I said this to my student yesterday, and I thought I’d share it here too: a big part of being an academic for me has been identifying unproductive turns in research.

What do I mean? A few examples of my wrong turns a

I spent my 2nd year for writing an empirical paper, a Princeton requirement, on cremation rates by race using consumer expenditure data. The data wasn’t right for the Q and I ended up with a Frankenstein. So, I begged profusely for a pass I didn’t deserve and moved on ...

to my dissertation research where I was initially comparing the US, Canada, and Italy. Italy didn’t make sense tho- economically very different and refugee program too was diff- after a year I added Germany. My book doesn’t include the Italian case (maybe other work will) ...

None of these were bad experiences. I learned from both. But had I felt like I needed to keep at either, even after I recognized irreconcilable flaws in design I would have lost precious time...

So all this to say, taking a wrong research turn is normal and always a learning experience. Let’s normalize it. And let’s move forward from research that doesn’t serve us.