The summer has begun and work in the lab is in full swing. I am lucky to have two full-time summer research assistants this year, as well as three students who are volunteering at various times across the summer. As I put project plans together for my students, however I am struck by how much my research program has transformed from the specialized to the general. This summer, we have quite a Renaissance lab including projects spanning the disciplines of psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, second language acquisition, and educational psych.
Of course, this is not the first time I've recognized the change in the way I approach my work. The scope of the research in my lab is the result of a steady transformation from a narrowly focused graduate student to a multi-tasking assistant professor working at a liberal arts college.
The obvious question is what effect this transformation has had on my goals and my productivity. Realistically, it takes longer to do the leg-work involved in researching the different fields from which our projects derive. And, juggling these various projects is tricky. But, one the other hand, I feel as if I am doing exactly what I wanted to be able to do the whole time I was completing my dissertation. At that time, I dreamed of being able to go after questions that were simply interesting. The general approach has allowed both my students and I to be curious. And, with this approach, because your projects are not all connected by a common theme, they are connected instead by a commitment to strong design. Consequently, the research process becomes the real focus of your work.
A lot of very difficult challenges lay down this generalist approach...but I think the rewards can be worth the extra effort of taking this path.