Role of Research Topic in Deciding Future Career

Among the assignments given to us, I think this question is the most difficult one. This made me think how the research topic would affect my future career. I found it hard to answer since I didn’t think of this while we were still deciding on what will be our research topic for this semester. As what I have in mind, we do research to improve the quality of life for us people to be somehow satisfied, for some time, even though we never get satisfied. We do research because of the existing problems we find in our everyday life. For me, as to the most obvious role of the research topic, it is a solution to the identified or observed problems that you have distinguished. As a result of readings done based on the problems identified, the solution is determined so does the research topic which will be the specific solution to those problems. To help me understand more on what is really the role of research topic in deciding my future career, I read some articles regarding this.
Research is a systematic investigation to establish facts. Why do people conduct research? To find things out and to help understand the world we live in. Also to produce valid and useful information or knowledge that has some significance to benefit society. Who are the main funders of research? The main funders of research are: Charities, Business Corporations, Private Companies, and Individuals.
There will come a time in most students' careers when they are assigned a research paper. Such an assignment often creates a great deal of unneeded anxiety in the student, which may result in delay or postponement and a feeling of confusion and inadequacy. This anxiety frequently stems from the fact that many students are unfamiliar and inexperienced with this sort of writing. Writing a research paper is an essential aspect of academics, and should not be avoided on account of one's anxiety. In fact, the process of writing a research paper can be one of the more rewarding experiences one may encounter in academics. What is more, many students will continue to do research throughout their careers, which is one of the reasons that this is so important.

Determining what our research topic will be, considering the theme “Green Computing”, gave us challenge. Our chosen topic reflects where we wanted to be. With this task, we can identify on what is really our interests since a good topic also requires that the researcher is interested of. In this connection, we may be able to somewhat look forward on deciding what our future career.

One of the reasons students draw back at research paper is that writing them is a skill that most college professors assume their students have, while few high school teachers teach it — leaving students to work out for themselves how exactly to proceed. Add to that the fact that students often take a range of courses they have little or no interest in to satisfy their general requirements, and it’s no wonder that students often feel hung out to dry when it comes to writing research papers. Looked at properly, research papers can be a great way to deepen your understanding of your chosen field, and may be the first step towards developing a specialization that will serve you well as you move into your career or advanced education. Figure out the link between the class you’re taking and your educational and career goals. If you hope to earn an MBA and find yourself stuck in a required Women’s Studies class, write about workplace harassment, or the impact of equal opportunity laws. If you are pre-med and have to take anthropology or sociology, write about cultural differences in notions of healing, or about access to health care for members of different classes.

Becoming an experienced researcher and writer in any field or discipline takes a great deal of practice. There are few individuals for whom this process comes naturally; even the most seasoned academic veterans have had to learn how to write a research paper at some point in their career. Therefore, with diligence, organization, practice, a willingness to learn (and to make mistakes! lolz), and, perhaps most important of all, patience, a student will find that she can achieve great things through her research and writing.

As a seminar in the Bell Communications Research Colloquia Series, Dr. Richard W. Hamming, a Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California and a former Bell Labs scientist, gave an interesting and stimulating talk, `You and Your Research' to an overflow audience of some 200 Bell core staff members and visitors at the Morris Research and Engineering Center. This talk centered on Hamming's observations and research on the question "Why do so few scientists make significant contributions and so many are forgotten in the long run?"

One of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage. Once you get your courage up and believe that you can do important problems, then you can. If you think you can't, almost surely you are not going to. That is the characteristic of great scientists; they have courage. They will go forward under incredible circumstances; they think and continue to think.

For me, the tasks that are involved in the research writing are also similar with how scientists in the world do their discoveries. A scientist can never discover something without researching on that topic. So as to research, one cannot achieve his objective if he will not have that enough courage to pursue his study on a certain problem. Although mistakes and other circumstances may come unexpectedly, it is good to have that courage to still continue working on what have been started. As to students, this character will really be a good help since they will practice and enhance how to keep pushing more to finish the research. This will be a good motivation for us students.

What Bode was saying was this: "Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest." Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice out produce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity it is very much like compound interest. I don't want to give you a rate, but it is a very high rate. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime. I took Bode's remark to heart; I spent a good deal more of my time for some years trying to work a bit harder and I found, in fact, I could get more work done. You have to neglect things if you intend to get what you want done. There's no question about this.

There's another trait on the side which I want to talk about; that trait is ambiguity. It took me a while to discover its importance. Most people like to believe something is or is not true. Great scientists tolerate ambiguity very well. They believe the theory enough to go ahead; they doubt it enough to notice the errors and faults so they can step forward and create the new replacement theory. If you believe too much you'll never notice the flaws; if you doubt too much you won't get started. It requires a lovely balance.

Why do so many people, with all their talents, fail? Why is it so? What happened to them? Why do so many of the people who have great promise, fail?
Well, one of the reasons is drive and commitment. The people who do great work with less ability but who are committed to it, get more done that those who have great skill and dabble in it, who work during the day and go home and do other things and come back and work the next day. They don't have the deep commitment that is apparently necessary for really first-class work. They turn out lots of good work, but we were talking, remember, about first-class work. There is a difference. Good people, very talented people, almost always turn out good work. Talking about the outstanding work, the type of work that gets the Nobel Prize and gets recognition.
With commitment towards what we are doing in this semester, for us research, we may be able to practice and become more determined in every thing we do. Thus, this will be very useful in determining in what fields are we interested of.

The second thing is, the problem of personality defects. You find this happening again and again; good scientists will fight the system rather than learn to work with the system and take advantage of all the system has to offer. It has a lot, if you learn how to use it. It takes patience, but you can learn how to use the system pretty well, and you can learn how to get around it.

Howard Vernon, a respected philosopher and psychologist in the 1960s, stated: “What you want in life also wants you.” Success already wants you -- it’s just a matter of reaching it with the right strategies and mindset.