in terms of your intellectual development in the discipline so you shouldn't be expected or expect yourself to be doing whatever groundbreaking thing they're doing. And, newsflash: most of them have had the same concerns and struggles, likely when they were where you are right now. Comparing yourself to others is really a path to frustration in grad school so I strongly advise you against it. If you insist upon it, I'd say that you should have one-on-one conversations with some grad students to see how they developed their topics/interests, what led them to where they are, etc. You may be surprised by the answers. 

Good luck! Keep us posted on how things are going.

[Philosobroad]

Oh my God, I'm getting flashbacks. Don't worry, this is completely normal!!!!! That said, it's a good idea to try to figure it out before you start applying to PhDs (if that's what you're going for)  - I didn't, which is why I needed two cycles to finally get into a program. I would suggest doing a directed study (or two back to back in consecutive semesters, if you can wrangle it!) with a professor you like. It should be someone who knows something about the field as well as has similar interests as yours, if possible. Work out a flexible reading curriculum with them of things you enjoy with the goal of writing a really good paper at the end of it all. That way you can go deeper into a topic as the interest grabs you, and and get a really good feel for and knowledge of a subfield that you really enjoy. The professor should be able to direct you to current happenings in this area and give you a really good grounding in it. Use this grounding, and the questions and interests you have generated, as the basis of your SOP, and use the paper you produce, after polishing it up as much as possible, as your writing sample. This will make your writing sample flow well with your stated project interests in your application as well, making you look like a focused candidate. (You can change up your goals in your PhD to some extent, so don't worry that this will box you in). Also, working closely with a professor will make them a really good recommender for you. 

[orphic_mel528]

When I started my MA in Literature, I was the only student without an undergraduate degree in English. Not only did I have no clue about what I should specialize in, I didn't have a clue who Derrida, Foucault, Hegel, and many others were, let alone what they were talking about, until about the 3rd week of class. 

Here is how it happens, and why you shouldn't worry: You are going to take a class that is going to introduce you to something, and it's going to be like a lightbulb turning on. It may not even be the class you expect. But it will happen, and you'll know when it happens. Not to be ridiculous, but it's got a lot of similarities to being infatuated with another human being: you can't stop thinking about it, you want to tell everyone about it, you want to see it (read about it) more and more...

Anyway, beyond that, look into attending conferences, and if you haven't signed up for an MLA membership yet, do so. They send you a journal every month with critical articles written on virtually every topic. Read them, and something might jump out at you. 

Don't worry.

[CrunchyMamademic]

6 hours ago, orphic_mel528 said:

Here is how it happens, and why you shouldn't worry: You are going to take a class that is going to introduce you to something, and it's going to be like a lightbulb turning on. It may not even be the class you expect. But it will happen, and you'll know when it happens. 

I second this wholeheartedly. My inspiration came in a 20th century British Literature course, when I noticed a strikingly similar situation in Virginia Woolf's novel Jacob's Room and E. M. Forster's Maurice. It ended up being my thesis and sparked my interest in Queer Theory and homosexuality in the Bloomsbury Group. I never thought of these things being my niche until that class.

[Dr. Old Bill]

7 hours ago, orphic_mel528 said:

When I started my MA in Literature, I was the only student without an undergraduate degree in English. Not only did I have no clue about what I should specialize in, I didn't have a clue who Derrida, Foucault, Hegel, and many others were, let alone what they were talking about, until about the 3rd week of class. 

Here is how it happens, and why you shouldn't worry: You are going to take a class that is going to introduce you to something, and it's going to be like a lightbulb turning on. It may not even be the class you expect. But it will happen, and you'll know when it happens. Not to be ridiculous, but it's got a lot of similarities to being infatuated with another human being: you can't stop thinking about it, you want to tell everyone about it, you want to see it (read about it) more and more...

This is some fantastic advice.

The one thing I will add (speaking a bit more to the original post) is that it's more important in grad school to focus on what you do know than on what you don't. If you keep in mind that it's virtually impossible to know everything pertinent to any given subject, you can then focus on both the general knowledge of a subject, and specific nuances that appeal to you. It's really about the blend of general understanding and specialization.

For instance, I'm very much an early modernist and more of a Shakespearean than anything else. My writing sample when I got into UMD was based on the Sonnets, and my writing sample for Ph.D. programs was also on the Sonnets (albeit a completely different sample and approach). One of my courses this semester started with a class on the Sonnets, and given the amount of time I've spent researching them over the past three or so years, you might think I'd know almost everything there is to know. That is most assuredly not the case, and in the course of the readings and discussion in class, I learned a great deal more than I contributed. This is because I have a thorough general knowledge of the Sonnets, and also have extensive knowledge about their textual scholarship...but there are myriad perspectives and lines of research that I had never encountered before, and surely some that I never will in the years to come.

The bottom line is this: never be ashamed of what you don't know -- only be ashamed of what you don't learn when that knowledge is presented to you.

(There's even some wiggle room in that notion, but it's a good soundbyte to end a post on, soooo...)
 

[Yanaka]

@Wyatt's Terps, would you mind writing books on graduate life please? You never have anything uninteresting and not uplifting to say. Thanks. 

[imogenshakes]

4 hours ago, Yanaka said:

@Wyatt's Terps, would you mind writing books on graduate life please? You never have anything uninteresting and not uplifting to say. Thanks. 

Seconded.

[bhr]

I'm a second semester PhD and I'm just now figuring out what my thesis concentration was. This is normal.

 

It's especially tough to settle when you are at a great program, because you find yourself wanting to emulate the work being done by others. I can't count the number of people who came into my program with a strong research interest, but found themselves doing a derivative of someone elses work for a little while because they felt the pressure to copy what works.

Meanwhile I'm drilling down to my diss area, and it turns out it's the same thing I wrote about in my MA letter three years ago.

[JKL]

A way to find your interest is to ask yourself this question: What about it?

I loved history. It's my field now. But I once struggled to find a specific interest in it. Then I asked myself what I loved about history. The answer? American history. Well that was good but not good enough. What about American history? The early republic, that is, Washington's presidency to Madison's. What about the early republic? The political culture. What about the political culture? Constitutionalism. What about constitutionalism? Constitutional dialogue. What about constitutional dialogue? Memory. What about memory? The memory of the Articles of Confederation. And what about it? Conflicting narratives of why the Articles failed. DING DING DING! AND WE HAVE A DISSERTATION!

Do you see what I did? I used the Socratic method on myself. Stop at a place broad enough for extensive research but narrow enough to ask a specific question within a specific context. (This is the most difficult part.) Ask yourself what interests you about the influences of classical rhetoric on modern practices.

Your love is what keeps you up at night. You'll know it when you find it. Best of luck.

Edited February 12, 2017 by JKL

[klader]

Hi, everyone! 

Just wanted to check back in and say that I finally found my thesis topic/what I want to study more closely. 

For those who may be reading this and who also may be lost on what they want to study in grad school, it happened like this:

I was driving back to school at the end of my spring break. I had gone to the 4 Cs conference the weekend before and listened to a ton of great talks about a myriad of things -- listened to people who actually figured out what they were doing with their lives. I'd finally secured a thesis chair who was helping me parse through ideas, and as I crossed state lines, it finally HIT me. 

I don't know how or why, but I realized what, exactly, I wanted to research, and why I care so much about it. In a lot of ways, I'd always been interested in the general idea. I'd often think about it and read other people discuss it. I just didn't know it could be an actual research topic. I'd read about related things in a course the semester before, and when I got back to school and met with my chair, we agreed my ideas were doable. A few weeks later, I was filling out IRB forms. And now I'm doing my background reading so I can start the primary research in the fall. 

You all were right. It just happens, and you know when it happens. 

Thanks again.