Career student
I am one of those people who would like to remain in school forever. The main reason for this, I think, is my lust for learning. I am afraid that the day I step out of the academic world, I will stop learning. Since I have never worked in industry, I cannot really compare life in industry vs. that in academia but I speak with friends and colleagues in industry often. And while it would be nice to have the money and the free time after work that comes with industry jobs, I fear that I will become shallow and mundane. I fear that a life in industry will mean that all I think about after work is how to enjoy life and how to best spend my hard-earned money. Yes, there is nothing wrong with that but I fear that not being around people who learn for a career (that's how I tend to think of people in academia) will take me away from learning. And if there is one thing that I never want to stop doing in life, its learning.
Since I've joined grad school I have found it very difficult to settle down on a research area for my PhD dissertation, leave alone a research topic. That is because I find every new research area I come across interesting. When I joined grad school I wanted to work on intelligent agent technology and its use in ubiquitous computing. At the same time, I was intrigued by discussions with my dad about how the large-scale information systems implementations that he was in-charge of at work always failed. So after dabbling in intelligent agents for a bit, and realizing that coding 'intelligence' as IF-THEN rules wasn't all that exciting, I moved onto the field of information systems.
I spent 3 months conducting focus groups at a local organization about the challenges they had faced with risk assessment of their recently-implemented large-scale information system. Soon I found that while the challenges in the field of information systems were interesting from a research perspective, there was a huge gap in the field between research done in academia and application of that to real-world problems in industry. I found the field of information systems to be very theoretical, with researchers expounding at length about the advantages of action research vs. critical theory in understanding information systems, while those in industry hardly ever heard of or applied such theories. I also found the community to be very closed in that the same researchers published at the top conferences and reviewed each others papers year after year.
While dabbling in information systems I got the opportunity to work on a project with a large teaching hospital that was worried about the high rate of patients turned away from their emergency department without being treated. They wanted us to adopt a simulation and modeling approach to study the problem. I ended up reading extensively about the overcrowding problem in emergency departments across the country and taking a course in medical informatics which opened up a whole new world for me. And the rest, as they say, is history. I have finally settled on the field of medical informatics for my PhD research.
But while the problems I am studying are very compelling and the field is exciting, I can't help think now and again "Oh, wouldn't it have been cool to study design and usability in the field of HCI?" or "Why did I not explore something in the fundamental sciences, specially biology?" Sometimes I feel like starting all over with grad school in a totally different area like DNA sequencing or solid state physics. Also, when I think whether I want to spend the rest of my life working in the field of medical informatics, the answer is a strong "NO". So what does that mean? Does it mean I will forever be searching for that perfect 'soulmate' of a research area that can quench my thirst for learning. Or does having such a deep thirst for learning mean I will always be the wandering learner, jumping from one area to another in search of exciting puzzles, new knowledge, and intellectual adventure?
And ofcourse there is the dream to apply to med-school some day and become an MD. Just to learn about the intricacies of the human body :)
Since I've joined grad school I have found it very difficult to settle down on a research area for my PhD dissertation, leave alone a research topic. That is because I find every new research area I come across interesting. When I joined grad school I wanted to work on intelligent agent technology and its use in ubiquitous computing. At the same time, I was intrigued by discussions with my dad about how the large-scale information systems implementations that he was in-charge of at work always failed. So after dabbling in intelligent agents for a bit, and realizing that coding 'intelligence' as IF-THEN rules wasn't all that exciting, I moved onto the field of information systems.
I spent 3 months conducting focus groups at a local organization about the challenges they had faced with risk assessment of their recently-implemented large-scale information system. Soon I found that while the challenges in the field of information systems were interesting from a research perspective, there was a huge gap in the field between research done in academia and application of that to real-world problems in industry. I found the field of information systems to be very theoretical, with researchers expounding at length about the advantages of action research vs. critical theory in understanding information systems, while those in industry hardly ever heard of or applied such theories. I also found the community to be very closed in that the same researchers published at the top conferences and reviewed each others papers year after year.
While dabbling in information systems I got the opportunity to work on a project with a large teaching hospital that was worried about the high rate of patients turned away from their emergency department without being treated. They wanted us to adopt a simulation and modeling approach to study the problem. I ended up reading extensively about the overcrowding problem in emergency departments across the country and taking a course in medical informatics which opened up a whole new world for me. And the rest, as they say, is history. I have finally settled on the field of medical informatics for my PhD research.
But while the problems I am studying are very compelling and the field is exciting, I can't help think now and again "Oh, wouldn't it have been cool to study design and usability in the field of HCI?" or "Why did I not explore something in the fundamental sciences, specially biology?" Sometimes I feel like starting all over with grad school in a totally different area like DNA sequencing or solid state physics. Also, when I think whether I want to spend the rest of my life working in the field of medical informatics, the answer is a strong "NO". So what does that mean? Does it mean I will forever be searching for that perfect 'soulmate' of a research area that can quench my thirst for learning. Or does having such a deep thirst for learning mean I will always be the wandering learner, jumping from one area to another in search of exciting puzzles, new knowledge, and intellectual adventure?
And ofcourse there is the dream to apply to med-school some day and become an MD. Just to learn about the intricacies of the human body :)
1 comment:
As I read your blog I was glad and suprised to see that I was not the only one who felt this way. Being a fellow learning junkie myself, I also had a lot of difficulty in focusing on a particular research subject. But in the end a PhD is to finish and the destination is as important as the journey, if not more :) Travelling the same path I am doing my research in the field of IS and Is success. Good luck.
Murat Sincan
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