So I have a dissertation chair now. The reason I went ahead with this, even though I don't plan to do a proposal until spring, was that I had a topic that I really liked but that was going to be very hard to get data for. The collective advice of various faculty members, who were enthused about my idea (it was original, interesting, never been done, likely to get attention, important, yada yada), was to get a committee formed so I could explore data sources.
And now almost the exact same work has been released by someone else.
A very tentative conversation with my chair had him saying thinking this helped prove the case that my work is important and I should go ahead. But I'm afraid that whatever I do now in this line will be seen as derivative, as a response to what this person did. (In some ways that is true, because it would be bad research not to take that work into account - but I don't get credit for coming up with x independently. It's like being close in horseshoes.) Morever, this person is an economist, which is probably one reason why the folks I talked to weren't aware it was being done. However, I'm kind of afraid of economists. It seems like education research by economists goes like this: Economist A releases a groundbreaking report on, say, the effectiveness of charter schools. Economist B then releases a report saying, ah, but if you include this variable, the effects disappear; A did not specify the model correctly. Economist A then releases a report saying that what B put in doesn't belong, is an effect and not a cause, and before you know it the whole thing become a pissing match about whether Ariano-Bond indicators ought to be used with Heckman selection. (Or something. The argument goes from something you can explain to Mom to something technical that Dale Ballou ends up using in one of his quant seminars where even the other faculty have their heads on the table in despair.)
Even with our heavily quantitative training, I'm afraid I'm not in that league, nor is it what I really want to do. Now I'm torn between really digging in and looking to see if I can salvage this or just putting it off until after comps. Because I really should be focusing on comps and some research that needs to be farther along before I can submit it to a conference, and the deadline for that is the end of the month. I'd rather be thinking about the diss than studying (which is a whole other post), but preferences and good strategy may not be interesecting here, let alone forming a union.
Also, this situation is just about the most stereotypical PhD story ever.
Monday, July 9, 2007
Sunday, July 8, 2007
New camera
I took my new camera to Shelby Park this morning to play with it. None of the photos are of exciting things, but the camera takes good pictures. And it has a 12x zoom!
Saturday, July 7, 2007
What makes you ready to start a dissertation?
I'm reading a book called "Writing the Doctoral Dissertation" by Gordon Davis and Clyde Parker. The advice given seems to be for a PhD program that is structured entirely differently than ours. Their model student (they provide a "Goofus and Gallant") plans his research design in his research methods course. On the subject of picking a dissertation topic, they write, "Rarely does a student have a well-defined topic in the beginning. Generally, the initial topic is poorly defined, too general, and too large in scope."
Our methods course occurs in our very first semester. The proposals we created in that class were certainly poorly defined, general, and large. As we refined them over the semester, they improved, but many revealed themselves to have fatal flaws or to be embarrassingly naive. I don't know that anyone came out of there with a workable proposal; by the time we had learned to design an excellent piece of research, it was too late for that particular project. But several semesters later, we are now readying ourselves to choose dissertation topics and defend proposals. Our faculty expect that we are able to propose good research. If a member of my cohort went to them with a topic that was "poorly defined, too general, and too large in scope," I think they would be disappointed.
That doesn't mean the faculty don't have suggestions for improvement; we still only have two years of experience, and they have many more. But we all have what the book supposes only a lucky few will have a minimum of - experience in coming up with research proposals and in working on large research projects.
This book isn't very useful for me, I've decided. It's written for someone with a different personality - someone who takes a lot of convincing that planning is worthwhile. It's also apparently written for someone clueless - someone who needs to be told that when doing a literature review, one should use online databases and dissertation indices.
Our methods course occurs in our very first semester. The proposals we created in that class were certainly poorly defined, general, and large. As we refined them over the semester, they improved, but many revealed themselves to have fatal flaws or to be embarrassingly naive. I don't know that anyone came out of there with a workable proposal; by the time we had learned to design an excellent piece of research, it was too late for that particular project. But several semesters later, we are now readying ourselves to choose dissertation topics and defend proposals. Our faculty expect that we are able to propose good research. If a member of my cohort went to them with a topic that was "poorly defined, too general, and too large in scope," I think they would be disappointed.
That doesn't mean the faculty don't have suggestions for improvement; we still only have two years of experience, and they have many more. But we all have what the book supposes only a lucky few will have a minimum of - experience in coming up with research proposals and in working on large research projects.
This book isn't very useful for me, I've decided. It's written for someone with a different personality - someone who takes a lot of convincing that planning is worthwhile. It's also apparently written for someone clueless - someone who needs to be told that when doing a literature review, one should use online databases and dissertation indices.
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Stop this mountain, I want to get off
The Mt. St. Helens hike is a month away, so today I did a "simulation" treadmill workout. As you know if you read this page with any regularity, I'm caught between trying to do hikes to prepare for the big trip and the lack of sufficient natural slope. A treadmill can't really give you the experience of stepping over tree roots and up boulders, but at least it has an incline button.
Of course, it's not exactly a perfect simulation. While an 11% incline at 3.0 miles per hour for 1 hour and 40 minutes may be an approximation of the climb up, the gym's treadmills don't have negative incline setting for the trip down. (I've seen treadmills that do, but never with a decline of more than 5%.) 3.0 mph is also way faster than we will or could hike. Furthermore, I'm not carrying the weight of a backpack. And at the end I did not stop and take pictures, there was no tang of pine in the air, I never stopped for a snack, etc., etc.
Nevertheless, as an endurance test it's a reasonable benchmark, I think. And the one bit of realism it has over actually going out and doing a hike is that the temperature and humidity in the gym is a lot closer to Mt. St. Helens than Tennessee in the summer is.
Of course, it's not exactly a perfect simulation. While an 11% incline at 3.0 miles per hour for 1 hour and 40 minutes may be an approximation of the climb up, the gym's treadmills don't have negative incline setting for the trip down. (I've seen treadmills that do, but never with a decline of more than 5%.) 3.0 mph is also way faster than we will or could hike. Furthermore, I'm not carrying the weight of a backpack. And at the end I did not stop and take pictures, there was no tang of pine in the air, I never stopped for a snack, etc., etc.
Nevertheless, as an endurance test it's a reasonable benchmark, I think. And the one bit of realism it has over actually going out and doing a hike is that the temperature and humidity in the gym is a lot closer to Mt. St. Helens than Tennessee in the summer is.
Monday, July 2, 2007
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