Linkon points to the tendency of students to be more open-minded when their research is written informally, and focuses her class around the process of research rather the gathering of it. It seems like a fascinating approach that reflects upon a problem I’ve always had with the research process.

In many research courses, the student develops an initial thesis statement or contention. And while these statements are not meant to be static or unchanging—indeed, the professor often insists upon the opposite—the process still encourages narrow research and close-mindedness. The student is loath to cut what doesn’t belong, or to go in directions they didn’t initially expect to tread.

This is less a loyalty to their own words than it is to the meaning they were initially trying to convey with them. It’s much like we saw in the first week of class: a little girl, rather than replacing her erroneous view of the universe with a correct one, instead tried to reconcile the two. Beginning a research course with a formal statement of intent inevitably assures that you’ll have trouble leaving that contention behind should you need to do so. You’re loyal to what you’ve basically stated as fact.

Linkon’s divests the process of these linear blinders by teaching only the process and eliminating the final paper. So if writing is merely thinking, written down and refined, then this course is more for developing inquisitiveness rather than discovering answers.

But perhaps the problem is not entirely that the research paper is too linear a format for scholarly inquiry, but that the process of beginning it is flawed. Supporting one’s initial contentions closes a door on multiple interpretations and becomes like solving a mathematical proof. It leads to, as Linkon notes, the perfunctory search for a few quotes to fulfill the requirement of “research,” or even the fatal procrastination of doing the papers in the last few days or hours before they’re due.

We should keep in mind, however, that completing a paper in this atmosphere can be an inherently exhilarating exercise. The work is not being ignored in such a situation; far from it, it hangs over the student’s head throughout the semester like a guillotine’s blade. Every day, the student frets over the growing 800-pound gorilla in the room, but is still unable to make any real progress because of their own literal beginning. The only way they ever manage to produce good work in this situation is by desperation. Managing to finish the paper in these last moments becomes the literary equivalent of defusing a bomb two seconds before it detonates.

The sense of release, of having survived with your head only moments from the chopping block, can lead to inherently melodramatic prose which—cultivated properly—can be whittled down to meaning which is often divested of the need to write within the lines set up for oneself. So, perhaps, instead of removing the final paper from the equation entirely, we should insist upon its completion before anything else is even attempted. Give them a mere week’s time to work with; it needn’t be research paper length, but half that would be sufficient.

The novelty of having them begin with the ending may inspire confusion, but that would lead to greater desperation as well. And ff necessity is the mother of invention, and desperation is the father of inspiration, why not put the student into a situation where those former states of mind lead to the latter?

-Matt Boyle