By:

Alfred James Ellar, PhD(c)

Faculty, College of Education, Arts and Sciences

s research is the handmaid of an intellectual journey, so then a researcher is the handmade of an

intellectual landscape.
n my decade of research engagement in various discourses, my excitement towards relevant
research findings remains as vibrant as a wondering child. In fact, the constant child-like attitude of
asking questions about something doubtful or confusing drives research endeavor. As such, let me take
this into consideration through the following three questions: (1) Does research a progress-oriented or
challenge-oriented activity? (2) Is researching a task or attitude? and (3) What is my portrait of a
researcher?
erhaps, my research testimonial is better expressed in a form of critical confession as related to
those three questions, and which I myself have observed, experienced, and realized:
As I observed, research is not merely a gateway for continuous progress; it is rather a
backdoor for greater challenges ahead. I considered writing a research as tediously
challenging, until I realized that the real challenge begins after I have finished writing
everything. Research is necessarily not a progress-oriented activity towards something
intellectually or academically worthwhile. Instead, it is a strategic intellectual anticipation of
the challenges ahead of their probable occurrence. As an anticipatory strategy, a research is an
indicator of coordinates to identify where the movement of progress is being intercepted by
its concomitant challenges.
As I experienced, researching is not a laborious task of information accumulation; it is rather
a purposive attitude to make things visibly clear. I found so hard to conceptualize a formalized
research agenda, until I envisioned the crossroads of my work that I found myself half-done
already of my research task. Researching becomes exhaustively difficult when researcher tries
to look for something instead of making something visibly clear to look for. Researching is a
rational navigation for clearing away something that is supposed not to be there in the route
of intellectual journey.
And third, I realized, a researcher is not a formally intelligent person; but a visionary risktaker who invests interest to things most people have taken for granted. I was hooked up by the
notion that intelligent people are excellent writers, until I was informed that to write
competently is not inborn or genetically acquired. A researcher is more likely an opinionbuster detective who is investing risk in other peoples passivity; rather than a truth-seeker
investigator who is bounded by standardized protocols. At most, my portrait of a researcher
is someone who is able to read the indicator of coordinates in the intellectual landscape and
capable of rational navigation for clearing the route of intellectual journey.
evertheless, what research, researching, and researcher are really all about is just a matter of
transforming a common-sense question into a principle of knowledge as truth and certainty.
Such is the joy of a person who understands the meaning of questions such as: Why is there something
rather than nothing? and Why there is still nothing if there is already something?