Research, teaching, and learning are three terms that relate to scholarship. Choose one or more of these terms and discuss how it affects a person's commitment to scholarship.
            
             To be a true scholar, and to devote one's life to scholarly practice, an individual must love learning. This love must come from a love of learning's sake. A professor or graduate student must log long hours in the research laboratory or library, often with little positive reinforcement that he or she is 'getting somewhere.' The life is often solitary, and brings little sense of connection to others because the specificity of one's topic of study, except at academic conferences or when you publish a book. However, learning in class and learning with others provides relief from solitary studying and makes the learning process more enjoyable, and also more productive when you can discuss ideas with other people in class.
             Teaching provides one way to share one's research with others. Some academics are naturally gifted teachers, and love to share their passion for their field with the public. Not all great teachers are gifted academics and researchers, of course, and not all researchers are great teachers. However, striving to be a good teacher can help clarify one's thought processes, and make an academic a better researcher. Teaching others can be part of the learning process.
             Research, one might say, is a form of self-directed learning. A researcher sets up the parameters of a study, forms a hypothesis, and embarks upon testing the hypothesis, either by exploring the history of a text or setting up an experimental model. To make the research useful, however, passion must be behind the collection of data, so the data is analyzed in a useful way. A researcher must be intellectually rigorous enough to accept that some of the data may conflict with his or her initial hypothesis. Being willing to admit error is an important p...