Ever since I first time applied to university nearly seven years ago, I was sure about one thing: I will do a PhD. In which discipline and on what subject ― I had no idea back then. I was sure that by the time I finish my undergraduate degree, I would be absolutely certain what I want to do, I would have found a perfect supervisor, established the essential contacts, etc etc
Now, two and half years later, I feel I have barely advanced... Paradoxically, I have completed two master's dissertations with distinction grades and yet I feel I am completely unable to write a simple PhD proposal. One reason for that is my trouble of finding an exact research topic and then stick into it... Even if I have found such a topic, I am completely stuck when it comes to the "justification" part of the proposal. Why on earth would someone grant tens of thousands of euros for research on some stupid memorial stones in remote Bosnian lands!
During the course of my undergraduate and postgraduate studies, I learned some essentials of social research. Everyone wants to study human trafficking but nobody knows how to get access to first hand data on the topic. Of course, we can appoach almost any topic with a postmodernist perspective. Like every student of social research, I was carried away by the writings of Foucault the God ― yet, this period did not last more than a few weeks.
While some postmodernist and poststststststructuralist ideas certainly make sense, the problem is: will someone outside the academia apprciate our research findings? Yes, something like Coming into term with intersectionalism in the process of constructing a homo oeconemicus among the Western research community in the orient may sound like an interesting research topic. But what would be the value added of these findings to the rest of our society? How would these research findings help to improve the everyday life of an average Joe?
Recently, I have been feeling like I want to do some hardcore positivist research, probably with statistical methods. Enough with constructivism, enough with critical that, critical this. This would be a truly Radical Change for someone who has dedicated (almost) an entire degree for studying qualitative methods. With all this confusion, looks like I am not going to start a PhD next autumn. Let's (again) wait for the next year...
I will fnish this blog entry with something less serious:
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| Radical haircut! |
Yes, I cut about 20 cm of my hair! Quite radical, considering I haven't had this short hair for about eight years. Feels so strange when doing a braid and suddeny I've run out of hair... At least, for the first time in two years, I can feel hair instead of dry hay!
