Assalamualaikum and Good Evening,
Well, this is the newest entry for this year of 2011. And to be honest, this post is talking about the differences between taking master either by research or coursework. It seems most of us seems to be a little bit confuse about what path for them to take. Of course, after finished or completed your study in Bachelor Degree, you somehow felt that it is still long way to go in this world of knowledge. You want to contribute something even though you notice that you are not about to make money but for the sake of our grandson in the future, you want to make their life better by improving their lifestyle. One of the path is by taking master and phd or just become a plain researcher to produce better product.
Here the cycle, as a researcher, you might start with a fundamental problem that you need to tackle. From that, within 2 or 3 years of doing your research, you found something interesting and start publishing your paper about it. Then, various company or stakeholders or the government that gave your supervisor/university the grant will try to start developing product. Of course, at first you need to be clear whether you can patent your finding or not. Because it depends on the people or institution that gave you the money. Depend on agreement you’ve made with them, from the first time you signed agreement to do your research. Of course, money is important in order to pay you for your research. Without money, how you could ever survive doing research 24/7.
So, a product will come at last and then the people out there will start to buy it. And then the next cycle continue and research, company, government and others will start play their roles.
Back to the topic, you are choosing your dream to become one of the Nobel recipient by upgrading your degree to the higher one. but you need to choose which path. Either by coursework or research. And I want to list them again even though I’ve made this article few months ago but this article seems to be a little bit upgrade.
We start by research because this is the path that I’ve chose. To earn your master by research actually takes longer than the by coursework. It depends. Somehow you can graduated at the same time as the coursework because you are smart or you are not smart. Why? You are 100% control of your research. If you are good at it, then for sure you are going to excel at it and complete your master by research within a year or 1 and half year. That is for smart people and we always thanks to them because we have a brilliant people there. But for a normal people or maybe above average just like myself, I’ve manged to complete my master by research within 2 years and half. Actually, I’ve completed it within 1 year and half but for 1 year, I’ve just need to write my thesis and took longer just to fix my broken english. I’m so sorry if my english is not for some of you. But, I’m about to improve it from time to time. Even though I don’t have enough time to go to English class. But , I’m trying to fix it.
And then, what so smart about taking master by research, is you are going to publish some papers either in conferences or journal articles. For sure you guys should have known that journal is a little bit complicated because their reviewers area really from the expert. Maybe four to five people (that have Professorships maybe) to review your lame paper. Then, you got rejected because of your poor writing skills, bad english, not enough graph, not enough evidence, lack contents, etc. But fear not, that is normal, all you have to do is to fix it. That is what everyone does. That is what all the Professor out there has been through. 20 years ago, they are also not good at it, but finally they continue to struggle to write and fix the paper. That is also why they were Professor. They were given the status because of their experience in their area. Hence, you will learn a good skill = writing papers/articles,etc
Next fun things about doing research, you are in control of your own research life. You are not about to go to the class and learn some boring stuff but you are on your own track of research. You are about to do what you like at most because research is something that you have chose before. You find a right supervisor with the research that you like and you start doing and digging the web about it. You learn what you are supposed to learn. You are doing well and better than everyone in the class. Compared to the coursework, they are going to learn all stuff and what they are going to do in their final semester is to make a simple project. That is all for coursework, but for research, you are about to pull out new or improve theory about some stuff. You contributing to human history, and your name at least is one among the researchers that will help other researchers to find something. Imagine, the technology of collision detection for example. Today you help by finding the best possible theory and algorithm to improve the speed of collision by maximizing the potential use of Bounding-Volume with the Distance Computation algorithm. Later in the future, somebody, based on one of your finding, will help that future researcher to produce more efficient algorithm. Thanks to you that you have helped him to save a lot of time and all he got to do is to improve it. Research is something that always fun and that is why most of researchers intend to stay until late night because they are doing something fun in their life. Research is their life. Nobody cannot say “NO” to research, You neighbor, mother, father, son, and every human in this world is doing research. For example, person A want to travel to the north, all he has to do is to find the transportation, fare cost, and any other cost. He needs to have a good budget for him to travel. If it is not, then he might just do a small research. Just to think when to start traveling is also a research.
Now, back to the topic again, clearly, doing research is good for anybody, even though it might takes longer than the coursework, but it is fun and you are contributing more than the coursework. You helping people a lot more and your understand better than other people. And doing research is not all alone. You need to find other researcher in the same area and discuss from time to time. One of the nearest is your supervisor. Make your supervisor your close friend. This is to develop a good interest in research.
You also might realize that when doing research, you can travel to the country you might not have been. This can be done if your supervisor have a research grant, and most supervisor did have a research grant, at least one. So, using the budget, you can publish paper to any conference in this world as long as it is good to be there. Publish to the high impact conference is good for your research. Once you presenting your ideas, people will start asking you. Compared to the non-high impact research conference that mix all in one, you might not have a better chance of getting feedback about your research. And most conference just want to take your money, so better be careful in publishing your paper. But somehow it is nice to present the paper in no-so-high impact conference. Why? because you have never been to country A, so all you need to do is to write up a just so-so paper and send for acceptance (mostly they will 99% accept it if your paper included 3 basic stuff – contribution, graph, analysis). So, you can go and have a nice holiday free of charge at the Country A.
Doing research is also depend on what kind of supervisor you have chosen. You must be able to choose a good supervisor to supervise your work. Because your supervisor must be someone that can grab you when you fall down. it is supervisor responsible to train somebody to become a good researcher. Otherwise, that supervisor is just meant to be just an ordinary lecturer and not a good researcher. Btw, there is a lot of stuff you can do if it is happened you have supervisor like that = just be honest. Tell him that you are not understand and want to discuss, make him or her (your supervisor) realize their roles in supervising their master/PhD student. Act now and don’t wait.
Momentum for doing master also important for you guys out there. As a researcher, somehow you must managed your time and vacation properly. Don’t take so long vacation because that just make you become lazy when the vacation is over. it is true, It already had been my worse nightmare and it took me almost 2 weeks to recover and start doing some research. But, I realized that later and keep my momentum always in standard mode so I can back in the research work that I’ve been left out before went for vacation.
So, there is a lot of stuff you need to do when doing your research but it is fun if you really like to do research. Trust me, research is part of our life, and it is our responsible to keep the research going in our daily life. That is for today, thanks for reading my blog. Thank you.
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