To Be A Researcher Is To Know How To Be Alone
What’s like to be a young researcher in a mapping project on physical vulnerabilities and dealing with the frustrations and anxiety that coming from the work.
Fernando¹ once told me that I’m good at telling stories. I was happy with the compliment because I never thought I was very good at it. I think maybe I was just telling it wrong; which makes me think that it took me a lifetime to find my way, which is a little crooked, but it’s ideal for me.
I always thought I wasn’t very good at talking but I’ve always been good at writing. I remember that when I was a child and I went to the speech therapist, one of the exercises was to write stories and she always praised me. Maybe she was just being nice, after all, I was a kid, but for the sake of this narrative let’s believe that the stories I made up were really good. And it is in this spirit of storytelling that I thought the best way to talk about my experiences as a young researcher was this: telling a little story.
I thought about how to tell my story professionally, in an objective and somewhat impersonal way, however, doing so probably no one would understand me — at least not in the way I hope. And the way I think is most appropriate is by being personal and telling details of my life that maybe should be left out of professional relationships — even though I don’t believe you can be human without being personal.
I could have chosen a million anguish and pain to tell. The one that is perhaps easiest to tell today would be about how the work of a researcher can be lonely and distressing. I honestly don’t know how to describe the feeling of loneliness and anguish, I don’t know how to explain it to someone who may never have gone through this. And maybe people even know what I’m talking about and it’s just not a problem for them. In my view, until a certain point, it wasn’t a problem either. Suddenly, the research work became too personal and it was no longer just work — it was also being me — the Alessandra who is not a researcher, but a person.
Until a certain moment I thought, with great conviction, that it was possible to separate the two things (being a researcher and being human) but I am almost certain that it is not possible; everything we do, more objectively and professionally, has a lot of what we are as people who exist and occupy a place in the world. It was a shock to realize that the way I do research and how I conduct my work says a lot about me, in a very personal way. I guess I always wanted to not just be my job but I ended up forgetting that it’s also a part of me.
More than a year ago, when I started working with mapping, I didn’t even see myself as a researcher, and after that, I hardly thought much about the relationships that involved research. I think I did everything on automatic, without reflecting much on what was unfolding. I believe it was all a process. I realize today how very objective the first part of the mapping I did in 2021 was. Starting with the organization of the fieldwork that was collective and calmly discussed, going through the fact that the data we collected were all “cold”; we deal little with outside people and their issues. So, there were no big questions about care, responsibility, purposes, the place of research, and the role of the researcher.
All of this set the stage for the other part of the mapping, the one that took place in 2022. Many factors made everything extremely different; the organization left the “we” plane and entered the “I” plane, this “I” being the person who writes to you. The fieldwork team grew, but only in numbers because the desire to do the work seemed to decrease (which is ironic since it was never very high). And the main change is that an important factor entered the equation: we needed the help of the residents of the territory to do the research. At first, for me, this wasn’t going to be a huge problem. Today I laugh in my face when I remember that I came to think that. As you can see, everything changed and I, who am not very keen on changes, was ahead of everything.
There were millions of small, more specific questions that crossed me throughout the mapping that took place in April 2022. The ones that are most worth telling are my anxieties about what my role was as a researcher, in front of people who had nothing to do with my work but were at the same time crucial to it. The issues have become much more delicate and weighty. It’s not just going there to collect data… it’s, whether you like it or not, taking care of and listening to the people you work with. And when I say “people you work with” I’m not just referring to teammates (which in themselves are a problem) but in the sense of “object of study”. It’s being careful to listen to what that person has to say, that’s because people like to be heard, they like to talk, they like to receive attention and I think that if we propose to research having a person and/or group as the focus of research, we have to take care that people deserve to have.
The difficult thing is that listening is not a simple task — I wish it were. It takes energy, focus, patience, and will,… You need to be willing and open to let in what the other person has to say to you. Listening, for me, is not about listening, and as the person talks, you think of an answer; most of the time no answer comforts the other person. I think the most important thing is to be there. However, being there and listening with focus and attention for hours, for three weeks in a row², is too tiring, especially when you find yourself powerless in the face of most issues. In the end, I came out drained from the situation. While I worried about not being a ‘leech’ with my research, I was being sucked by everything and everyone around me.
I think it is a fundamental role for the researcher not to build on empty promises, even understanding that not making any promises is, in itself, a promise.
Another main issue is about hopes. The mapping work is about physical vulnerabilities; it is a delicate work. We deal with issues that touch a very sensitive place for people, which is the question of the house, the question of the place that surrounds them, that protects them. This space, above all, is a place of refuge. And then, you get there and you say that you are researching physical vulnerabilities, that you intend to take this data to a government agency and you give hope to those people that the problems they face daily will be solved somehow. Problems that, because they are daily and without someone to solve them, get lost in the course of other issues, people go on living and adapting to them, and may even forget that they live surrounded by problems. And then we arrive at their door and bring it all up, reminding them that reality is very bad indeed. And here we face this dichotomy. It’s a place where you give hope, but it’s also a hopeless place because often people come and make promises that aren’t kept. Marginalized people are used to promises that are always empty. And I think it is a fundamental role for the researcher not to build on empty promises, even understanding that not making any promises is, in itself, a promise.
It’s a complicated place where I saw myself as a researcher (and as a human being, as a woman, as everything I am). It is not possible to solve all problems. Even though I proposed in some way to give hope to these people — no matter how much the focus isn’t it, no matter how much the work is not giving hope — it is necessary to understand that this happens, whether we like it or not, and we have to take care of these hopes, these expectations that people place on us. It is a responsibility that, again, like it or not, comes with work and it takes maturity to deal with it. It is necessary to understand that these people put expectations on us because we put ourselves in that place. And this is inevitable.
Finally, dealing with the reality that is: going to the place, collecting data, diving into the problems and expectations created by the population that surrounds you, and leaving without your work has made any substantial change. For me, there was always the question “what am I doing here?” and it still haunts me from time to time. I understand that the work has great chances of bringing positive results for those residents in the long term, but I also know that the problems I heard about won’t wait God knows how long; they happen on a day-to-day basis and people need short-term solutions, solutions that I can’t give. This whole situation got a little more complicated because as I was the main person responsible for mapping, all the big issues were outsourced to me, so in addition to my issues I still had to deal with everyone else’s. All this alone. And here comes a little of the loneliness that I believe is common in research, that sometimes all that’s left is the researcher and big unanswered questions.
I wanted to go to the end, stressing that I don’t believe it is possible to do research without being human in the process, without understanding and accepting that common emotions (anger, fear, disappointment, joy, anxiety, and so on) will cross the work, which nothing and no one is impartial (“To live is to take sides”, as said the german poet Friedrich Hebbel), that loneliness in the face of research will often be inevitable. I would like to say that I now have answers to my concerns, but I would be lying. I don’t even know if I’ll ever get to have them.
If you read until here: thank you! And if you want to know more about my mapping work you can read more about it here.
¹ Fernando is my project coordinator. Also a good friend/mentor.
² The mapping process that took place in April 2022 was made in the last three weeks of the month. Everyday the team got to field to work collecting data.
