Question

How did you become more confident in your research ability?

Answer 1

Doing original research is mostly just a matter of curiosity. You ask questions and try to figure out the answers to them.

At first the questions you ask are simplistic or naive (although you don't know that yet) and you can find the answers in textbooks or by asking your professors.

Eventually, after you learn more, the questions you ask will become harder to answer, and you'll have to search through increasingly obscure academic literature in order to find the answers. At some point you won't be able to find the answers in the literature at all, or the existing answers will be disatisfying. At that point youre doing original research.

One thing that happens to a lot of students is that they "discover" something new only to later find out that someone else figured it out a while ago. Don't despair if this happens; rediscovering good solutions to interesting problems is a sure sign of growing intellectual maturity, and it's only a matter of time before you start answering questions that nobody else has tackled yet.

Answer 2

Although, I wasn't super doubtful of doing any original research, I was really scared that I wouldn't be able to make arguments that require few steps of original thinking.

There's no other way to obtain confidence to take up research projects and keep doing them until it works. I ended up finding new results and thought maube it isn't as hard.

Although, this fear will catch up to you from time to time, but you should remember that if you have ever had an original idea, you can have it again.

Answer 3

It's really not that different or difficult. Just understand the topic well (something you have to as an undergrad too) and then do some problem solving (again, you have to do this as an undergrad as well). If your supervisor sends you in the right directions, that's all you need to do in the beginning of your research career. Over the time, as you become an expert, sure, you need to ask the right questions and all that. But the beginning is not that scary and should not seem unnecessarily daunting and I hope putting it bluntly like this helps you avoid future imposter syndrome.

Answer 4

I’m so happy you’re just starting this journey, buckle up, it will be fun!

Generally there is no point where you “start” to produce original work, it’s just practice. When you’re learning and absorbing information, you focus more on remembering new knowledge and being able to use it in new settings. That’s just how it works when you join a new field.

You will start noticing some logic in the ideas, what leads one thing to another, how structure of your process as researcher affects the outcome of your work, which methods work for you to see the things in the perspectives that can spark new ideas.

At first you won’t be confident AT ALL in such ideas, your subconscious won’t even raise those ideas because they would seem so naive or you will feel imposter syndrome. But with more knowledge and reflection you will start closing those mental gaps, by working with successful more senior researchers you will pick up mental processes that they use and start understanding what is “worth trying” and what is “a waste of time”. Confidence will just be proportionate to amount of time you spent on it.

Of course you won’t be 100% right all the time, but with enough peer feedback you will get into that ballpark area where you can consistently produce high value work.

Just another small but very important point. Almost all of the major discoveries are people being in the right time in the right place with the right tools and INSANE amount of creativity (aka always wondering if a situation has more information than we already accepted as a fact). So with more time you will have more opportunities to spot novel ideas, while hard work will give you the foundation where to draw your creativity out.

Cheers!

Answer 5

Get better at research.