There are more universities around the world that offers the chance for many to pursue their studies via a Masters
degree with two distinctive pathways: (1) academic research and (2) supervised project (i.e. doing an internship somewhere like in a company with more courses). For this short blog post, I will argue why doing an academic research is not as bad as you may think… in fact you can get a lot of practical (yes I said practical) skills.
In a dream world, students should do both: supervised project plus research! But this is not the case for many universities.
So what are the practical skills you can develop from writing a research in a academic setting?
1. Train yours thoughts and arguments to be consistent and logical.
2. Become a better writer (personally, this was very beneficial for me)
3. No room for BS in your writing — hence, learn to constraint yourself
4. Learn to search, find, organize, and conceptualize information (in this abundant world of information)
5. Learn to be independent and autonomous
6. Develop a sense of curiosity
And as a bonus:
7. Meet some famous professors and researchers from top schools and realize how disconnected they are from reality hahahaha — this point (#7), not really practical!