Transcripts
1. Introduction: What does it mean to do proper research? And what does it mean to find out something that you didn't know before? And how do you actually go about thinking about somebody subjects in the humanities like philosophy, history, and literature, these disciplines are inherently tricky. And sometimes schools and institutions and universities, they don't necessarily spend enough time talking about how exactly to face these disciplines or to do research in these disciplines, or to read some of the texts from these disciplines, light and the stars who ought and over the last four years have been sharing various insights on how to reading to the humanities and how to be a better student in the humanities on YouTube. A longer journey, I've picked up various techniques, tricks, and academic research scales that I've been actively making into video essay. So my channel, most of the scales that we need a students to dive deeply into the subjects we love. Most academic research skills warrant exactly explicitly taught at universities. There might be classes here and narrative teach your give you a little bit direction here and there on how to dive into research, how to formulate arguments, have to write something out on paper. But most of these classes are counterproductive, if not downright useless. So this course, in a sense, is a compilation of all that I've learned over the past four years, both on YouTube and in my own personal academic journey. And I really want to keep everything in one place in one course. So in this course, we're going to tackle things like how to read an academic paper, how to go about finding academic papers and resources that you can use to point you to write papers and write articles for research. We're also going to cover the critical distinction between linchpin tests and primary texts, along with a lot of techniques for how to mark up a book, how to read deeper into an argument and how to add last formulate your own arguments. So if you've enjoyed some of my videos on YouTube, I'm sure you'll like this course too, and there's no time to waste. Let's get the class started.
2. Why Study The Humanities? : So I think before diving into the nitty-gritties, before diving into the nerdy to talents is more important for us to first of all, establish a very firm reason for studying the humanities, or established a very firm rationale for why the humanities are important in the 21st century. Because on a surface, it could seem like Audi odds are against us or on the tides are against us because the humanities and the 21st century, first of all, there's no guaranteed employment opportunity. And there's no guaranteed the Great I could use to boost your prestige. There's not exactly anything out there that's directly related to your course. For example, if you're a history major, there's not going to be exactly one career path that's designed for a history graduate, or that's exactly designed for a philosophy graduate or literature, Literature Degree student. So it could seem like you're shooting yourself in the foot by studying some of these subjects in the humanities. It could seem like that you're wasting your time. But in this first video of this class, I want to convince you that it is not the case. And I want to convince you that studying the humanities might just be the best decision that you've ever made or undertaking a liberal arts degree might just be the best decision to Have you ever made in your life. So it, my own journey of investigating deeply into the humanities, into philosophy, and into literature started when I was in the 11th grade. And back then I had the ambition of becoming an engineer or studying physics and to your role myself into a Bachelor of Science degree. But then halfway through the semester, I came to a hardware realization, which was that the course itself had nothing to do with understanding the subjects, with understanding the logic of mathematics or with understanding the principles of physics. The foundation of the course was rather a course that forced us to utilize the mathematical abilities or utilized the skills in engineering or just goes in physics for a specific outcome, for very concrete outcome in high school, the outcome for me was getting the perfect rate. The outcome was asean exam, which for me just wasn't a very fun way to go about education. Hours status should have spent understanding the subject were spent on drills and repetitive practices that NBN didn't exactly Yoda and a better understanding in a utilitarian sense, these drills very helpful during a sense very conducive to getting the perfect test score. But in terms of understanding, at the end of every class, I walked out of those classes and I felt like I didn't understand a thing. And when I asked the teachers, why are we doing this? When I asked the teachers, you know, why exactly are we speeding along the course, why are exactly rushing or understanding? And the responses that I've received had always been just follow along the coursework. Just don't ask too many questions and just finish your homework and your exam and that entire resume and left me very dissatisfied with my own education because my core, one of my core values is understanding. So what's the point of studying the subjects that I don't really understand them. On a brink of the 12th grade, I enrolled myself into a course called extended investigations. And alongside data, pulled out of all of my pre-engineering courses into the humanities. And that's where I started studying subjects like literature, like history, like linguistics and philosophy. And it's one unit called extended investigations, in a sense, really opened up the door for me to do further research into this problem of what is education for. At the end of the course, we had to present a mini thesis on some of our findings. But a large part of this course was in a sense, an independent research project of throwing you into the deep end. Hopefully that you could find out some essential truth about some subject. So I went into this class with the intention of figuring out what is education for. And that led me down a rabbit hole of designing and doing a genealogy on a history of the SAT as it was finished in that course. As I was doing that research, I came to had with the number one enemy or to number one bogeyman in all of academic research, which is confusion. That period of finding papers, that period of reading papers send out, period of dealing with this intellectual uncertainty, on one hand, scared the crap out of me. But on the other hand, a sense subconsciously taught me some of the most useful skills when it comes down to academic research. And after that entire year, I finished writing my findings. I finished writing up my research and presented a research in front of a panel and ended up receiving the subject award as the best student in a class, alongside some more academic skills from this class, I think what's more valuable for me that I've got I took away from this class was a sense of intellectual curiosity. I've regained that curiosity of learning through this process of research, through this process of diving into something that I didn't know anything about before. But nevertheless, had Anna was able to figure out some order or figure out some pattern, or figure out some kind of intellectual understanding out of it. And throughout that research, I think my understanding of the term humanities, my understanding of the term literature, philosophy, and history. Are they in a sense, took on brand new meanings. For me, the humanities are not just old books. The humanities are not just poets, are not just separate pieces of really old classical novels or philosophical treatises there in a sense, lenses that you could utilize to look at a world. We live in an age of information overload. There's too much coming our way and there are a lot of opinions out there that you needed sit through and there's a lot of layers to, to societal game that we're playing. In a sense, being a student in literature, in philosophy or in history is not just being someone a recite, a lot of academic faxing, that's very, very technical and very nebulous subjects. But it's in a sense, fundamentally being the kind of person that can reason from multiple perspectives is being a person that's comfortable with dealing with intellectual uncertainty and comfortable sifting through a lot of the confusion, lot of the uncertain periods as to not lending some dull and definitive understanding. This entire journey of research or this entire journey of wrestling with the humanities is in a sense, a really good workout for your brain. Soda upon graduation, when you go out into the real-world, you're able to process information, or you're able to look at problems within society with a brand new appreciation and with a brand new kind of understanding. Open-mindedness right now is increasingly rare in our society because we have so many things that are trying to anchor us down to some setting stone understanding that are trying to ground us in some absolute truth. And without the ability to critically snap out of your paradigm, or without the ability to critically switch between different perspectives, you are in a sense at risk of receiving a lot of stupid opinions and just running with them. In a sense, the humanities for me, is a way to Jailbreak your mind, is a way for you to relate to problems in society with a brand new pair, fresh eyes, with a brand new sense of appreciation and with a brand new kind of complex thinking to specific problems. So in a sense, the humanities is your antidote to information overload the humanities as subjects, as disciplines and ask ways of thinking are your freedom tickets to a more intellectually stimulating world and to reason through things, I had to look up problems in a very nuanced way and aloneness process of understanding. You also receive revelations and insights into the world, into people, into society that are very inherently rewarding, very inherently stimulating, and very inherently satisfying. So in conclusion, I'm very excited to take you along for the ride and to equip you with some of the skills that you need to be debt free thinker to be that critical thinker who's able to look at problems with nuance. I'll see you in the next lesson.
3. Redefining The Essay: I think before we start talking about the actual basics of academic writing, academic research, how to read deeper into the humanities, how to read literature, how to read history, how to read philosophy, and eventually how to write an essay in response to one of these topics, we have to redefine a word, essay. Essay as a word has a kind of connotation around university studies, around, you know, academic research. That's kinda like the thing that everyone's afraid of. Bread. You go into a course, you heading to a sociology course, a philosophy course, or a history course, we're literature course. Dominant form of assessment is going to be an essay. Your dominant form of demonstrating understanding is going to be NSA, could be 1500 words, law, could be 2000 words law could be longer. In certain research projects. I just feel like universities and academic institutions had research facilities. They don't necessarily have quite a concrete understanding of what an essay really is. Or undergrad students or grad students, even I don't think they have quiet a strong understanding of this word essay. What does it mean to write an essay? That's the topic of this class or this lesson of this course. To understand word essay, we have to first of all, trace, well, trace the origin of the word. So the word essay came to us from the French word SEA, means to try to understand a subject is to try to understand it and to investigate a subject is to try to derive a deeper understanding out of it. So hence, if we take this understanding of the essay and pinpointed to a very, very eloquent French writer. He's name was misread the main thing. And I think multi-line had a really, really interesting life story. So after the death of his father, he was trying to overcome some person who ministers. And he basically withdrew himself into his little village until a little village where he grew up. And he basically said to himself, here's my village and the village she have a vast library where India's vast library. He could read whatever he wants to. He could think about whatever it wants to think about. And then he can write about whatever he's thinking. Typically, if you finished high school, if you, if you're a university student, when I say the word essay, there's a connotation of kinda like a perfection, right? Here's a piece of essay that you're supposed to submit and that you're supposed to get a great mark out of necessity. You have to perfect the craft of writing an essay. You have to structure argument in such a way that you feel like you know what you're talking about. But if we take the connotation of SCA to try, the definition of the essay becomes quite blurry. So from the perspective of Michel de Montaigne, the essay was basically a forum for him to figure out certain subjects that he's confused about or certain subjects He's interested in. And like I said, he had the means to withdraw himself into a little village where he had all the resources out of books and ADA should I said support that he needs to contemplate or mall already subjects. These essays are not structured. These essays are in a sense nonlinear. These S's are in a sense just collections of scattered thoughts. And India attempts of doing so, or India attempts of trying, of SCA, of trying to figure out a deeper level of understanding. We have this book in our hands. So I really want you to rethink the definition, or you're a definition of an essay. Because universities, high schools, and research institutions, they don't necessarily, they won't necessarily teach it as the central truth about what it means to write an essay. For me, what it means to write an essay is to dive into a subject that you knew next to nothing about and to figure out a layer of understanding, what's interesting here is that this layer of understanding is something that you probably didn't have before, is something that you probably have to figure out as you write the essay, as you try to understand a subject. And the act of writing the essay is you deepening your level of understanding of the subject. So really think about this and contemplate the consequences of this redefinition of the essay. When you sit down to write an essay, like, oh, if this ridiculous idea, you have to craft a perfect argument. To perfect subject, to perfect research. Load your essay up with quotes that you know next to nothing about. Forget about writing an essay that's supposed to be an epitome of academic understanding. Writing an essay is simply a method, or it's simply a way for you to dive into the subject and to figure out an extra layer of understanding that you didn't have before. So treat the act of writing an essay has an active investigation of something that you are trying SEO, trying to figure out something that you didn't know before. So the act of writing will become a lot less stressful, a lot less on your nerves, so to speak. If you treat essay writing with this, with this frame of, from a viewing. And we're not denying the fact that writing an SOP stressful, writing an essay could be, there will be times where you feel like I'm so confused. I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't know what source such as site. I don't know how to tackle the subject. I know nothing about the subject, but just rest in a security that at some point, you'll figure it out. At some point, if you spend enough time with the subject, if you spend enough time reading the papers, if you spend enough time trying to write up an argument that at first might not sound that fascinating, might not sound that interesting. Eventually, just the act of writing an essay will deepen your understanding. So the conclusion at the end of this episode or just lesson. Remember that when you're writing an essay, treat the writing, the act of writing itself as an act of exploration, as an act of diving into something that you didn't know before as an act of intellectual freedom or intellectual adventure. So that's really the best thing you could do for your paper writing.
4. Gathering Your Resources: Welcome to this lesson on how to gather your resources. And I think it's really important for us to talk about this time around, talk about the actual mechanics of research and some resources where one of the resources that I personally really, really enjoy when it comes down to doing a research. So before you dive into a piece of research, you have to understand what exactly you're doing. What exactly are you doing by researching to a subject? What do you exactly doing by diving into something or constructing an argument out of something, or researching into something that you didn't know before. So essentially, we have to understand here, especially if you're at a undergrad level or even grad level, is that you're trying to bridge a gap of understanding. You're trying to bridge something that's new or for undergrad level, it's something that's not entirely new. And for poststrata level, you're supposed to use existing knowledge to identify a gap in the research or to identify a topic that people had never looked into before or identify a specific novel viewpoint that you're trying to demonstrate or particular kinda understanding that you're trying to demonstrate her professors. Essentially. One thing that you cannot escape from is the fact that you have to engage with secondary sources. You have to engage with the thoughts of other academics, or you have to engage with the other thoughts of people, Other thoughts of other research in the area. And for those of you who are not in universities, or for those of you who are not exactly humanities students, this lesson could still be helpful in that it is a really good way for you to read deeper into a book that you're reading. Read deeper into, should I say, the academic aspect of a specific text or of a specific poem or specific philosophical treatise. So to understand the groundwork here, you essentially have to scout out what's been already done before you could argue your point, before you could have a cohesive argument, before you could argue in a way that's not completely ridiculous. Secondary research is in a sense, setting a boundary for your arguments, setting a boundary for your essays, viewpoint for your very specific individual, unique viewpoint. And the first step to get to that viewpoint is for you to construct a pull of understanding or pull of research or pull of papers. And this, I think it's one of the most important first steps to understanding a subject, to understanding that this course around the topic that you're tackling a discourse around. A specific topic that you're writing for, for your essay is specific subject. Metaphysics. We're like literature or a poem that you're deciphering. Having this poll of research prevents you from just going off into the clouds and arguing about something that's completely ridiculous. So here's some resources, some tips, and some strategies for you to find this pool of understanding. And at the end of this video, I'm going to present you with a metaphor or an analogy. So the first resource that I'm going to point you to is J store or this academic research platform that I think all students or all university students and all grad students. Or if you're just a layman with a library card access, you should be able to get your hands on this website. So I think J store a, my, my opinion is the gold standard for academic catalogs. And I think this is just such a fantastic resource that you should look into course you could use Google Scholar, of course you could use ProQuest or many other things which I'll link down in the description down below. But I think J store. The reason why I love J store so much is because you can actually automatically site whatever paper that you want to, you want to include in our paper. So right here on the screen you can see the cite this paper in MLA, Chicago, APA. And I'll talk about citing in a second. But citing is one of the things that stop a lot of students from really engaging with their sources. At first, you want to identify the keywords at the subject you're researching into. For example, currently I'm working on a paper on Michel Foucault and the concepts of Sigmund Freud. So it's comparison between fucose view on sexuality and Sigmund Freud's view points on sexuality. So right here I have keyword as scientists, sexual Alice and psi intrasexual Alice is a term that Foucault used to describe this temptation to analyze sex or temptation to medicalized sex. So if I search a science, your sexual Alice, there are a lot of these papers that will pop up that are potentially helpful for my research. And what you wanna do at this point of your research is to gather as many of these papers as possible. Over time, you develop this intuition for how to pick, pick up the right one. But at first, especially when you don't know anything about the subject, you want to gather as many of these papers as possible. So for example, over here we have a comparison between Friedrich Nietzsche and the concept of cyano sexual Alice. And I think that's potentially interesting. So what you wanna do is that you want to download this paper and you want to copy your citations. So my recommendation is for you to copy the citation into a separate document straight away. So right here, I have a Word document with all of my citations for this specific paper. So it's basically the title of the paper or some, some preliminary notes on the paper and then to full reference. So you really need to watch out for it, the style of referencing your day you need to use for your paper. So essentially copy down the relevancy of this paper and then copy down a citation in a separate document. And through this process of gathering resources, through this process of copying down a citation Already, later on, when you're writing a paper, you have a lot less to stress about. You have a lot more time to dedicate time to your writing and your construction of your argument, then worrying about all of these technical citations. So I would recommend you to do your citations before you even start writing the essay. So copy down a citation. And for J store, they actually have just a citation button right there. You could click inside it straight away. That's why I love this website so, so much. And I actually recommend you to gather all of these resources, gather all of these papers. You know, a few days before you start writing the essay, a few days before you construct your argument, a few days before. Well, a way ahead of the submission date. So that's where a lot of students go wrong, is that beta leave the essay to like three to four days before the due date and a freak out about constructing a perfect argument preparation work here is very important. And the most important preparation work that you could do for your paper is to gather list, giant list of resources for you to use for your reference back to. And this is going to be your backbone to your research, to constructing your paper, to construct your essay. But if you've done scouting before, There's this technique where you have to scout out a landscape. You have to put specific markers in that landscape for you to, in order for you to get a general sense of what the landscape is out there is like this method right here, is essentially you scouting now the general feature of the landscape, that general terrain of the landscape before you could do a lot of surveying work and gathering these papers will also, in a sense, a narrow down your focus of research, narrowed down your frame of research. Because sometimes you'll have an idea and this idea isn't exactly going to work. But you don't know that unless you actually engage with somebody's existing research and a hallmark of a really great essays that it has a very defined scope, focus it has, it has a very defined scope of discussion. So if you want to have a very sharp point for your research, if you haven't, if you want to have a really good entry point to writing this essay, or an entry point to understanding to subtract. Scouting out the landscape is very important. Scouting out what's out there? There are crocodiles out there. What kind of trees other out there? What's the landscape like out there? Only with security, with that sort of confidence in your scope. Can you move on to the next step which is reading these papers? And I'm going to leave that to the next lesson. So stay tuned.
5. On Reading: Linchpin Texts: So in this lesson, I think it's very important for us to address the distinction between source texts and linchpin texts and source types and lynch pin texts. There are two very different things. This distinction alone, it's going to set up the entire foundation of your analyses or have your arguments and the content of your paper. So long story, short source texts are in a sense, your raw data, your raw points or your rotting formation. Now you are trying to mold and understanding out of this could be a play, it could be a poem, could be a novel that you're studying as a part of your literature degree, could be a period of history that you're trying to tease out some understanding out of from a history course. And it could be a piece of artwork if you're studying art history, some call it primary sources work the primary test. This is something that is, in a sense unstructured in nature, or there could be some structure to it. But a structure is, in a sense, not inherent to this piece of text itself. And the structure itself has to rely on interpretation. Does structures, how has to rely on interpretations of scholars, interpretations of art critics, literary critics and poems to critics of poems. So in a sense, in a process of engaging with primary texts, in a process of engaging with these forms of literature or forms of poetic devices and forms of, should I say source events. You are getting yourself ready to draw some conclusions here. We're getting yourself ready to draw some inferences, to draw some understanding, more to mold and understanding out of this undifferentiated ball of chaos. And a very good rule of thumb here is to recognize primary sources or primary texts as pieces of artistic creation or pieces of events that don't seem to have a structure to it. First place, academic research in literature and in humanities is essentially trying to piece together a piece of cohesive understanding out of something that didn't have that cohesion before. And a roll of the scholar is to help his fellow men to understand the hidden devices were to hidden patterns within these pieces of literature, pieces of novels and pieces of poems. And that is going to bring us over to lynch pin texts or secondary texts or secondary sources. Linchpin texts are essentially attempts of making sense of the world. Attempts of conceptualizing reality or attempts of reducing art down to a piece of theory or reducing history down two systems of thoughts. Some very common books within the linchpin text category could be Philosophy treatise, could be academic journals, could be art reference books, or it could be pieces of literary criticism. The beautiful thing with secondary texts or linchpin texts, is that these theories are in a sense, cross-disciplinary and understanding of metaphysics or epistomology, for example, in philosophy, could innocence be applied to the reading of a poem by Emily Dickinson? A piece of interpretation of history, in a sense be applied to the reading of a novel. But you do have to keep in mind that the linchpin texts are, in a sense, more difficult to read. Linchpin texts are not designed for you to engage with it in a very artistic manner. Linchpin texts are in a sense, your lens to look at reality or your way of interpreting the source. Now, for those of you who have a prescription glasses, I mean, I do. There's going to be a period where when you get a new pair of glasses, There's going to be a period of adjustment. There's going to be a period where when you look out of your classes, you're not exactly used to it. You're not used to, to wait. Not used to how light reflects into your eyes with your new pair of glasses. That period of adjustment is something that you have to put up with whenever you're engaging with one of these Lynch contests. The entire function of these linchpin texts is to alter your perception on reality, is to alter your way of viewing certain piece of literature. Your original viewpoint might be proven wrong, might be proven to be problematic. And these should I say philosophical texts or the secondary criticisms, or literary criticisms are in a sense, scurrying on a new lens for you to view the world in a very, very nuanced and very new way. And a process is not going to be comfortable, and a process isn't exactly going to be that pleasurable. But here's the cool thing about lunch contexts is that you could actually apply the insights from one lynchpin text to multiple primary texts or source texts. In essence, the intellectual heavy lifting when you're engaging with, for example, a piece of philosophical treatise by Foucault or when you're engaging with, for example, being and nothingness budget on that intellectual heavy lifting is in a sense, something that you can keep with you forever. It is a lens for you to keep to view the world from the lens of that philosopher. And then when you read a piece of source texts, when you read a piece of novel, when you read a piece of poem, you can then use those different lenses to view to poem width. In a sense, research, it's not just about researching to write a paper. Researches about gathering multiple perspectives, scattering multiple of these, should I say linchpin texts. So you have the freedom to jump between these different perspectives, but heavy lifting has to come first, the heavy lifting of engaging with these rioters, engaging or wrestling, intellectually wrestling with the concepts of Plato, Aristotle, and then eventually move your way to other philosophers. Move your way through the entire Western intellectual tradition. This heavy lifting is kinda give you the freedom to view a piece of primary test, or a piece of historical event, or a piece of literature, or a piece of poem with brand new nuance with multiple perspectives. That for me, is in a sense, the core of intellectual work to core of doing academic research is allowing yourself to freedom of multiple perspectives at allowing yourself to jump through seemingly contradictory ideas bad the end. Resolve these ideas in a very satisfying and a very conclusive way. And in this case, academic papers or to papers that I told you to gather from the last lesson. There, in a sense, attempts of bridging these two worlds, academic papers and journals. They're in a sense, responses to this bridging process between linchpin texts and secondary texts. You can read a paper on Nietzsche's interpretation of Antigone's the play. Or you can read a paper on the viewpoint of Blaise Pascal's conception and how that influenced the writing of Emily Dickinson's poems. So view your academic writing journey, or view your journey of engaging with secondary sources are engaging with academic papers as an attempt to bridge these two worlds. One world of philosophical understanding and a world of using this understanding, philosophical understanding upon a piece of representation of reality, which is a literature, which is R, which could be an eventing history. It is that bridging process that's going to breed a lot of arguments, a lot of discussions, and a lot of intellectual activity. So keep that distinction in mind. And in the next episode, we're going to be talking about how to read an academic paper and how to eventually construct your own arguments.
6. On Reading: Inspectional Reading : Welcome to this episode on the basic concepts of how to read an academic journal, how to read an academic text, and if you watched the previous lesson, how to read it linchpin taps to or how to read a primary text or how to read things had a more analytical in nature. If I am kinda surprised or not really surprised that schools didn't really exactly teach us how to do such analytical reading or how to face these academic texts. Because different books, they actually require different reading strategies for something that's a little more academic, for something that's a little bit more insightful or a little bit more difficult to read. Sometimes we tend to hit a wall because we've never dealt with these kinds of reading material before. So in this episode, I just want to give you guys a brief technique or a rundown, or a really, really good strategy for you to actually get started with the ciphering these texts that are a little bit more philosophical, little bit more academic, or a little bit more complicated to read, something different from your usual fiction that you buy from the fiction bookstore. So first of all, you have to realize that the nature of these philosophical treatise or the nature of these lynch pin tests, or the nature of these academic papers that you're going to read in preparation for writing up your arguments. They are in a sense, in themselves, presenting you with a series of arguments, a big part of understanding or philosophical understanding, intellectual understanding. It rests upon the pivot point of delivering an argument. You have to make a point to conceptualize reality. I have to make a point about reality to assert your viewpoint, to assert your novel viewpoint. And this is exactly something that you have to do when you're drafting up your paper to read these texts or to read into these pieces of work is to hold onto overall structure, hold onto this overall idea, or hold onto the big idea. Where small ideas are attached to the backbone of a grand big idea. And now I have to tell you guys a little bit about this person, this author by the name of Mortimer J. Adler, who wrote a brilliant book on how to read caught evidently how to read a book. I'll link to spoke in the description down below. If you want to check out this book, this is an amazing book on how to get more out of, should I say fiction reading? How to get more out of philosophical reading? How to get more out of reading and general, any one of the chapters in one of the more preliminary chapters, he basically talked about this idea of inspection or reading. Think of reading as charting out a territory. Think of reading as charting out of forced, should I say? Think of reading as a hiking trip. Where are you heading to a forest? When you heading to a place, you need it seeded gentle terrain first without getting lost in the weeds, so to speak, you innocence have to establish your bearing before going any deeper into the woods because you run the risk of getting lost and gatherers words. We have to, when we read, when he talks about reading, when we read, we have to resist the temptation to lose the forest for the trees, because trees could be everywhere and a peculiar looking tree could completely carried away your attention that you're actually going to lose touch with the general landscape. In the case of reading, sometimes it's easy for us to get lost in one very minor argument was forgetting the whole point of the entire paper. Typically, when you pick up an academic paper, when you pick up one of these academic journals, there's a temptation for you to read this thing in its entirety. You lost grasping onto every little argument. So over here he argued this over there, he argued that and your brain is doing just 360 where it's like it's trying to grasp on to too many pieces of information at once. Sometimes an argument might be captivating. Sometimes an argument could lead you down a rabbit hole, but back then stops you from pursuing the threat of what is, what is the general point that the papers arguing if you get lost in a tree or if you get lost in staring at one specific tree, you run the risk of not grasping onto the general argument of the paper or so in a sense, inspection or reading gives you the liberty to go through the entire paper and get a general sense of what the argument is about. Get a general sense of what the paper is talking about. And speed here is very important. And you really want to resist the temptation of trying to understand every single nuke and cranny of the paper when you're reading it for the first time, because it is not only going to drive you crazy, it is awesome, just not that useful in general. Principles of inspection or reading. First of all, you want to grasp on to the general argument of the author, general case or the general notion or the general big picture understanding of the paper. And the key with inspection we're reading is that you're trying to find a structure of the entire paper and not necessarily the content or to specific arguments. But you want to grasp onto an overall structure of the entire paper. You want to see how the arguments are organized. So reading subtitles are important if there are subtitles in DSA reading where it a paragraphs break apart. That's also very important because in a very beautifully constructed academic paper to tend to break a paragraphs in a very deliberate kind of way. And as you're reading the paper, do not do well on any specific arguments. Do not dwell on any specific point. Because that's going to stop you from grasping onto the general big picture of what the papers arguing to counteract this temptation to grasp on to every single argument to counteract this, should I say this urge to grasp on to every cranny of the paper on your first go, I'm going to introduce a guest who had technique of tabbing. So what you wanna do is that you want to buy somebody's plastic flags. You want to keep them handy and you want to keep it next to your academic paper. So whenever you encounter one of these arguments that you find really interesting, whenever you find one of these arguments or one of these points of arguments or one of these minor arguments that you find potentially interesting, don't dwell on the argument too much. Or if there's an argument that you don't quite understand, just read along. But what you wanna do here is that, so this is a paper that I wrote for the video on James Joyce or for my paper on James Joyce, which later on turning to a video, what you wanna do here is that you just want to underline the little paragraph or underlined a sentence that you found potentially interesting, potentially useful for your argument or that you didn't exactly quite understand and Mark these paragraphs using different color at flax. And then after you've marked it, forget about it, just keep on reading a paper till you finish it. If you keep a tab, this is going to in a sense, create a mental note for you to come back to this potentially interesting paragraph later on when you're doing your analytical reading. And this prevents you from absolutely going nuts over every little single detail. And what's really cool about the tagging system is that these tabs that you've established during your inspection or reading or innocence anchor points for your analytical reading. They are in their nature highlights for you to ground your understanding of the paper in their reference points. For you to then develop a really solid understanding of what the authors are arguing. And by developing the system, you can go through a lot of papers really quickly. And this is a very important thing for relevancy ratings because out of that pole of research or pull of papers that I've told you to gather. They're going to be papers that are not as relevant papers. And you can't exactly know that if you've spent so much time reading into every single argument. So what you wanna do is that you want to trading spectrum of reading as a taster or as a way of tasting these papers and as a way of establishing a very general view of the argument and through tabbing, these are your anchor points of research. Next video, we'll talk about analytical reading, and I'll see you then.
7. On Reading: Analytical Reading: Welcome to this lesson on analytical reading and analytical reading. I think it's one of the most difficult parts of reading your papers is one of the most difficult parts of doing research. And here is where most of your heavy lifting is going to come from. Here's where should I say? This is where 90 percent of the work comes in to your academic reading comes into your sifting through all the papers that you've gathered from the previous chapters. So let's just do a general overview of what we've done already to lead us to this point of conducting analytical reading. So you've gathered your sphere of a pool of research. You're pulling relevant papers to define a general scope of your research and throwing especially for reading you've innocence and narrow down this very big sphere. We're just pull of research and analytical reading is in a sense, the last step. 2, you're reading the last step to really finding the key arguments of a specific scholar and academic or an author. And I think first we need to address this objection, which is like, what's the point of reading a paper twice? What's the point of reading something? And over and over and over again. Should we just do, should, shouldn't we just do analytical reading straight away instead of bothering with spectral reading? Here's the thing. Academic papers sometimes can be very confusing because upon first glance it's innocence sometimes impossible even to distinguish what is a proposition. What is, what are the supporting point supporting this pop proposition and what does conclusion to that proposition? So when you're reading it for the first time, it's very difficult even to make out what the author's arguing about because it's just a jumble of text, inspection or reading allows you to chart out the journals structure of assessing. Reading gives you the key to, in a sense, chart out a landscape before you go focus on one specific point of this paper. If inspection or reading charts out entire territory. In a very broad sort of sense, analytical reading is a way for you to focus the very nitty-gritties, to focus on SONA points of analysis, to focus on the deeper points at the author's trying to get out. And I could spend hours talking about analytical reading. So I'm going to link my personal notes to a book that's really, really good for the subject, which is some, evidently Mortimer J. Adler's how to read a book. I'll link all of my notes plus the book in the description down below so you can read the book yourself and taken account of my summary. But basically, analytical reading in itself is all about locating propositions. And proposition is just another way of saying an argument and academic paper, if it's well written, if it's written in a very rigorous fashion. In a sense, a presentation of a series of points that the author is trying to get to you. It's a series of it. It's kinda like this exchange of knowledge, exchange of conscious Osama's where the author has to put in a lot of effort into placing these key arguments in a very structured fashion and throw your inspection or reading, you've probably spotted some subtitles from this paper, and those are really good anchor points for you to conduct your analytical reading. And if you remember to flagging technique from the last lesson or from the last chapter, we talked about anchoring the paper down to a few specific key points and draw your inspection or reading. You're taking those key points and you're reading deeper into these key points. And the central exercise here for you to distinguish what is an argument and what are some of the evidence backing up this argument and a mistake. And most of the confusion happens when a student reads, should I say a piece, a piece of evidence as a piece of arguments. So they really get lost in the weeds. So to get really lost in some tangent, they might get lost in the woods of this research process. So here's an example from a paper that I've read for my modernism analysis, for, for this paper that I wrote for my modernism unit on James Joyce at first, it seems like just a block of text. It's very difficult to decipher which one of these sentences is, in a sense, an argument and which sentence is actually an evidence supporting that argument. And a really good example for proposition is typically the first sentence at the beginning of a giant chunk of a paragraph. You high school, people might have caught a topic sentences, but these are two sentences that you need to look for to anchor the rest of the evidence upon this, upon this general proposition. And for example, I've tagged this specific one line in the sum paragraph. It's the opening paragraph or opening sentence of this paragraph and it reads, Joyce's own career as a writer is dominated by the same linguistic anxieties. So that's a prime example of a proposition. So the author argues, wants to argue the point that Joyce's creation or literary creation, it is dominated by kind of linguistic anxiety. So now you're gonna have questions. What is this linguistic anxiety and why is it a process of domination? What is exactly dominating Joyce and he's artistic decisions. And what did he do to overcome just kind of linguistic anxiety. And the rest of your reading of this paragraph should be a process of matching evidence with this one liner with this proposition. So in general, analytical reading is all about spotting propositions. It's all about finding the key points within this paper. It's all about finding the footing of this paper and distinguishing what is actually just plain evidence and what is the main point of argument. Read the paper as a series of listener arguments. Read the paper as a series of the author trying to backup a main statement. And that's in a sense, how you should conduct analytical reading. There's a lot of nitty-gritties to this analytical reading business. So like I said, I'm going to link all of my personal notes on this very brilliant chapter in a book, how to read a book in the description down below. So you can check that out and go please download the book or read a book yourself. And this is going to set up a really strong foundation for your reading. And this is going to chart the foundation for your essay writing for next episode onward, we will talk about how to write a paper, or I'll give you some specific pointers and tips on how to write an academic paper. So stay tuned.
8. On Writing: Sharpening Your Voice: Hello and welcome to this portion of the class on how to actually write an academic paper or how to write an essay for a university or high school, depending on your level, undergrad, grab, you know, there are different roles, but what I really want to do with this portion of the class is to introduce you guys to a few pointers, few tips and tricks that I personally use to write up an academic paper, top-scoring papers, and things that you could show off to professors, to your peers to demonstrate your understanding of the subject. So, so far we've covered a lot of ground in how to read an academic journal. You know, why should you study the humanities and then lynch pin texts versus source text or primary texts. This section of the course is not going to be like at the tail. Boring sort of academic rolling for how to write an excellent paper. What I'm going to present you here is a series of guidelines and tricks and little tips they could use to strengthen, first of all, the strength of the arguments and strengthen your own academic voice. And I think that's a really good place to start, would just start with talking about the concept of riding with an academic voice or writing with a voice that is uniquely yours. One of the traps of academic writing is that you feel the need to stuff your entire essay full of references and full of key points that you've read from your paper, from your analytical reading, from your inspection or reading, and you want to reference the crap out of this entire paper. So at the end, your entire paper just turns into different academics speaking through your wards, which simply not exactly what you want at this point. I think I'll have you guys know how to structure and argument. I'll leave you guys to know how to lay out an argument. And now all of you guys have this ability to, for example, pose arguments after you've read a bunch, after you thought about what you've run after you've laid out the entire, should I say the skeleton for your essay? Now, here's what's important, the key perspective change, or should I say the paradigm shift here, is that you need to view your paper as a piece coming from your own voice, coming from your own ability to think and your secondary sources and auto papers that you've read and all of the references that you've gathered, they should only be aids. Should I say visit only age or argument base should only be there to support your argument. They should not and never should they be the main points of the argument. And this process of finding your own academic voice or finding your own way of arguing, or finding your own way of structuring arguments. This is going to take some time, just like creative writing. It takes enough or it takes a rider a lot of time to figure out what they sound like on paper. And in an academic context, it's, in a sense, harder to find that voice because you have all of these boundaries can strengths of references, of academic integrity, of analytics, rigorous subjects that you're tackling. A lot of students in a sense, get really confused about what their voices. They don't exactly know what they sound like academically yet. They don't exactly, they're not exactly that confident with their arguments just yet. And here's another really important observation. The more complicated your essay sounds, the less fun you've put into this essay. Because even a fool, even a stupid person could call it together necessary to load it full of references and load it full of other people's words. But you, as an independent thinker, you asked someone that's put in a lot of work into structuring your arguments, into thinking about your subject, into reading all these papers, you need to find a way to be very confident about some of the points that you're getting across to the hallmark of a really good piece of essay, a really good piece of academic writing are innocence, clear arguments, and you need to spend your time, take a day off, take two days off after you've read all your papers, go for a walk in the woods and think through the layers of what you've ranked. Think for all of the things that you've processed. And it allowed AT process to sit for a bit and allow that process to really bring your head so that what comes out the other end are your own original creative thoughts, creative ideas, you know, unique connections that you've formed. If reading papers is in a sense, charting out the territory's or if written papers as a process of identifying research gaps and gaps in arguments and your writing process should be bridging that gap with your own voice. And in this case, complicated writing does not equate to complexity, does not equate to academic rigor. In a sense, the more fancy language to more adjectives in a more sort of like academic jargon that you use, the less certain you are about the point of argument that you're actually arguing. So this episode, in a sense, a word of caution for you to really rethink the process. Writing an academic paper, rethink how you want to structure an argument. Rethink how not to write a boring paper, just load it full of other people's worse, your secondary sources are supplements. They're there to support whatever you really want to write about in your own voice. And that voice is in a central result of practice. First, paper mice had a lot of stupid. It might not be that innovative. It might not be that sort of like comfortable for you to write. But over time, the more papers you write, the more input that you put into this craft of crafting NSA, the more you develop a skill that's critical ability to think, the more you can start to craft an essay with more and more succinct language. And I really want to view your essay writing journey as a journey of improvement of a journey that's training you into a better thinker. Because at first you don't necessarily have this ability to construct your own critical arguments, or should I say construct your ST and very to the point arguments. But over time, as you write more papers, as you get deeper into the weeds, as you develop is critical ability to write in a voice that feels comfortable to you. As it developed, as ability to in a sense, find your very unique point of argument. That's where results in academic success. Not this nebulous notion of writing the perfect paper, not succumbing to, should I say, jargony language all the time. And just at the end of this lesson, let's bring back that original definition of the essay. To write an essay is to try to figure out in a subject not necessarily having a perfect understanding of it, but nevertheless you're willing to stretch your ability to think. And the words on your essay, where to words say you write on your page, is the process of developing or strengthening your ability to think. So, the end product of the essay is not the end-all be-all. Your first undergrad essay might be shit. It might be absolutely horrendous, but that is exactly what you need to get yourself to that level where we can think critically and construct really beautiful and succinct and very to the point arguments. So keep that in mind. Recognize that writing an essay like anything, it's a skill that needs practice, that deserves practice. There's no like overnight genius. You know, there's not a way for you to just jump in a wagon of constructing perfect essays out of the blue. This is a process of training. And this is a process of trying to understand the subject and just have fun with it. Stay with your confusion. And over time, you will develop your own very unique writing voicing, academic research.
9. On Writing: Scheduling Your Writing: Welcome to this lesson on one of the tips or one of the things I wish I knew when I started writing essays for university and this trick or does tip that I wish I knew, is that ideally, you want to write your essays across a few days. Now, a lot of students, there seems to be an epidemic of students who likes to write a space a day before it's due or a few hours before it's due or a couple of days before it's due. And there's certainly are ways for you to go around that certainly are ways for you to skip a lot of steps or to produce an essay that's hastily constructed. But you have to realize that a part of academic success and a part of writing a really great essay. It has a lot to do with the kind of infrastructure that you've set around, your act of the act of writing the essay. So the task here is not just about writing a perfect paper. It's not just a bounding pressing a professor with what you've written on a page. It's also about building this framework around your paper, building this lifestyle, should I say, building a very strong, solid, productive retain around writing your essays. And one of those routines for me at least is to schedule ahead of time and making sure that you have the space that think about where you're going to write about. So in the previous lesson, we briefly touched upon this idea of like you need to clarify your thinking. You need a ride as succinctly as possible. And it is only with the time that you put into thinking about your subject. It is only with that process of really digging through your confusion, of really spending enough time with the subject. Can you come up with this really, really strong arguments? In this episode, we're going to put more focus on the act of writing. So as a very concrete example, for example, what paper is going to be somewhere around 1000 to 3000 words. Different students have different strategies for how to manage dose. A few thousand words. But for me, the most useful thing that I've done for my own essay writing is to actually schedule ahead of time and to write that 2000 words across the span of for me, across the span of three days, in a sense, I'll divide the essay up into three big chunks, into three big arguments that I want to focus on. Each and every single one of those days, I could spend enough time and effort on one of these paragraphs. So if you really take the effort to split up your labor, one hand, you're only writing about 500 words a day, which is insanely manageable. And on another hand, that's going to allow you more free thinking time. That's going to allow you more space to think about these 500 words that you've written. So at the end of those three days, you're going to end up with a 1500 word paper or a 2000 word paper. That's, in a sense really foolproof. And another really cool thing with, should I say splitting up a papering to your live sessions as you're writing the paper, is that crown dose gaps when you're not writing the essay. So you write 500 words and you leave it aside through those gaps of time, your brain is in a sense, going to subconsciously start to construct a next paragraph. Or you brain is going to automatically start to search for some of the mistakes, search or somewhat logical and consistencies. And you're going to start thinking about the paragraph that you've written. So that the next day when you come back to this essay, when you write your next 500 words, you're gonna get new ideas. You're going to have new connections formed and you're going to maybe even change some of the arguments in your first paragraph. So it is this process of editing as you're writing the essay. So some students, they do a first big draft and then to go back to the essay and edit it again. But that's not a way that I like to do things. I like to process where I write certain amount of day and I left that brew for a bit. And the second day around when I come back to the essay, are ranked 500 more words and in a sense, fix up the first essay as I'm writing the second, second part of the essay. So near the conclusion of the essay, I've already had the time to, in a sense, edit and rewrite the first two paragraphs. And this buffer timeframe between the first two giant paragraphs in the last paragraph, is innocence going to make the last paragraph so much more conclusive because as you progress through your essay, you're in a sense trying to reach a grand conclusion. You're in a sense trying to tie your essay into a very, very clear and there's sort of like easy, not a very perfect not. And these gaps of time in-between the writing of these sections of your essay is an excellent way for you to really clarify. You're thinking. It's also going to save you a lot of time. Because if you write an essay in this way, you don't ever have to hit back to the beginning and proofread it or like edited ever again, because this is going to be one entire streamlined essay. Now actually puts us lesson from some of my own creative writing projects like nonfiction and fiction pieces that I write, is that sometimes the ritual of laying down a certain number of words per day, it innocence, it, it eliminates procrastination because you have a clear goal of how many words you want to write a day. And it is a goal that's not overwhelming. It is a goal that is manageable, that is bite-sized. And if you use this mentality to construct your essay, if you use this little tip, now, I'm aware that everyone works differently, but this is something that really worked out for me. Try out this technique, write an essay across a few days, split your essay up into different chunks to in a sense, allow yourself the gap of thinking. So at the end, you're going to end up with an essay that's conclusive. You're going to end up with a really sweet conclusion that ties the entire piece together. And you have to really develop the proper scheduling strategy that discipline the daily routine of sitting down to write a certain number of wars and schedule ahead of time to really make this method work. So I hope you guys found it to be useful for writing your essay. And in the next episode, we're going to cover one really neat trick for referencing Stay tuned.
10. On Writing: Dummy Referencing : Now, in every film or TV series, there's usually the best episodes, usually towards the end of the season. Now, this is not always the case, but it is certainly the case for this course. This is probably one of my favorite, favorite lessons for this entire course. Academic writing or, you know, the basics or tricks and tips and tricks on how to write academically. And this is a little technique, little sneaky technique that I've been using forever for my papers. And without this little technique, I probably would have been bang my head against a wall and this entire time. So this technique at the very end of this course, which I want to tell you about, which I want to introduce you to is called dummy referencing. So I know referencing is one of the most annoying parts of writing an essay. It's one of the most hideous parts and writing an essay. But for me, just inerting me, it's just like referencing is actually, should I say, one of my favorite parts of right-hand essay, because referencing is the point where you get to actually trace back to sources that you've used and referencing is in a sense, an exhibition of all the readings or auto research that you've done for this one specific essay. So as you're compiling your list of references. So in one of the previous episode, we talked about compiling your references list early on, so you don't have to stress about it at the very end of the essay. So all you have to do in a sense, once you have your reference list, is to just copy and paste whatever scene that referencing document into your, into your Works Cited section. So that's the par with the bibliography. And I encourage you to re-watch that video on how to gather your resources beforehand so you have that full list of references. But here, I wanted to talk about in-text referencing. Just a quick note on referencing style makes sure that you contact your professor, makes sure that you read a criteria for your essay first to secure your style of referencing. My favorite referencing style is actually MLA. I think it's one of the most economic way. So for referencing, and I think, I think it's specific for history essays, you have to use footnotes who are at the style Chicago, but that's a whole canon. Warm said I'm not going to dive into. So make sure you have your style of referencing down pat before we even start the essay. So once you have your style figured out, here, is like my favorite part about using this technique, call dummy referencing. Think back to the concept of academic voice. Think back to the concept of articulating thoughts in your own voice. Articulating your thoughts and your original, you know, academic voice instead of some borrowed voice from somewhat of paper as you're writing your paper, if you've done on a previous work of all ADA, previous chapters of ADA past lessons. Sometimes you'll find yourself writing a little sentence here and there, writing a little phrase here and there. That sounds kinda familiar. You're just kinda like maybe I've read that from somewhere. Maybe I've written that from one of these papers that I've gathered through my gathering process. But I can't exactly pinpoint it down and I can't exactly reference it back to a paper that I've researched here is where you employ that dummy referencing method. Whenever you have one of these light bulb moments have like, I think I'm writing about this thing that I've read about somewhere in a paper. Immediately put a bracket or footnote next to that sentence, and then just make a mark for yourself, but do not under any circumstances, stop writing. You know, put a little marker and keep on writing. Put a little marker next to the seventh day. You think it's from a journal somewhere and just keep writing. That little marker might be a note on which paper you think it was from. It might be a year, certain year or certain page of a book that you think that you've read for your research. But that little marker is simply a dummy, right? It's there for you to temporarily mark a sentence as a potential reference, but you don't actually have to reference a straight away on a spot. And the most important thing here is for you to pursue, actually pursued a string of your arguments without stopping, without stopping or stream of thoughts to do referencing. And the most frustrating thing for a student or for, for an essay writer to do is to stop every once and awhile to search down as reference. And if you do that every time that you're going to realize is that you are going to be stuck in his essay for a very long time as you're writing your essay, if you find a similar word or if you think your argument echos a certain academics voice, if your argument is referencing a certain, if you have an intuition for it, it's kinda light bulb moment. If you think you're writing about an argument from a certain paper, use a dummy reference and do not stop your stream of thoughts. And at the very end of paper, after you finished writing the entire thing, after you've got your bibliography down, you go back to these dummy references and trace back and rephrase these, should I say original sentences into the actual references? This dummy referencing technique allows you to in a sense, articulate everything your own voice first. And then you can go back and actually plug in the actual academic quotes from those journals. And in this way, it is really going to allow you to write simultaneously in your own voice and back your statements up with facts and evidence from other papers. So your, your paper at the end, It's still very much your paper, but it is supported by evidence, just supported by other scholars and academics. But it is by no means a patchwork of all these foreign voices. And I think this lesson right here is a really nice way to tie up the entire course. And I really do think that academic writing is innocence, just a process of clarifying your own thinking and through dummy referencing. And if it were odd a tips and tricks that we've talked about in this course. It is a way for you to develop a really critical mind. So when you go out into the world and you look at people, when you look at situations, you can apply the same filter of critical thinking that you've gained from this entire essay writing process. So try out the dummy referencing technique and see if it works for you and ensure that when you write an essay, do not interrupt your own stream of thinking. That's the most important thing. That's where your professors are looking for. That's what's going to really clarify your thinking. And that's what's going to really demonstrate your ability to critically think. In the next episode, we're going to wrap up this course by talking about one of the most important things they need to contend with as you're writing an essay.
11. Conclusion: Embracing Confusion: So here it is, the last conclusion conclusive episode to discourse. And, you know, what is the most dangerous thing ever, sort of most dangerous days, both in an academic environment and in real life, is comfort. The most dangerous thing is a lack of confusion. The most dangerous thing is, in a sense, certainty. And this is one of the things that I think it's particularly important for you when you're heading into research, when you're heading into writing a paper for your course, when you're heading into a subject that you know next to nothing about is that expects herself to wrap yourself up in a sea of confusion. And this position isn't exactly the most comfortable position to be in, isn't exactly the most comfortable space to be in, But the enemy of all understanding as a sensitive intellectual comfort where you know, you've read certain things, where, you know, you've done certain essay topics where you know, there's a formula for writing a good essay. That to me is, in a sense, academic suicide. That to me it's like you're not getting the bang for your buck as you're embarking on this journey of academic understanding. So I really want to use this last parting remark to really direct you or reframe this idea of confusion or reframed as uncomfortable feeling your chest when you were confused. And I really want you to start thinking about confusion as a sign of progress. Confusion is, in a sense, assignor, you're progressing into the right direction because when you're writing in that, so when you're researching, you're expanding your sphere of understanding. And when you reach the edge of your understanding, of course, beyond us horizon, beyond this event horizon, so to speak, there's a lot of stuff that you don't necessarily know. There are a lot of concepts and theories and philosophical ideas that you don't necessarily know how to contend with. And the feeling that you get from contending with one of these periods of confusion could be very scary, could be very much like, Oh my God, I think I'm gonna fail this essay. I think I'm going to write up something that's completely ridiculous, but if you calm yourself and view doubting tire confusing process as a sign for growth or as a sign that you're actually stretching or abilities. That is a sure-fire way to ensure that you are actually writing about something that's meaningful. Because a lot of the times, understanding a subject deeply does not come from you inductively building upon the same premises, inductively building your, your way into this final argument. It typically doesn't happen like that. A really good piece of knowledge and a really good piece of understanding should in a sense, the stabilize your entire foundation of understanding so that when you reason again for this new foundation, you find yourself in a position to conjure up new ideas, conjure up new ways of thinking and new ways of interpreting everything. So this is why I think when you're going through the lynch pin texts or these very key cornerstones or these philosophical treatises that you'll be going through Azure resource for your topics. Contend with that confusion. Put up with it and eat it, and hold yourself to it and learn to really enjoy this period of not knowing anything. Being ignorant is one of the most excellent things ever. Because being A1A and knows that there are things outside of the sphere of your understanding allowing yourself to be ignorant. Also, for just this idea in your mind that you don't know everything, that you are, in a sense a fool. And the purpose of being a researcher or purpose of understanding a specific subject. For you to be in a position where your spear of understanding is constantly, constantly expanding. And of course, there'll be periods where you feel comfortable in your position. You'll feel comfortable in one sort of intellectual domain and you stay there forever. And you argue the same points over and over and over again. But at some point, you have to be willing enough to contend with the chaos to, in a sense, completely rearranged the foundations of your arguments to foundations of your understanding and in philosophical terms, rearrange your epistemological foundation. And this is a sure-fire way for you to remain open-minded because there could be things don't happen in your life that makes no sense to your on-premise whatsoever. And your entire job of understanding life, your entire job of understanding the field at your n is in a sense, the process of slowly contending with new incoming information and to slowly or rearrange your old premises. And it's this constant process of updating your worldview, updating your opinions, updating your conceptions of the world. And there's really no end point to this entire journey, which is why I am super, super excited to dive deeper into this world of research, dive deeper into my own academic journey, and I'll continue to share in my lessons on YouTube and here on Skillshare. And I hope you guys have enjoyed that class. And I hope you guys had taken down some good notes. And I hope you guys had found some value in this entire process of trying to communicate some of the tips and tricks that I've learned throughout my own journey of conducting research or C1 here. Thank you for viewing this course, and I will see you in the next one.
Robin Waldun, Writer/YouTuber
