"Happiness is like a cat. If you coax it or call it, it will avoid you. It will never come. But if you pay not attention to it and go about your business, you'll find it rubbing up against your legs and jumping into your lap." - William J. Bennett....
Well....happiness at least as far as research is concerned is a bitch.....if you coax it,it will avoid u...if you don't pay attention, it will return to bite you harder...As they say" pay back is a bitch"...Having been at the receiving end of it, i can quite confess that its so damn true....After years of working your heart out, you are left with nothing in hand.....
These typical undergraduate research projects are the result of both curiosity and necessity..Many people who enter into IIT are confused as to what to do in their lives and i am no exception..So one needs to set out and explore various researching options before a decision on one's career is made.....The curiosity part of it is to identify one's interests.....( Something i dint do while selecting my undergrad stream)...and the necessity part of it is for getting admissions into top Ivy league universities...Everyone's dream...Just like how a management guy would dream of an IIT + IIM combo......
But what one fails to realize is that the magnitude of research done by a person is not determined by the number of research papers published by the guy but the quality of those papers. And one should always research about the topics in depth and not start a project generally just because the topic is the hot area of research currently...
After spending about a year and a half of slogging, you come to certain conclusions about research...
1. Never expect rewards...once you have achieved your results,it will take you about a year to year and a half to get it published and by the time if anyone else publishes it --------> :P
2. Almost all research you would be doing in the lab has no direct connection whatsoever with your daily life...
3. In spite of putting the extra efforts, you invariably get paid much lesser than your peers who chose the management line..
4.Seeing all your other friends who had started projects along with you give up, your enthu levels go down drastically and you are left to drag along...
5. After about a year of research, one might get fed up with the kind of work he is doing leading to increased frustration levels eventually leading to misunderstanding between you and prof...
Sadly the weakest link when it comes to doing part time research in the undergraduate situation are the MS scholars and PhD scholars with whom we work with....These people are usually dumb buggers who don't care about research and come into IIT just for the sake of a degree....However, i don't deny the fact that there are a few people who are really oriented towards research and work with dedication. They are just difficult to spot and our case stands out to be the best example of Murphy's law.......
Once u start working under these MS scholars, u become their slave..doing all sorts of meaningless things and by the time by the time you start to have a feel of research and wear your thinking caps on, the bad time begins....
The MS scholars do not understand the ideas being put forth by us and arises an ego clash...U overcome these scholars and present your idea to the prof and he is impressed...He now asks you to work with the MS scholar to generate results....BANG...The MS scholar ensures that your life is screwed..
You still manage to get results and present it to the prof...the prof is happy and asks you to write a paper to be published. You become so excited that your work has paid off at last..but wait for it..he rejects your attempt at the paper and asks u to work with the MS scholar to generate the paper...Screwed again..The MS scholar comes out with such bizarre responses like " I have personal work for three months...Come after that, i might try looking at it".." or..i am going out of station this week end..come next month.... "..Again u try to overcome the MS scholar and go to the prof repeatedly..He becomes very irritated and throws us out the lab.... Story ends there...
Fault lies on both the sides of faculties and students..
Students must be more patient in general and profs must realize that the time has long gone when someone did research for pure passion and expect no results...At the end of the day, everyone wants to keep their profiles shining and appealing....Substance is important true..But a little bit of glamor is necessary too...
I wasn't trying to put across any advice...its just my sad story....
