Had a great day with Jade and Lauren on our "girl date." Funnily enough, the details of these plans were not known to me until I got into Lauren's car for our excursion.
We first went to the Ackland Museum, which I discovered, is home to an obscurely-exhibited, unassuming Degas sculpture! UNC, you win some points for this.
While at Cafe Driade, we discussed many stressful topics, more than often relating to our program and career objectives. Sigh. Jade remarked about the difficulty of standing as a self-sufficient, fully matured academic whose research has been conducted correctly and approved of by the community. This is a fear I've often thought of, as I imagine myself in the post-intellectual-incubator world, "What if I misspecify or run my study incorrectly? What if my research gets lambasted by the community?" Well, no matter how far along you are in your academic career, this is bound to happen. This situation is well illustrated in Martin Ravallion's blog, about the evidence on microfinance impact. Two researchers publish results for a study they've conducted on microfinance programming, finding it to achieve positive gains for women. Another set of researchers attempt to replicate the study, and they are unable to do it! Of course, Ravallion provides reasons as to why (it seems the replication was flawed), but it just goes to show, whenever you are investigating hot topics at the cutting edge of research, it can be difficult to know how to analyze complex data. There will always be people who are ready to criticize, so you must be ready to defend! Lucky for me, I'm still in the incubator, but I've still got a ways to go. Sigh.
Note to self: Read those papers and try to understand them.
Second note to self: You are too geeky for finding the follow up remarks and the whole debate fascinating!
We first went to the Ackland Museum, which I discovered, is home to an obscurely-exhibited, unassuming Degas sculpture! UNC, you win some points for this.
While at Cafe Driade, we discussed many stressful topics, more than often relating to our program and career objectives. Sigh. Jade remarked about the difficulty of standing as a self-sufficient, fully matured academic whose research has been conducted correctly and approved of by the community. This is a fear I've often thought of, as I imagine myself in the post-intellectual-incubator world, "What if I misspecify or run my study incorrectly? What if my research gets lambasted by the community?" Well, no matter how far along you are in your academic career, this is bound to happen. This situation is well illustrated in Martin Ravallion's blog, about the evidence on microfinance impact. Two researchers publish results for a study they've conducted on microfinance programming, finding it to achieve positive gains for women. Another set of researchers attempt to replicate the study, and they are unable to do it! Of course, Ravallion provides reasons as to why (it seems the replication was flawed), but it just goes to show, whenever you are investigating hot topics at the cutting edge of research, it can be difficult to know how to analyze complex data. There will always be people who are ready to criticize, so you must be ready to defend! Lucky for me, I'm still in the incubator, but I've still got a ways to go. Sigh.
Note to self: Read those papers and try to understand them.
Second note to self: You are too geeky for finding the follow up remarks and the whole debate fascinating!
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