Thoughts about the Research Subject

Research is one of the subjects that I feared the most since I entered college. Upon hearing this subject, it is always sounds intimidating to me since I am not knowledgeable with it. Yes, we already conducted such since Grade 7, but I did not actually learn how to properly do it since it is not discussed well due to short period of time and favoritism of the teachers from the middle school I went to. We were just given with copies of past studies similar to what we are conducting to base it without actually understanding the importance of each part of the research. Only those students who were competing outside the campus were trained and actually learned the proper way of doing it, and us, the average students were just required and just complied to it without actually understanding its process and concepts, the reason why I lost my interest with this subject.

But now that I am in my third year of being a college student and currently taking the Criminological Research 1, my perception with research instantly changed. I always thought to myself that it is hard to do it, but when we have learned how to do the parts of a research little by little, I said to myself, it’s not that difficult for as long as you have the will and interest to listen, and huge amount of patience and determination in conducting it. I have realized what is lacking to my experience in conducting research in high school is that the teachers do not care to every student that they handle, they only care about recognition and awards that they receive and not minding those average students about their research. Not to be “sipsip” but I do appreciate our instructor in this subject for she really wants the best for us and pushes us to do better in conducting such and really did well in explaining every part of the research needed in this subject. Another notable experience for me, being the leader in my group is one of the hardest role I have ever did in my entire college life. To be honest, I’m not really fond of being a leader since I like working alone, but I cannot just leave my friends behind, I wanted to all of us to succeed. Honestly, at first, I am really hesitant to trust other, but I took the risk, and fortunately, my friends really showed their interest and willingness to help in our research which made me fully trust them. As the leader, I have learned not to be vulnerable and to have more patience and that I should be the role model of our group so that in exchange, they would also do the same because I believed, the way I behave in leading our group really have a great impact to my group members. The stress in doing our manuscript is always there but honestly, I was challenged in doing such since it is technically, my first time in doing a research that is not just for compliance. The only disappointing is that our research adviser was not responsive with our queries and not frequently checking our output which made us rely with our own capabilities.

All in all, I really did enjoy my time in learning with this subject and I could definitely tell others not to be fearful with this subject. For the first time in my life, I could actually say that research is fun for as long as you have the interest, focus, determination and having a good group is really essential because they are your support system when you are feeling down.