Some people think being a top student enough but that is either necessary nor sufficient. And you should know your intellectual or mental limit and be ready for failures? If you are you extremely motivated , that is all you need you need passion to do research. Research is not a job, and is more like a hobby!
What is Research?
Except for your fear there is no difference between a homework problem and a research problem, research is anything but homework. Finding a good problem to study is part of research too. Research is all about pushing the limits, dismiss the problem if the solution is not interesting enough. Research is a game for which you get to set the rules, but it cannot be a trivial one!
What is Good Research
- Novelty (better if you were not able to publish it at first)
- Simplicity (better if your advisor refused to grant you a degree)
- Universality (better if others found it trivial at first sight)
The Common misunderstandings you make during research
You think research is only for genius , and you think yourself is a genius, think you need to know everything about the subject in advance. Sometimes you think you should wait for the most important problem to work on and also think a solution is correct just because you cannot find anything wrong.
How to Do Research?
You should always be both confident and humble, both critical and collaborative. And also ambitious, realistic, proactive and willing to take a chance!
The only way you can improve yourself is to learn things that you are the most afraid of!
When you do research you feel like it’s an endless cycle between excitement and depression, an endless cycle between sense of success and failure, an endless cycle between over-confidence and self-doubt
Research needs faith in there are always interesting new things for you to discover and by doing so you can make the world a better place