A Winding Path

  Recently, I began to understand "research". I think I made a mistake, because I had used the old way which I learned from the university to do my MA project.
  In here, teachers never deny us and they love to ask us questions which promote our to rethink profoundly. Maybe some questions look like simple, but they are thought-provoking. In the university, we usually showed our ideas to teachers. Sometimes, we changed our idea and we told teachers we changed it. The reaction of teachers was just listening to our new ideas. It seemed to come naturally. However, in the last design course, when a classmate said she gave up her old idea, Joe asked her "why did you give up this idea and use the new idea ?" Reginald also asked me to give him a reason of my design.
  ......
  It was rendered speechless, was not it?
  I realized that I cannot go freestyle and I cannot just depend on my feeling. This kind of methodology pushes me to think and rethink again and again.
  Research is a vital part of our studying. In another word, it is a core part. I know I should borrow some books from library and search information from the Internet and I have been doing that. But, I just felt I did not know the spirit of research, how to do it and why to do it. I was like a zombie.
  Thanks to Tira, he shared his studying experience with me. In order to design our kiosk, I found many and various types of boxes,such as cigarette box, matchbox, moon cake. Finally, I decided to use the concept of the CD box. Tira said, I should do research about comparing these different boxes and explaining why I choose the CD box.
  On Tuesday, Joe showed her research about a building. She tried to put the building in different environment and found some case studies about her assumption which can proof the possibility of her assumption. It enlightened me a lot. I think doing research is like seeking confirmation of a math question. First, I should come up with lots of ideas, compare them and obtain my initial conclusion. Then, draw on some case studies to proof and develop my conclusion. Finally, get my final conclusion. This progress is scrupulous and  needs divergent thinking.
  Therefore, I come back to my concept and do more research about all kinds of boxes. I find something which I did not find them before. I guess research has become more and more interesting.