What is it like to do original research?

I’ve always imagined it to be the natural result of learning a lot. You go to universities and fill your mind with reams of knowledge. Scientific models and theories. They all sort of percolate there in a beige sort of idea stew. Then, one fine day as you’re walking a foot-path along a creek in a forest on University land, it hits you. Divine inspiration visits you, drops off an Original Idea, and spirits off as quickly as it came. You take the Original Idea and write up a paper on it and that is your dissertation.

As I made my way through university, this story was replaced by another story. You apply to a Professor’s lab, in some sort of soul-sucking process that applications usually are. Then you do menial tasks like clean the cyclotrons and deliver the coffee to the Grad Students; your purpose is just to Observe. When it is determined that you have Observed enough, you become a Foot Soldier and get to use the machines and run the experiments. By some later alchemy you also gain the ability to design experiments and ask Questions. Eventually you answer a Question with your experiments and write up a paper on it and that is your dissertation.

I never did that. When I was younger I always thought it would be cool to buzz about on the frontiers of science and push the boundaries of human knowledge, but I have since learned that I have no idea how to do that. I know that my university had a lot of opportunities for research, but somehow I managed to graduate with a Master’s degree without having to do any research at all.

I don’t think I have it in me to do original research. I don’t know how you find a Question at all, let alone a Question big and complicated and abstruse enough that it’s worth writing a hundred-and-fifty-page dissertation about. There are probably things worth writing such extended soliloquies about, but I can’t think of one that smarter people haven’t written about already.

When my relatives learn that I have a Master’s degree, they ask, “So are you going back to get a PhD?” And I say, “Possibly,” but I know, deep down, that that was never in the cards for me.