On Saturday night, my friends and I went to the UCI Men's Basketball game against Cal State Fullerton. We cheered as loudly as we could, but it wasn't enough; we lost 81-66. Nevertheless, our team had never made it so far in the post season. We are sad that the season has ended, but we are excited to cheer on the baseball team this spring.
It's finals week and the quarter is winding down. I've temporarily fallen out of the slump and feel better after having talked to a couple older grad students in the program. Apparently, the slump is not uncommon and many grad students have felt like throwing in the towel during their first few years. In attempts to remedy the slump, I'm going to explore non-quantitative research methods by taking a qualitative methods class next quarter. A weakness of our program is that we do not have a structured research methods sequence. It is extremely frustrating because we are supposed to be "doing research," but I feel ill equipped to do so. Since the quantitative-qualitative divide is so great, the department does not offer any required methods courses because it does not want to seem as though it endorses one method over another. Instead, we "learn" methods (sort of) through reading assigned class readings in our seminars. It's useful, but it still doesn't teach us how to "do" research. So, sometimes it feels like a sink or swim, but I had better learn to swim- and fast.
It's finals week and the quarter is winding down. I've temporarily fallen out of the slump and feel better after having talked to a couple older grad students in the program. Apparently, the slump is not uncommon and many grad students have felt like throwing in the towel during their first few years. In attempts to remedy the slump, I'm going to explore non-quantitative research methods by taking a qualitative methods class next quarter. A weakness of our program is that we do not have a structured research methods sequence. It is extremely frustrating because we are supposed to be "doing research," but I feel ill equipped to do so. Since the quantitative-qualitative divide is so great, the department does not offer any required methods courses because it does not want to seem as though it endorses one method over another. Instead, we "learn" methods (sort of) through reading assigned class readings in our seminars. It's useful, but it still doesn't teach us how to "do" research. So, sometimes it feels like a sink or swim, but I had better learn to swim- and fast.
No comments:
Post a Comment