The scholarly self: A case for research

9/30/15 5:09am

Rice proudly promotes itself as a research university while, according to the Office of Institutional Research, 68 percent of Rice University undergraduates do independent research during their time here. But why? What’s the point of spending so much time in the lab, running assays to determine how mTOR or HER2 (or some other protein of the month) is regulated in breast cancer? What benefit do we get pulling all-nighters in the library, poring over mountains of books to characterize Roman Campana reliefs, or finding new ways to deconstruct Tolstoy?

Credentialism aside, many undergraduates do research with the prime intention of impacting their fields. Yet this is ill-considered. It’s very difficult to make significant contributions to oncology, classical archaeology, literary theory or any other discipline within three or four years as a part-time undergraduate researcher. So let’s set aside the desire of making contributions, for the proverbial journey in undergraduate research is much more important and enriching than its destination. We need a feasible goal to maintain momentum, but constant fixation on it blinds us to the great rewards of the journey — lengthy, taxing and filled with uncertainties it may be. Save the discovering and breakthrough-ing for when you reach postgraduate school.

This journey’s most immediate advantage is the praxis of classroom knowledge. Our remembrance of course material after the final exam perpetually causes much handwringing among professors. That shouldn’t surprise us, seeing as the traditional lecture format renders us passive recipients of an incessant stream of information bordering on the soporific. Research, in contrast, transforms us into active critics and synthesisers of knowledge. Researching lets us take composite ideas in textbooks and lectures, and apply them in terms that align with our personal interests, beliefs and values. The ideas we play with become part of our identity, taking on new interpretations firmly grounded in our world-views.

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More significantly, research transmutes our approach to learning. In classrooms, we meet course objectives and learn specific concepts, while in research, we set our own objectives and decide what concepts are even worth learning to begin with. In research, we learn that asking questions is just as important as answering them. Moreover, research teaches us that we can learn from failure. In the classroom, an all-consuming fanaticism for the almighty A often limits, if not outright quashes, our courage to take risks, diminishing any possibility of failure. Research helps us see that we gain more by asking why we failed than asking why we succeeded. It encourages us to challenge the seemingly inscrutable and impenetrable, and ultimately instills in us the intrinsic joy produced by such intrepid scholastic exploration.

The most compelling justification for research, still, argues it as an instrument to develop one’s scholarly self. Professors Anthony Grafton (Princeton University) and James Grossman (University of Chicago) describe the scholarly self as “intolerant of weak arguments and loose citation and all other forms of shoddy craftsmanship; a self that doesn’t accept a thesis without asking what assumptions and evidence it rests on; a self that doesn’t have a lot of patience with simpleminded formulas and knows an observation from an opinion and an opinion from an argument.”

The qualities of a scholarly self apply to all academic disciplines. When a student makes an independent leap into research, he must pose questions, design experiments, challenge his suppositions and consider evidence from divergent perspectives. He must then formulate coherent arguments (via countless rounds of revision) and present them in an articulate and compact manner that engages and enlightens the audience. The student emerges a more rigorous and mindful thinker, less apt to make assumptions and more so to develop his own conclusions. He becomes less dogmatic and pedantic, and more conscientious and passionate.

To the early humanists, the ideal education created active, productive and ethical citizens out of students. Research fulfills this legacy beautifully. It is, in an epistemic sense, very practical. The student develops sound habits of mind and cogent means of communication, skills necessary to lead a meaningful life that advances understanding of the human condition.

This may all sound like fanciful thinking. And maybe it is, just a little bit. But these lofty ideas, at least to me, form the raison d’être of our time here. So to those who are researching, research away; to those who aren’t, give it a try. You might not, in the end, produce any enduring or “useful” results. But why should that matter? In losing yourself amidst your research, you might just discover yourself — your scholarly self. And that, in itself, is a marvelous thing.

Henry Bair is a Baker college junior.

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