Back when I started the PhD, I started this blog. Today, to procrastinate on completing my final syllabus for next semester, I started to read through some of my old posting (even though I was not consistent with the blogging)s: Moving from MA to IL, and then the rest of the story (I can laugh at it all now), stuff about writing and classes, and one that I thought I would revisit: Thinking Again.
In Thinking Again, I asked, “A PhD program just primes you to ask even more questions. I wonder how unknowledgeable I’ll feel by the time I graduate. I may be a pure-bred dumb ass by then.” Then noted that in I will be Dr. Dumb Ass in four more years. Well, first it took five years. Second, I do have a lot more questions, but what the program actually did was to show me was to seek out the answers. The proper methodologies, statistical analyses, qualitative analyses. and the like. When to use which. Triangulation. Oh, and a review of what has already been asked and how those questions were answered. And one cannot neglect the larger questions that have been posed in regard to the future of the field and the like. All and all, I have a bunch of information in my head (even though I can’t recall it on a moment’s notice, I do have it safely backed on on an external hard drive!).
Years ago a good friend told me that I don’t have to know all the answers, I just need to know where to find the answers. So to answer the original question, while I have a lot more questions about the world, I am in a much better place to finally begin to answer them.
But I still chuckle at the title Dr. Dumb-Ass.
Time to get that syllabus done…
Georgette's musings 