Last week, Professor Andrew Mertha discussed his research on Cambodia’s history and how the Chinese had a significant influence. To be honest, for me the discussion regarding how he researched this topic was more interesting then his actual findings (I’m not big on govt/political history). In discussing his research, Prof. Mertha provided interesting stories about how he obtained a lot of the information he used. For example, if I remember correctly, he was kicked out of one archive/library because the documents he was asking for were essentially classified. After that while in a Cambodian museum he stumbled upon a Chinese document that was labeled TOP SECRET that was very important to his research. He went to the information desk and said that he was from Cornell and that he was wondering if they had any more like that. Because the staff recognized Cornell, he was able to go through the documents upon documents of critical information (gotta love those Cornell connections).

The process of doing research and publishing the findings really provided me with an appreciation for what these researchers do. When I’m reading something for a class, I just think of it as another reading, maybe skim through it to get the main points and move on, but the time and effort that is put in to produce a given piece is truly remarkable.