As I briefly noted last week, this week would be spent writing a PhD research proposal almost from scratch, to move into a discipline that had not been my own. With much help from my supervisor to ground my research in jargon that the information systems (IS) people would understand, I completed the task over four 12-hour workdays and most of Friday. The end product was a 10-page research proposal to examine the social and political implications arising from differences between how builders and users conceive information infrastructure.
(Some readers may recalled that an MIS journal had approached me to do some work for them, and also that I declined for lack of experience in the field. It was the correct decision at the time, and after this week's experience, the decision stands.)
For the many non-academics reading, a research plan should go a little something like this:
1. Ground oneself in some field of research.
2. Identify some problem or opportunity to which one has some insight.
3. Propose to do some work that will probably yield some theoretical and/or practical goodies.
My main problem (and my usual M.O.) is that I had plenty of insights and a broad idea about the field (2) and some idea about a solution (3), but almost no knowledge of the recent ideological particulars (1). On the advice of my second supervisor (who was in Vancouver for a conference this week) we agreed on an approach to front-load buzz-words that would appeal to each of the department's diverse post-graduate academic committee members. Apparently, this method to make faculty feel included in new work through name-dropping lowers defenses against the new work we have in mind.
Among other things, writing the proposal in one week required:
-reading (M)IS papers written since the 1990s about the field (our department is redefining itself, and primarily focuses mainly on design and IS)
-reading papers in computer-supported cooperative work
-reading papers about (the lack of theory about) information infrastructures
-reading papers about all that STS stuff I had osmosed but not directly studied at my time at the University of Calgary
-reading papers about participatory design, ethnographic approaches, etc. by Scandinavian authors
-reading a couple of introductory MIS textbooks (substantially the same material as covered every month or so on /., with approximately the same lack of theoretical or thematic cohesion other than it's all computer-related)
-a dozen (decreasingly dreadful) trips to the new automated drink machine that remains in the process of being outfitted and calibrated
-six drafts of the research plan
-discovering that the department doesn't have a comprehensive post-graduate course list
It was also a challenge to fit my ideas about research into local expectations about the kinds of content required in a research plan. Instead of demonstrating through a detailed plan to implement research using the anticipated and available data sources, a researcher's competence is shown through the mastery of vague high-level categories that do not apply to any research effort in particular, along with the CV and supervisors' recommendations.
On Friday evening, upon describing what I had done that week, the Korean MIS researcher with whom I'm sharing an office compared the effort to that required to write a good conference paper, in an unrealistically compressed timeline. I could not disagree with that assessment, but only pointed out that such
As we discussed our common research, political, and social interests over beers with the Finland vs Russia hockey game in the background (beers are five euro each for students, including taxes and tip) I had several moments in which the MIS jargon and perspectives became well connected to various IT and innovation concepts from my past. It became clear that much of my struggles earlier in the week with respect to categorizing my research methods and approaches related to differences in how Finns and/or MIS viewed the fundamental structure and order of social relationships.
These details, rather than the technical content, I would have to learn additionally in the Finnish way.
B. Extra-curricular activities
There are two waves of diners at the dining hall: The first consists of those who hate to prepare food; the second those who do not like to put down their work. As I participated in the second wave on Wednesday, I met a geologist from China who told me rather a lot about Alberta's geological formations. We compared notes about government paperwork after his arrival in the city that morning. Not surprisingly, the bureaucrats knew how to deal with international scholars from China. On our way out, we were recruited by a pocket of English-speaking international students to [an international student leadership organisation]'s events on Thursday and Friday about "Leadership" and "Project Management". Neither of us were strangers to these concepts, but we reasoned that it might be a good idea to learn about such things from the Finnish perspective. Conveniently, I already had a key for the venue ("Ape House") as that was to be my apartment building [I may have already posted about that story].
So, an Italian, a Russian, a Chinese man, a Canadian, and a couple of Finns walk into a student activity room. The first speaker on leadership draws a 2x2 grid crossing MOTIVATION and ABILITY. He highlighted the organizational importance of developing and retaining individuals with high motivation and high ability, along with methods to move members toward that direction. The speaker then introduced three kinds of individuals who *could* move group members among the categories: mangers, leaders, and coaches. In this framework, managers tell people to do things; leaders set the overall direction, while coaches help individuals overcome personal obstacles. Obviously frustrated that none of the attendees (including the Finns) chose managers as those who could enhance members' skills or motivations, the speaker proceeded to reflect on his grudges with the previous leadership of the local chapter, and how bad it is to have non-motivated but highly skilled "Party Members" (the casual social event, not the political organization) such as himself around to drag down everyone else. The organization's two attending executive members conferred among themselves for some time, and identified some (many) internal leaders who needed more management if the grid were to be followed.
At the event, I also met one of the hundreds of Masters' students, who proceeded to tell me over lunch on Friday about the many inner financial workings of the university and the department. In brief: The university receives government funding for Masters' and PhD students when they graduate (~50,000 euro each). It receives government funding for undergraduate students for as long as they take courses. Undergraduate (half-)courses cost the students approximately 150 euro each. In a bid to expand its financial base (because graduate students were not completing their programs in a timely manner), the department opened an undergraduate program a few years ago. It was also verified to me that the dining hall food operated on a system of cycles and epicycles, in which the same ingredients would occur on a weekly cycle, but be made into different shaped dishes on a monthly cycle.
C. Reverse engineered recipes
1. Carrot salad
Ingredients:
Carrots (100-150g per person)
Vesi (5 tsp)
White vinegar (1 tsp)
Instructions:
Finely shread carrots.
Mix 5 parts vesi with one part white vinegar.
Spritz the vesi and vinegar mixture on the shreadded carrots to taste.
2. Carrot and cabbage salad
Ingredients:
[Carrot salad]
Cabbage (1/4 head per person)
Instructions:
Cube a cabbage
Mix 1 part carrot salad with one part cubed cabbage
3. Carrot, cabbage, and Zucchini salad
Ingredients:
[Carrot and cabbage salad]
Zucchini
Red cabbage
Canned pineapple slices (unsugared)
Instructions:
Drain and rinse canned pineapple
Compress pineapple slices using a cheese cloth to extract remaining juice
Cube pineapple pieces
Cube Zucchini
Finely slice red cabbage
Mix 10 parts carrot and cabbage salad with 10 parts cubed zucchini and one part pineapple fibers
Garnish with red cabbage slices to taste
4. Fruit salad with bonus fibre
Ingredients:
[Carrot, cabbage, and Zucchini salad]
Canned fruit salad
Cubed cabbage
Instructions:
Drain and rinse canned fruid salad
Mix three parts canned fruit salad with one part carrot, cabbage, and Zucchini salad
Garnish with cubed cabbage pieces to taste
5. Next update:
Mail, university IT systems, Kela, taxes, banking, touristy stuff and more
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