Senior Plan--Don't Fear the Research

So you're feeling anxious about s.p. (senior plan)? Believe it or not that's probably a good thing--if you're reading this in March or early April, that is! If you don't feel some anxiety as you start a major research project like the Senior Plan, you probably haven't asked the right questions. You're facing the unknown, which is always unsettling. And even if you've come up with a reasonable working thesis for your s.p. presentation, you never know what you might discover about your topic out there in the infosphere.

The worst thing you can do? Procrastinate. Leave it to the last minute, and your anxiety will morph into panic and paralysis. Not a good state of mind for your oral presentation!

Research is a process. If you do it right you'll probably find yourself circling around your subject quite a few times before you feel you've got a handle on it. When you first approach your topic you're probably going to experience what information experts call an "anomalous state of knowledge" or ASK. That is, you won't know exactly what it is you want to know or even how to ask about it. Or as ex-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has so famously put it:

The Unknown

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

.........................................

So together our goal should be to find ways to wrestle the known knowns, the known unknowns, and the unknown unknowns into submission and get everybody passed on the first time round!