What I learned after conducting a research for my thesis

One of my session in a cafe

As a final year college student in Indonesia, I have to write thesis for my final project. It doesn’t have to be a research, but my professor is a research professor, so it becomes a research project.

Aside from that, I’m also working full-time as an intern. This is my 7th semester, I can actually take the final project credit on next semester and I will still be graduating on time.

My decision of taking the final project this semester turns out to be a mistake (and disaster).

However, it also becomes my most exciting and real learning experience. These are the things I learned from doing my thesis and working at the same time:

1. I enjoy researching. I already know that I love reading and writing, but researching is another thing. It’s reading and writing with one purpose only. The topic of the research. To have the topic in mind and try to find the sources, then read it and find the bits of information in the sources, then put it together to make one paragraph that makes sense. That’s researching.
2. Research world is another world full of people that are trying to figure out what’s going on in the world we live in. There’s so little that one can find and do a research on, but it’s contributing to the whole book of knowledge we have as human race.
3. Journals and articles are expensive. Not to be disrespectful of the researchers that have worked so hard on theories, but I think knowledge shouldn’t be expensive, and even should be free. There’s no point in finding mind-blowing facts if there’s no one that reads or knows them. (I used the famous sci-hub to access locked journals, but now it’s gone…)
4. It takes time. Research involves reading hard-to-understand journals, synthesizing and writing, collecting data, analyzing data, and understand the research process itself. For me, I learned it as I was doing the work. I learn time management. I have to do time management for real this time. I took the ‘wake up and do your most important work in the morning’ advice to heart, woke up at 4, wrote 300 words of synthesized sentences into my Word document, then get ready for work at 5, and out the door at 6 to catch the 6.15 bus. That is an ideal morning.
5. The hardest part for me is the data collection part (because I’m doing a quantitative research). I’m an introvert, and my social energy level would be zero after work. So I reached out to people I know on my chat group and social media. I think I should’ve hired someone to collect data…

In conclusion, I love researching. I could’ve done better if it wasn’t for the internship.

Hi, I’m Fike. I am an Indonesian girl living in Jakarta. Currently an Information Systems student and an intern. I love reading, writing, and learning.