Archive for February, 2006
Raphaela
She made me very happy, out of blue popped up for a visit from Zurich;)
By Nana | February 26, 2006 | Topics: Personal | No Comments »
A Big Thank You VOL2
This time to Heck, as he sent me a set of very beautiful photo prints of Slovenia. Most of them can be seen here.
Thank you, Heck:)
By Nana | February 24, 2006 | Topics: Personal | No Comments »
A Big Thank You
Some time ago, I found an online paper on combining methods, written by Katrin Niglas. I didn’t know how to quote it, so I dropped her an email.
When I returned home last week, a book was waiting for me. She sent me her book, which title is: The combined use of qualitative and quantitative methods in educational research. She couldn’t make me happier.
So, BIG thank you, Katrin!
By Nana | February 20, 2006 | Topics: Academic books | 5 Comments »
Home
sweet home.
By Nana | February 15, 2006 | Topics: Personal | 2 Comments »
Ph(ilosopher)’s hints
This philosopher, who has called his field a boring, pedantic, useless and pretentious subject, from time to time writes some wisdoms and advices, and I thought (as they are useful and funny) that it would be super selfish of me not to share them. Allora, here they are:
A great motivation technique: stand up once every few hours and shout “Shaka” - as loud as you can (it also helps to release pressure;))
In case you didn’t know yet, here is a thick description of academia: “academia is a large house with lots and lots of highly intelligent, over qualified and underemployed people that are getting paid to do nothing but ripping each others work into pieces”.
A tip on how to live your life: “Live your life as if you want to write a biography and not a CV!!!”
Bu.sh. must be the official abbreviation for “bull shit”… this philosopher has also noticed that Bush is a “four letter word”, which is an expression for everything nasty, because all swearwords seem to have four letters in English (sh**, f***, s***,d***,c***).
Women and men looks: for a woman its much easier to look magically - she only puts her lipstick on, while guys have to go to the gym for three months;)
To be efficient with work: one should take a bit time off! We are all the time concerned with not wasting time, and forget to really switch off!
To be continued …
By Nana | February 9, 2006 | Topics: General | 1 Comment »
A Story Of a Poor Book
I have just borrowed a book that nobody has borrowed it for the last eight years. The book was published in 1986, which probably means that the library got it in 1987, which probably means that in those 11 years was borrowed maybe once or twice, if we follow the logic for its probability to be choosen.
Poor book, actually a very tiny useful one: Fielding, N. and Fielding, J. L. (1986). Linking data. Beverly Hills; London: Sage
So people, go to your libraries and borrow it, I don’t want a poor book be left alone for so long in other libraries as well.
By Nana | February 7, 2006 | Topics: Academic books | No Comments »
Tricks of the Trade
that kept me in bed till 2pm is a great book, written by Howard S. Becker. Once you start reading, you can’t get a hold of yourself anymore. It makes me laugh out loud on every second or third page with his witty remarks about himself or other social scientists or social science in general. In chapter one, for example, when he tries to explain what kind of tricks he is going to teach the reader, he says:
“… others may think I mean technical tricks of writing or computing or “methods” or statistics (though not many expect statistical tricks from me)”
or another laughing material, when he argues why it is not always advisable just to adopt conventional ideas that have been praised by people that studied the same phenomenon before as the uninspected premises of our research:
“The estimable activity of “reviewing the literature,” so dear to the hearts of dissertation committees, exposes us to the danger of that seduction.”
Anyway, beside a good laughter it also made me think about the way I or people around me conduct our research. I literally ate the chapter about the researcher’s imagery, that is how we think of what we are going to study before we actually start the study, how we picture the social setting or a group in our head, what kind of stereotypes we have about them, how we think we know their experience etc. The question that very much intrigues me here is whether a researcher who has no first hand experience with the phenomenon under study, can make accurate and adequate conclusions about it. It is just what I heard three weeks ago from a friend who asked me what is my opinion on using sex as a method in order to acquire a full understanding of experiences and meanings of the practices of informants. This friend was against it and had very good arguments for that. I agreed but now, having read the issues Becker rises up, I am not so sure anymore. I as a person possess too many stereotypes and assumptions in my own head plus a set of my own experiences which I can’t get completely free of as a researcher when trying to explain someone else’s behaviour. Becker tells a few tricks how to deal with it.
I am in a sampling section now, when he goes about how to deal with probabilistic and non probabilistic sampling and why the later is no less good as the former.
Really a must read material, especially for people like I, who are still a beginners on their research journey.
By Nana | February 5, 2006 | Topics: Academic books | 2 Comments »
Ce Soir, Je Suis BOB
This sentence is the latest progress in my French;) Here in Belgium, they have a nice costume to give even nicer label BOB to a person, who must not drink and has to arrange, that everyone else who has been drinking arrives home safe. The other evening, people from UCL NNL were meeting ULB people for a drink. And I was BOB. Well, not that I had a car and took everyone home (I was the one who had to travel the largest distance to get home, to be precise), but mostly cos they all had been drinking real beers and I stuck to pechresse & kriek again. Very nice, light, sweet, fruit beers.
From right to left: Virginie, Regis, Jean-Benoit, Emilie, Caroline.
By Nana | February 3, 2006 | Topics: Les Voyages, Personal | 4 Comments »
Inspiring Office for übermensch
It’s very easy: It has two screens (tho I only use one, but the more the better;)), big window, I am all ALONE in here, cosy setting … what more would I want?
Voila;)
By Nana | February 1, 2006 | Topics: Les Voyages, PhD | 5 Comments »