The Students Research Companion

Doing research means to bravely battle several challenges at once: not only do you try to come to grasps with your topic, conduct a useful project, and write it all up. You also serve as crucial motivator and hardest critic. You are expected to challenge yourself enough to grow, but not enough to lose your wits. And those are only two of the countless difficult balances to keep. No wonder that especially junior researchers feel exhausting stress, encounter intellectual and emotional cramps, and sometimes seemingly turn into thoroughly drained ghosts at the end of their research journey.

If you are wary of your upcoming final academic project since you have seen how others have struggled, this book is for you. It draws together fifty useful mindsets throughout the thesis process that can help you keep your nerves together, your mind sharp, and your productivity up.

The (junior) research experience needs to improve. This book will help find ways to optimize this experience. It follows the notion to consider junior researchers first as human beings, second as citizens, and third as researchers. Researchers are not algorithms that pick and apply methodology to problems - researchers are people who seek opportunities to help solve societies’ problems by growing into the ability to reliably answer questions. If you agree, then this book is for you.

Omid Aschari, Benjamin Berghaus

Professor Omid Aschari is an Associate Professor of Strategic Management and founding Managing Director of the globally respected flagship Master in Strategy and International Management (SIM-HSG) at the University of St. Gallen since its inception in 2003.

Dr. Benjamin Berghaus (HSG) is a scientific entrepreneur at the intersection of research, education, and practice in his field. Since 2018, Benjamin has established himself to work a broad portfolio of self- and co-initiated projects geared towards fostering young people at the transition from the academic to the professional phase of their lives.