I've always considered myself somewhat knowledgeable of events in East Asia, especially related to the People's Republic of China. I incidentally have an online acquaintance who lives in Hong Kong and has participated in the protests himself. For these reasons, I pretty much immediately knew what my topic for the research paper would be. My research process went entirely normally, the same as everybody else's, save for the fact that through the research process I became entirely apathetic towards both my topic, as well as the process itself.