I suck at doing research. How to get better?

[renea]

Pardon me if this overlaps/repeats what someone else has said (shamefully I didn't read all the comments, so sorry). But if you are having problems coming up with an "original idea" (and let's just sidestep the debate about whether it is important that your idea is new, I'll just say that if your idea adds nothing new it's not adding to the conversation), I would suggest thinking about research more in formulaic terms.

 

First: you do need to do at least some reading. No one should expect you to read up on everything, but you should be reading up on 

1. the major works in your field (sadly, the cannon)

2. the well-known works in your subtopic

3. the articles/critics/contributors that you either admire or completely disagree with (I often find these to be very specific articles from major journals in my field, imagine these to be the most recently published out of the 3 types listed here).

 

This seems like a lot, but really imagine it 3-5 books and 6-10 articles. You shouldn't have to read all of it, skim the articles, get the main ideas, and pull out the applicable quotes. Read the books and then maybe read some articles/commentary about the books. There's your lit review. 

What I like to do with the lit review is instead of just summarizing the texts (boring and not always useful), is to draw out a bit of a diagram (it can be a list, a map, or just some notes, whatever works for you), about how the texts relate to each other. After doing this I look for the physical gaps. The recent articles will be the best indication of what has/hasn't been written about these texts, since they were recently published. Most (good) journals aren't going to publish articles talking about outdated/irrelevant topics. Most (good) scholars also won't be revisiting these topics unless there is still more to be said. The gaps that you find among the texts are your research topics. Once you have your idea, I find it best to chat with a couple of people in the field (if you have some professors who are open listeners). If you're idea is not new, they will probably tell you. I find that when I talk to my chair about my ideas she often throws a few more ideas for readings/tosses me a book off her shelf for me to read on the topic as well.

 

Once you have your topic, have done some reading, and are ready to start writing I find that following a formula of sorts can be helpful as a jumping off point:

 

What is your topic? This is the subtopic you picked.

What has been said about the topic so far? This is the review you did (don't always feel obligated to do the summary/traditional lit review thing, feel free to just mention a few of the authors and give a very short mention of their contributions. I've seen published authors do their lit review in a mere 3 sentences and it's brilliantly simple to mimic).

What is missing? This is your gap that you just found.

Why is it important (the exigency). Why does the gap matter (this may be the hardest part to explain, but your topic must have some sort of relevance to the field- does it answer some questions? Is it applicable to understanding other texts? Does it somehow apply to the classroom or academy at large?)

Then dive into your conversation. 

 

I apologize also if this is all very obvious stuff, but for some of my graduate coursework this is how we were taught to get started on research and I found it very helpful. In general I mostly just find it very useful to read though recent articles in journals (which it seems like you do as well) I would want to be published in. What are they writing about? How are they writing, and what "big moves" are they making in the text?

 

Also if this is relevant, I'm in Rhet/Comp, but I framed this as English/Comp in general. 

[Bumblebea]

2 hours ago, Eigen said:

Watching someone argue with a  professor about who deserves to be called professor under what circumstances is a bit surreal. 

Really? Are we really going to go the "appeal to authority" angle? 

If we are, well, I'm a prof and I understand what @EmmaJava is saying, even if I don't agree that calling oneself "professor" when one has not been appointed as such is an act of fraud. It's clearly not. I do think, though, that we need to be as honest as possible about how universities are functioning, and who is doing the teaching. When I did not have a PhD and was teaching a ton of undergrad courses as a TA, I was always very clear to explain to the students that I was not a professor. I felt it was in their best interest that they have as much information as possible about how the university saw fit to handle their instruction. The literal definition of "professor as someone who professes" was somewhat immaterial in that situation. (How does one define "profess," after all? Clearly not every teacher at a university is a professor, and neither is a PhD teaching at a middle school. Context matters.) 

(And somewhat unrelated, where I initially taught, the students refused to call PhDs "doctor." They felt that professors were not doctors and did not deserve the title. So "professor" was the best you could do.)

Edited September 2, 2017 by Bumblebea

[Eigen]

I didn't actually make an appeal to authority. I just pointed out that this particular argument seemed surreal to me. And the surreal part, to me, was that in general I find those looking forward to a position are more protective of it than those doing the job. It's like the stigma of new PhDs wanting everyone to call them Doctor. If I'd wanted to make the appeal to authority card, I'd have used my authority, not someone else's.

Also, to edit in: the opposite of an appeal to authority has already been made, by @EmmaJava accusing @rising_star of taking the issue personally due to not being a real professor. The fact that already entered into it was part of what made the whole thing surreal.

20 hours ago, EmmaJava said:

I am not saying incorrect things on the internet, and you're being rude. Probably defensive, too, if what is going on is what I think is going on. I think we are writing past each other, yes, and I'll take some responsibility in that, but it's going to need to work both ways. You, I take it, are calling yourself a professor? Because you profess, but not because you've been appointed by your department as...ahem...you know...that thing? As I said before, you just go right on ahead with that.

The thread isn't derailed when the relevant post to the OP was largely to do with precisely this issue.

Shape up, mod. You should know better.

On the derailed topic at hand, I think arguing that a lecturer (the original post by @EmmaJava wasn't about TAs, the topic to which its now pivoted) doesn't deserve the title of professor. Including, apparently, some of 

There are countries where that is true, and "professor" is an earned title, but the US isn't one of those. 

I think it's pretty hard to argue that a long term, full time lecturer doesn't 'deserve' to be called professor, but that a VAP does just because it's part of their job title. 

Everywhere I've taught enforces the right of anyone teaching in a college classroom to be called professor, if we're adding another data point. Granted, there weren't TAs teaching classes at these places, and I think that is a separate discussion from whether lecturers are professors. 

If we really want to follow the strictest sense of the law, you don't deserve to be called professor until after promotion to full, as in the UK. 

Edited September 2, 2017 by Eigen
Cleaned up formatting from phone post.

[jrockford27]

Wow, this thread has gotten very pedantic since I last checked in!  I think it's funny when my students call me Dr. or Professor, I usually joke that "those are titles that come with pay and benefits that I don't receive, so you can just call me [firstname], or Mr. [Lastname] if you're not into the whole brevity thing."  Nevertheless, the undergrads still seem to want to call me professor or Dr.  I suppose if one of my fellow grad students told a local at the bar they were a "professor of English" I'd probably snicker a bit.  

The only reason the discussion of job titles is important to a discussion of admissions is because you want to get your letters of rec from tenured faculty wherever possible.*  If this seems unfair, this was advice I received from a non-tenure lecturer I asked for a letter of rec!  In American universities, this person will hold a job title that has the word "professor" in it, otherwise I can't imagine why this is relevant.

On 8/31/2017 at 8:20 PM, Doll Tearsheet said:

One of my favorite professors, my adviser, would always tell me that if I wanted to do research (like for a writing sample) and write about a literary author as the primary focus of my essay, I should read all the important critical literature of that author as well as full-length books. Basically his expectation seemed like I should be very well-versed in the secondary literature, and also be very aware of how I'm contributing/interacting with it. Are his expectations unrealistic or...? I find myself getting stuck in a vicious circle: I can't write until I know enough secondary literature and how my argument contributes to it, but then once I read enough, I become too paralyzed to write and have trouble presenting all those complex ideas.

I suppose my goal wasn't to tell you that reading the secondary literature wasn't important.  It is.  But at the stage you are at in your academic career (finishing/recently finished undergrad, I think) nobody expects you to have expert knowledge of a subfield. You will go to grad school to develop expert knowledge of a subfield.  That is what your comprehensive exams will be.

How much do you need to have read in order to write a good writing sample: enough to be able to write a good 20ish page research paper.  Without trying to assume anything about your plans, I'd just warn that if you use too much of your writing sample to show off how much you've read you're going to write a very lousy paper.  Plan an argument that shows you can work interestingly with the sources you're already familiar with, show them what you're already strong at.  Or really, just use your best paper from undergrad, because you'll already have feedback on it, if it's not long enough, think about how you can expand it.

 

*A word I'd add to the job title discussion, is that I think it's useful for people (students, people outside academia, etc.) know how the system functions, they should know who is teaching them, and what titles mean.  For example, they ought to know they're being taught by a smart person with a PhD but who nevertheless makes minimum wage and receives no insurance, if that's indeed the case. If you're calling yourself a professor but are a grad student or contingent instructor you may be contributing in some small way to concealing the way the system functions.

Edited September 2, 2017 by jrockford27

[Eigen]

12 minutes ago, jrockford27 said:

The only reason the discussion of job titles is important to a discussion of admissions is because you want to get your letters of rec from tenured faculty wherever possible.*  If this seems unfair, this was advice I received from a non-tenure lecturer I asked for a letter of rec!  In American universities, this person will hold a job title that has the word "professor" in it, otherwise I can't imagine why this is relevant.

I'm assuming this is a typo, but I think you probably meant a "tenure track" faculty, rather than a "tenured" faculty? American systems have the "tenure track" line (Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Professor), where only a Professor is guaranteed to have tenure. 

Then many universities have "Lecturers" who are often full time, but not tenure track- they are teaching as opposed to research faculty. On the other hand, you have "Research Professors"- Research Assistant Professor, Research Associate Professor, Research Professor who are non-tenure track research faculty. Both of these tracks are (generally) full time "renewable" positions- not tenured, but assumed to be reasonably permanent. 

There are also the less permanent positions- Visiting Assistant Professors and Adjunct Professors/Lecturers. The former is not assumed to be permanent (it's usually a limited time contract) and adjunct professors/lecturers who are frequently not full time, or not assumed to be full time. 

Ideally, you get your letters of recommendation from tenure track faculty- and even a letter from an assistant professor will likely serve you well- as they can ideally speak to both your research and coursework abilities. 

As to the above list, there is obviously (by this thread) a lot of debate about who earns what title. There seems to be a strong thread of argument that only full time, tenure track faculty should be actually called "professor" in the classroom, with a counterargument that any of these faculty members should be called professor. 

It may be pedantic, but I'd argue that there's a serious undercurrent here in terms of how people's work is valued- I frequently associate arguments that lecturers shouldn't be called "professor" with a strongly negative evaluation of their work, and a hint of the older academic caste system, which is something I feel like is slowly fading and not a good thing.

[samman1994]

US schooling here, so this applies only to them. Also, only scientific fields (STEM). 

A professor, generally speaking, is an instructor who also has a PhD. Anyone teaching college level who does not have a PhD is called an instructor (including master students and undergrads). There are varying degrees of professors, to full-time, part-time, associate, emeritus, etc. However, all have their PhDs. 

I along with many others, don't know if you have a PhD, and thus call everyone in college/university a professor. 90% of people who don't have it, will either attempt to correct you and tell you they don't have a PhD and they are an instructor, try and tell you to call them Mr. or Mrs, or have given up trying. Because even if you tell them, students will still call anyone in a college/university position professor. 

That being said, a PhD means absolutely nothing in my eyes in regards to prestige, intellect, or heirachy. In my time in the academic system, I have come to understand a PhD means absolutely nothing in regards to the person. I have met PhDs who got PhDs in chemistry, but actually don't know anything about well... any chemistry field (organic, analytical, physical, etc.). I have met PhDs who were complete and utter idiots (A professor during a thesis defense once asked how fish breathe). I respect the amount of work a PhD has put in, but that is it. Whether you have a PhD or not means nothing to me when it comes to teaching. As someone who actively took part in hiring committees at my school to hire potential professors (with PhDs), and also worked alongside many master students who taught classes, I can tell you having a PhD means jack shit in teaching. Why do I bring this up? Because people think the title of professor has some prestige with, and as stated before, that title is for people who have PhDs.  I really don't think it means much though based on the above statements. I think calling someone with an MA a professor, or calling someone with a PhD professor is fine in regards to teaching.

Anyways, this is from a students perspective, not a professors perspective. 

[Bumblebea]

1 hour ago, jrockford27 said:

Wow, this thread has gotten very pedantic since I last checked in!  I think it's funny when my students call me Dr. or Professor, I usually joke that "those are titles that come with pay and benefits that I don't receive, so you can just call me [firstname], or Mr. [Lastname] if you're not into the whole brevity thing."  Nevertheless, the undergrads still seem to want to call me professor or Dr.  I suppose if one of my fellow grad students told a local at the bar they were a "professor of English" I'd probably snicker a bit.

Seriously! I'm trying not to take @Eigen's jab at VAPs personally. After all, I don't want to add to the mountains of projection that are already going on in this thread--especially since the OP did indeed have a valid and interesting question. And one I hope to help them with. I don't want OP to end up in VAP-ville, after all! 

[Eigen]

Hah, no jab at VAP's intended- I'm one, after all. 

[GreenEyedTrombonist]

hey @Doll Tearsheet ! I think you've gotten some good advice and inadvertently started a hot debate, haha. Are you still looking for advice/do you have follow-up questions? 

[Doll Tearsheet]

2 hours ago, GreenEyedTrombonist said:

hey @Doll Tearsheet ! I think you've gotten some good advice and inadvertently started a hot debate, haha. Are you still looking for advice/do you have follow-up questions? 

I've got some great replies here, I've read all this advice and am taking it to heart for sure, since much of it seems spot-on.

The only thing I can say at this point is this: As I go on to do my research over the next few months/year, I was wondering if anyone here would be interested in seeing a draft of what I write (again probably a few months later) and potentially giving some feedback? Figured I'd ask to see if anyone might be interested, and then when the time comes around I can send a private message on these forums. I do have 3 professors at my school who would read it, but outside of those three, I don't have anyone else to send it for any feedback, so I figured the more the merrier if possible.

[GreenEyedTrombonist]

Good thing to ask @Doll Tearsheet I think I'll be able to do some feedback in a few months so feel free to shoot me a DM at that time. 

[Doll Tearsheet]

@GreenEyedTrombonist Marvellous. I will reach out, and any others that express interest, when I'm ready with a draft. Should you be busy when that time comes, then I would understand of course.

[jrockford27]

I guess the VAP complicates what I said in ways I hadn't thought of.

7 hours ago, Eigen said:

I'm assuming this is a typo, but I think you probably meant a "tenure track" faculty, rather than a "tenured" faculty? American systems have the "tenure track" line (Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Professor), where only a Professor is guaranteed to have tenure. 

[...]

It may be pedantic, but I'd argue that there's a serious undercurrent here in terms of how people's work is valued- I frequently associate arguments that lecturers shouldn't be called "professor" with a strongly negative evaluation of their work, and a hint of the older academic caste system, which is something I feel like is slowly fading and not a good thing.

No, I still think that if I were advising a prospective graduate student I would give the advice the way I phrased it above.*  You want a letter of recommendation from a tenured member of the faculty if possible - not because those people are inherently wiser, smarter, better people, but because their letter is likely to carry more weight with an admissions committee because tenure usually carries the perception of a strong record of publication in the field, as well as experience advising graduate and undergraduate students.  Not to say that an Assistant Professor can't write a strong letter, my advice came from a strictly pragmatic place.

*Edit:  I see you probably meant the phrase "non-tenure lecturer", so yeah, I guess I could have put "track" behind that.

With regard to the other paragraph, I think that that is a fair way to see the discussion.  Devaluing anyone's work is the last thing I'd want to do, and I'm involved and vocal about advocating for better conditions for non-tenure track faculty and graduate instructors. BuI think euphemisms hurt the cause of non-tenure track faculty because they obscure the professional stratification of the university.  Those job titles mean actual things, and I think students and the general public really ought to know that.   My university had an "adjunct walkout day" a few years ago, and while I wasn't an adjunct so I didn't walk out, I spent the first 10 minutes of my class explaining what academic job titles mean t to a group of freshmen that were half-bored and half-intrigued.  I think explaining the way teaching is handled at a large research University actually improved their impression of their non-tenure track and graduate student instructors.

I now realize that I've dived headlong into the pedantry I had once decried.  So my real feeling is, call yourself whatever you want, but think about what you're calling yourself when you're calling yourself something. 

Edited September 3, 2017 by jrockford27

[rising_star]

On 9/1/2017 at 8:29 PM, Doll Tearsheet said:

Yes, I have read many articles throughout the years both out of curiosity and in courses, though I don't do it daily. I found them helpful at the level of teaching me what language to use and some potential key "moves" to make. They're useful but every thesis is distinct and has its own concerns and needs for decisions about structure and language, so they're a bit limited in how much they can help.

Of course each thesis is unique (otherwise it wouldn't be making a new contribution to the scholarship). But, there are commonalities in arguments which it would behoove you to identify long-term (Note: not entirely necessary for the writing sample of a PhD application). If you really want to get better at your argumentation, then it might be helpful to map out how each article/chapter you read works. That is, what's their thesis, what evidence do they support it with, and how do they use that evidence in making their argument? It's not just about language but also seeing what texts/sections people are drawing on when writing about your topic.  

On 9/2/2017 at 5:15 PM, Eigen said:

I'm assuming this is a typo, but I think you probably meant a "tenure track" faculty, rather than a "tenured" faculty? American systems have the "tenure track" line (Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Professor), where only a Professor is guaranteed to have tenure. 

Then many universities have "Lecturers" who are often full time, but not tenure track- they are teaching as opposed to research faculty. On the other hand, you have "Research Professors"- Research Assistant Professor, Research Associate Professor, Research Professor who are non-tenure track research faculty. Both of these tracks are (generally) full time "renewable" positions- not tenured, but assumed to be reasonably permanent. 

So true about only a Professor being guaranteed to have tenure. There are Associate Profs at my institution that don't have tenure yet (often because the tenure and promotion processes are separated, especially when one comes in with credit of years spent at a previous institution). 

There are also Teaching Professor tracks at many schools now. In fact, I think the semantic move to "Teaching Professor" is precisely because some people devalue people who are "merely Lecturers" (and there's been evidence of that in this thread!). The University System of Georgia has a teaching-track where one can be promoted and receive tenure, just as there is a research track and the combo research/teaching/service which has historically been most prevalent. There are also tracks where Lecturers can be promoted to Senior Lecturer after six years (so the same timing as going up for tenure if one were on the tenure-track), suggesting another avenue of permanent employment that belies how people typically think of the term. 

[Eigen]

There are also the "quasi-tenure" positions a lot more schools have for lecturers that are rolling 3-5 year contracts (I've seen one school with 10). It's not "tenure", but it serves a very similar purpose. 

[TakeruK]

Just to add another example: At my PhD school, there were no such things as Associate Professors. If you're tenure-track then you start as Assistant Professor and your tenured status comes with a promotion to Professor. I'm sure there are different pay scales and levels of advancement within both of these ranks, but they were opaque to students. In addition, the faculty were divided into "Teaching Faculty" and "Research Faculty" with only the former being on the tenure-track.

At most schools in Canada, especially those that do not grant 4 year degrees (we call them "Colleges", Americans tend to call them "Community College" or "Junior College"), every instructor tends to have the rank and job title of Instructor. Doesn't matter if you have a Masters or a PhD. However, colloquially, everyone refers to these instructors as "professor", not "instructor". 

These examples are meant to show that there is no single definition of what is a professor. Unlike some other professions (and similar to many other professions), the title "professor" isn't a protected title. In many places it's illegal to call yourself a Nurse or a Doctor or an Engineer without proper certification with the relevant governing body but "Professor" doesn't have this classification. So, as long as your own employer doesn't forbid you from calling yourself a professor and you are not doing it in a way that would defraud others, there should be nothing wrong with being addressed as professor even if your employment status is "professor". 

To most people, a "professor" is an instructor at the university level. So there's no real need, in my opinion, to be pedantic about "Professor" and "professor", or whether or not when you say "professor" you mean their actual job title, what they are doing or what they seem to be doing. When the context actually does matter (e.g. advising a student on who to pick as their LOR writer) you can just ask the person to clarify but there's no need to try to get everyone to use whatever your definition of professor/Professor since there is no "right" definition. 

On a related note, many people don't even use their official job title to describe themselves or their form of address. My current official job title is "Research Officer 2". I don't introduce myself to others as this position though. I just say "I'm an Astronomer" or "I'm a Planetary Scientist", or even sometimes, "I'm a Physicist", depending on the context of the conversation. Even though some places use Astronomer as an official job title, that doesn't mean I'm not allowed to call myself an Astronomer just because that's not my actual job title. Similarly, when I was a graduate student, when talking to people who aren't in academia, I would often say "I research and teach about astronomy at [school name]" when people ask what I did for a living. My actual job title was "Graduate Research Assistant", but again, I wouldn't use that term.

Finally, I guess whether or not a student needs a letter from a tenured professor or a tenure-track professor seems to really depend on the field. In my field, it makes no difference at all, except for the correlation between tenure and how long you've been in the field. However, some professors who are fairly new but are superstars and have huge impact on their fields would also have impactful letters.

(Fun fact: All three of my letter writers for postdoc positions were not tenured at the time the decisions were made. However, my field is very young, and really began only in 1995 and really only took off in the last 10 years. So the majority of the best researchers in this field are assistant professors just up for tenure now.)

[CulturalCriminal]

Wow, I am sorry for opening up the "what makes a professor" conversation. OP, just take away that the people who taught you may not have specifically had a PhD (and that isn't a bad thing, just maybe focus on seeking advice from those who do have PhDs when it comes to questions about applying for PhDs).

Good luck on applying to grad school!

[Doll Tearsheet]

5 hours ago, CulturalCriminal said:

Wow, I am sorry for opening up the "what makes a professor" conversation. OP, just take away that the people who taught you may not have specifically had a PhD (and that isn't a bad thing, just maybe focus on seeking advice from those who do have PhDs when it comes to questions about applying for PhDs).

Good luck on applying to grad school!

No problem. It was distracting but somehow we got through it. As for your comment about nothing that for advice, the thing is that I already knew that, and all the professors I asked for advice were into their tenure and had completed PhD programs, so it wasn't helpful even in that minimal sense (haha).

Edited September 7, 2017 by Doll Tearsheet

[JKL]

On 8/30/2017 at 4:09 PM, Doll Tearsheet said:

My biggest problem is probably with structure. I want to get better. Any advice?

First, perhaps it'll provide some comfort knowing that even the most advanced writers struggle with issues like this. It's difficult, plain and simple. It's never a breeze.

Second, read, read, read. And when you read, pay particular attention to the structure of the text. Does the structure make sense? Does it flow? Is it logical? If you feel that a paragraph would've fit better in another place, write it in the margins. Don't be afraid to critique it.

Third, take notes on what structures you like. Write your praises in the margins. This will give you a sense of what to emulate when writing papers.