For most students, the most difficult part of a research paper is simply finding the topic. In a fit of panic, almost everyone falls into one of the common mistakes.
- To explore strange new worlds. Certainly, it's interesting to read about topics that are new to you, but if you go too far from your field of expertise, you won't even know what questions to ask. You'll write a breathless paper that explores very ordinary basic definitions.
- To seek out new life and new civilizations. A research paper must be grounded. If you get into speculation ("Do space aliens exist? Did they leave crystal skulls to teach us technology and art?"), you aren't writing academic research. Leave that sort of thing for the supermarket tabloid papers.
- To boldly go where no man has gone before. If there's nothing written about your topic, no primary research, you'll have to fly to the Amazon yourself to come up with a decent paper. Maybe it's really intriguing to ask the enormous questions, but save that for your doctoral dissertation. Right now, you've got really limited time and no foundation grant.
Three more paradoxes
- Big topics make small papers. Students often figure that the more generalized and enormous topic will make a long paper more easily, but it's the tightly focused topics that suggest a LOT of further research. Consider which would make a longer paper (because it suggests more fertile research questions). "High gasoline prices" or "Effect of high gasoline prices on family-owned businesses in two ocean resorts: Ocean City, Maryland, compared with Rehoboth Beach, Delaware."
- Easy topics make difficult papers. (Difficult to find enough material, that is.) Students often go for no-brainers like "how to change a tire" or "reasons to quit smoking." The problem is that a three-page pamphlet has thoroughly covered the topic, so there's nothing to do except summarize it and get frustrated. There's nothing to prove, nothing to discuss.
- If you know it in your heart, you will have trouble proving it. When you approach a "research" project to teach the rest of us that you were right in the first place, you'll only look at sources that support your point of view. That's why nobody is in love with faith-based papers (except the writer and those who already agree). That's also why topics such as creationism, acupuncture, and macrobiotic diets usually don't fly in the academic world. You have to already believe the main point to accept the basic premise of the paper. There's no possibility for the "research" to change the writer's opinion, even the smallest amount.
