I'm going to be taking a class in qualitative methods this summer. I am actually excited about the class! I've been doing the readings to prepare, and I've found that for the first time in ages, I'm reading about studies that are actually interesting to me. Ethnographies, studies using media as a data source, studies using in-person interviews. I guess what I find interesting about them is they seek to explore the meanings behind actions and words, motivations for behaviors, and how and why cultures function the way they do.
This, of course, is why I studied sociology as an undergrad. It was the ideology of sociology that ultimately turned me off, but perhaps if I study the use of these methods in the context of public health or epidemiology they will be of more interest to me.
I also also really like the instructors in the class. I had one of them for a class I took last Fall, and she was fantastic. None of the fellows in the class liked her because she called them out for conducting private discussions during her lectures, and leaving immediately after they had presented so they wouldn't have to listen to the other students go. One friend of mine went so far as to call her "unprofessional" which to me was the height of irony, since it was the fellows who were acting unprofessionally!
Anyway, she is an ass kicker, and I think she's amazing, and hopefully I will get some useful tips on how to design one the studies I'm planning.
Crossing my fingers!
6 Pearls of Wisdom:
I always found the students who complained the most were the ones who were also the most unprofessional, disrespectful. Figured it was just my side of the Mississippi; sad to find out, tis not true and that rude, inane students are everywhere.
Hope you enjoy!!
I love qualitative methods! I will be interested to hear your thoughts on the class.
Sounds like an awesome course. I would love to take a class like that someday. (hah, maybe as a fellow?)
I actually wanted to include a more qualitative aspect/study in my dissertation but my advisor vetoed it- he claims you have to be an anthropologist to do proper qualitative work. :( sometimes i think i SHOULD have been an anthropologist, or sociologist, at least as an undergrad. it would certainly be more useful now.
enjoy the class! (and the pre-reading!)
Wow, I wish I had the courage or like cash to just start doing something that I REALLY like. I completed a business degree and just jumped right into the business world, not my scene, boo hoo!
Ditto on what A Doc 2 Be said! I went back to present to the students of the lower classes a few years after I graduated, and I finally stopped my lecture and asked them to be quiet or leave. It was the one thing I had wished my professors had said regularly when I was *in* the classes, and I wasn't about to put up with it when I was the presenter.
Needless to say, I wasn't asked back! (But oh, the satisfaction!)
Don't listen to sociologists. They're delusional. Since when did tick boxes on a survey reflect real life? That's the ultimate failure of their methodology. Butttt, we all need to write grants and get money from NIH/NSF, so its really easy to play into their numbers rather than trouble where they came from in the first place.
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