As individuals each day we are faced with a task that may be new or carried on from the past. We may believe the approaches we take are the best, or are the only ones. We may believe that with our knowledge and commitment we can solve anything by ourselves. The fact of the matter is that we shouldn’t, we need others in order to accomplish goals.
The importance of a research community is that networking together and communicating with one another may give solutions and ideas to help us progress in the various fields of research.
In order to grow and develop our way of thinking, through listening and networking with others we can be shown a different perspective that may be much more optimal than our own approaches. A research community should be comprised of researchers that are willing to listen and consider other thoughts, contribute what they can when possible, uniting as one in order to further progress towards a solution. As individuals we have our own methods and try to do all of the work by ourselves, or through a community of researchers we can work together and instead of working hard, we work smart. Ultimately, being open to a community of researchers rather than having an individualistic mind will allow many opportunities for understanding and analyzing the problem at hand. Research shouldn’t necessarily be about the individual trying to solve the problem just for recognition, we must not forget of what the real problem is at hand. Lastly, a strong community and an understanding one is why and how the advances in technology or medicine have been made, through a team, and more than one person.
Matthew Vasquez, PVAMU
