{"id":3225,"date":"2019-11-27T13:49:15","date_gmt":"2019-11-27T13:49:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/what-motivates-you-to-do-research-9-researchers-share-their-thoughts\/"},"modified":"2025-01-15T06:31:11","modified_gmt":"2025-01-15T06:31:11","slug":"what-motivates-you-research-9-researchers-share-their-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/what-motivates-you-research-9-researchers-share-their-thoughts","title":{"rendered":"What motivates you to do research? 9 Researchers share their thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"

During my undergraduate and postgraduate years, my circle of friends included a few people who were pursuing their PhD degrees. It was easy to see how our lives differed. My days were filled with classes and assignments (and quite a bit of free time), while theirs was mostly free time. Or so I thought. They got paid for studying, while I made no money off of my efforts. So, the grass definitely seemed greener on the PhD patch. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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However as time passed and my friendships became deeper, I realized how many strings were attached to pursuing a PhD. It was not a simple matter of choosing a question or an area that one wanted to focus on and diving in. There were important aspects that I had failed to consider \u2014 like the importance of the dynamics in the relationship between a supervisor and a PhD student, funding problems, the struggle to get published, the uncertainty of being able to secure a professional future within academia, demands from other parts of their lives having repercussions on their research, etc. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Despite it all, some of my friends managed to integrate it all, work through it, and submit their theses. This seemed nothing less than a Herculean feat to me, a struggling post-grad who could barely balance her course-load and the rest of her life! <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Today, my work with the Editage Insights team has brought me back to researchers again. The more I look, the more it seems that the five-or-longer years of research life are a quagmire that very few manage to escape unscathed. The initial enthusiasm almost always seems to get replaced by a sense of cynicism and depression. I became curious about what kept researchers motivated on their journey. I mined through websites and blogs and came across a few researchers who had somehow managed to (for the lack of a better word) form a whole<\/i> that served them. I reached out to a few of them, looking for answers to a couple of simple questions: <\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n