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What Did You Do For Your Education/Career Today?

I think I may have found something I actually want to study next year...

A Bachelor of Visual Communication Design

Arty, designy, sounds like something i'd like to do... hmm...
Now... how to get into uni...
 
Good news all around everybody!

Bedhead: I think Political Science is a pseudo science but no less important! Let us know about getting that paper published. :)

poopie: That's so cool. I know it's *so* hard to get a job right now. Good call on driving it in person and dressing really smart for the interview. :D

Jam: where are you 'escaping' to eventually?

purple: I'd worry about getting in to uni first then worry about the major. Actually, if that's what gives you the motivation to get in who am I to say? Good luck!
 
Hooray for everyone's success!

Took 5 exams today on that god-awful Kenexa module: Word, Excel, Outlook, Access, and *gasp* legal typing. 100% on Word, Excel, and Outlook; 95% on Access, and 87 wpm typing with NO ERRORS.

:D
 
Amor- thank you! i had my third interview for the position on tuesday and it did not go well. the interviewer/nurse administrator got the feeling that i'd be better suited for a different floor (specifically ICU). so, it kind of sounds good...except for the fact that their ICU has no positions open and just recently took on a couple of graduates.

so, back to the drawing board, but with a little more hope.

how about you and your educational/career conquests?
 
I am currently designing an interview guide for my pilot study on the reproduction of scientific labor, trying to trouble shoot problems with my school's IRB online application process, and then I will probably try to read more Deleuze and Guattari for a theory paper. Fun times!
 
peer.review said:
I am currently designing an interview guide for my pilot study on the reproduction of scientific labor, trying to trouble shoot problems with my school's IRB online application process, and then I will probably try to read more Deleuze and Guattari for a theory paper. Fun times!
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Fuck yeah on both counts. What aspect of the reproduction of scientific labour are you looking at? From what perspective? Have you read Bruno Latour?

Also, Deleuze and Guattari, hell yes. I've been trying to get people I know around them. They've affected my thinking really extremely, I'll be writing a better thesis because of them.
 
I have read a good amount of Latour, the rest of the ANT gang, lots of stuff on assemblage and a good amount of Neo-Marxist literature (mainly Gramsci and Althusser). I am mainly focusing on the reproduction of pharmaceutical research scientists within academic laboratories at a major pharmaceutical research university here in the USA. My pilot is going to be an ethnographic grounded theory study focusing on just one laboratory and if the study goes well, then I might want to expand my study and try to do a multisite ethnography.

Deleuze and Guattari are good for making me think through complex social processes in an interesting way. I got interested in them mainly because of my interest in post-structuralist theory and because of a dissertation defense that I sat through on "Assembling Harm Reduction Policy in Taiwan" which used a lot of theory from Deleuze and Guattari.

If you are interested in the science and technology studies and neo-marxist stuff, then I would recommend you check out Catherine Waldby (she is at the University of Sydney). She has been a huge influence of mine in studying biocapital and tissue economies.
 
Science studies isn't my area, although I find it interesting. I read Latour because I happened across his article "Why has critique run out of steam", and then moved on to 'We have never been modern' which I loved. Then I read 'reassembling the social'...he's very provocative and has a lot of interesting things to say but he is flat our wrong about some of the theorists he critiques in that book. Nevertheless he's got some important stuff to say particularly about working through binaries, critiques of reification, etc. I read Deleuze and Guattari for similar reasons, an ontology that allows you to understand society outside of subject/object, agency/structure binaries.

So that's three people on bluelight who are into social theory. Perhaps we should have our own sub-forum ;)
 
^ I can see that quickly degenerating into fantasizing about Foucault and Marx oil wrestling over conceptions of power. Or maybe that is just me.

(back on topic)

My research site may deny me access until the winter of next year so I might be left high and dry for my pilot study next year. So today I begged for the laboratory to still grant me access despite the PI going on sabbatical for most of next year. Oh the joys of research.
 
peer.review said:
^ I can see that quickly degenerating into fantasizing about Foucault and Marx oil wrestling over conceptions of power. Or maybe that is just me.
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That would be fine by me.

My research site may deny me access until the winter of next year so I might be left high and dry for my pilot study next year. So today I begged for the laboratory to still grant me access despite the PI going on sabbatical for most of next year. Oh the joys of research.
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That is a total drag. That's more than a year away right? Are you doing a PhD?
 
The start date for my research is actually about 4 months away. I have to design the project and submit it to my school's IRB for ethics approval, hope that they okay it, and then start collecting data in the beginning of Fall 2010.


Are you doing a PhD?
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Yeah I am working on my Sociology PhD. I am almost done with my first year, just have to finish up a theory course (Post-Structuralism and Symbolic Interactionism), take my theory qualifying exam, and get this research in order so that I am on track for my second year!
 
peer.review said:
Yeah I am working on my Sociology PhD. I am almost done with my first year, just have to finish up a theory course (Post-Structuralism and Symbolic Interactionism), take my theory qualifying exam, and get this research in order so that I am on track for my second year!
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Right. I'm in my third year. We don't have PhD coursework here so the whole thing is supposed to be finished by the end of the third year, although people commonly take an extra six months. It would be nice to have had some coursework at the beginning particularly since undergraduate theory courses are so woeful, and the understanding of theory that some PhDs seem to have early in the process is similarly woeful.
 
ethnographic grounded theory study
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No! Extended case method! ;)
...
Gawd does the Berkeley program run lengthily. Par is finishing the masters and quals by year 4.
...
And you guys don't begin with theory coursework? Odd...
...
And I'm counting 4+ social theory buffs. ;)

ebola
 
I should check out more of the extended case method stuff. I have only read a little bit of Burawoy and sat through a talk of his at UCB earlier this (school) year. However, it's kind of hard not to do something grounded theory related at the school the created grounded theory. ha.

I think my program's average length is something like 5-6 years. 3 years course work and then you work on your research until you are finished!
 
Grounded theory is an epistemological crock really. It comes from the time when qualitative researchers were saying "look everyone, we are rigorous too, just like the number crunchers." The idea that your codes come purely from your data is an inductivist fable. I try to avoid methodological niches like this ("I'm using an X method approach" or whatever). I'm doing qualitative work. That's enough for me.

ebola? said:
And you guys don't begin with theory coursework? Odd...
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Yeah that's how it is in Australia. Three years, and you have to learn all your theory by yourself, and write the thesis (and publish) in those three years. My understanding is that the quality of Australian theses is internationally competitive, but I'm not sure where I stand on the coursework idea overall.
 
satricion said:
Grounded theory is an epistemological crock really. It comes from the time when qualitative researchers were saying "look everyone, we are rigorous too, just like the number crunchers." The idea that your codes come purely from your data is an inductivist fable. I try to avoid methodological niches like this ("I'm using an X method approach" or whatever). I'm doing qualitative work. That's enough for me.
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I agree (mostly) with this statement. However, it would make my life even harder if I just told the IRB and my advisor that I am just doing "qualitative work." So I play the game and tell them something open enough to give me theoretical and methodological wiggle room but "understandable" enough to get me into the field. I have already had problems with one of the research gatekeepers for saying I want to do a grounded theory ethnography and my research proposal too theoretically.
 
Oh right yeah IRBs. Well they don't know anything about epistemology. You can just feed them whatever bullshit sounds acceptable and then do it properly later on. Ultimately it makes no difference, if they want a buzzword like 'grounded theory' then they can have it.
 
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