Letting Go of Senior Research

What came before and what comes after aren’t always clear. Photo credit: Isabel Wong.

Registration always seems to sneak up on me, even this semester’s when the date was pushed back. As I juggled Core requirements and classes I’ve been eyeing since sophomore year, I kept circling back to one course in particular, Senior Seminar. In my very first post, I talked about why I ultimately chose to conduct senior research. The first leg of the journey behind me, I now must decide whether to continue.

My decision to end where I am was seemingly easy to make despite its rather unreliable basis. What made the decision easy was that, if I am completely honest with myself, I didn’t particularly enjoy conducting research this semester. This is not to say I didn’t enjoy Senior Seminar. I loved Senior Seminar. It was one of my favorite classes. The professor was enthusiastic and rigorous and understanding, everything you could want in a professor, particularly during a pandemic. Our seminar was quite small, and I genuinely enjoyed talking with my peers, hearing about their projects and lives. While I’ve had classes with each of them before, I now feel like I have genuine friends with whom I can eat lunch, stress, and rely. 

Despite wanting to spend another semester working with both the professor and my classmates, it was actually one of my peers who made me realize that while I loved the class, I didn’t love research. We were messaging back and forth, asking whether the other was going to re-enroll. She was interested in continuing her research but was worried about all her other courses. Because she enjoyed research, she had a tendency to ignore all her other work as she pursued its endless paths. When she told me this, I realized that I did the opposite. Rather than lean into research, I found every excuse to avoid it, whether that be readings for other classes, peer editing other people’s essays, or helping cook dinner. 

Talking with my friend put into relief what I suppose I already knew but didn’t want to admit. Research is not something I look forward to nor is it a priority in my life. As I thought about how else I plan to spend my time next semester, classes, jobs, extracurriculars, the very real reality that I will still be applying for post-graduate jobs, not to mention cooking, laundry, groceries, etc., I realized that I am either unwilling or unable to give these activities up. For each activity not strictly necessary, when measured up against senior research, I found myself choosing the former rather than the latter. On my priority list, senior research is the last item. It is something I am willing and able to let go.

Despite feeling okay about my priority list, I feel very doubtful about the circumstances upon which senior research’s ranking lies. I can’t be sure how greatly the abnormal circumstances and stresses of this semester affected my ability and willingness to do senior research. With time zone differences, my sleep schedule was even more jagged than usual, alarms ringing throughout the day and night. My family was dealing with its own health issues, which the pandemic only made more stressful and difficult to handle. Coupled with the usual academic stress of a semester, I was exhausted much of the time, physically, mentally, and emotionally. 

With my schedule set to stabilize and the familial health issues concluded, I can’t help but wonder if perhaps my relationship to research could be different next semester. Perhaps with more time and more emotional and mental capacity, I’ll find the concentration and energy to dive into research. How much of my research experience this past semester was due to circumstance?

I’ll never know. While I do worry that I’m passing by an opportunity, that this last semester was simply a rough one and not a sturdy basis upon which to make decisions for the next, I also feel okay with my choice. In many ways, not much has changed from last semester. We’re still in a pandemic. The familial health issues, while no longer present, carry their own legacies of grief that will require their own space. 

It is my last semester at Columbia. There’s no time to waste doing what I feel I should do rather than what I would like to do, at least when the choice is mine. These are the activities I’m interested in. This is how I am choosing to spend my time. This is where I am right now. 

This entry was posted in Senior Thesis, Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.