Tonight, Robert and I played Nertz (which is like a speed solitaire in which you play on common aces in the center but have your own stacks to build on and a pile of 13 cards you want to get rid of) for a combined score of 72, which is our new high score. (I can't remember our combined low score, but it is less than 0.)
Our individual high scores are 42 (me) and 39 (Robert - tonight - despite suffering from the cold that had knocked me out last weekend).
It felt sort of odd to lose with a score of 33, but I still liked scoring my age, which does tend to get harder as the years go by; I have fewer than 20 years to enjoy this as a possibility.
(UPDATE: Re-reading this, I was filled with sudden uncertainty whether that is my age; I had to ask Robert, "I am 33, aren't I?" This is not the first time I have had to do this in the past several months. Ugh.)
My absolute favorite score was 40 (my two favorite numbers multiplied together). I also am quite fond of any multiple of four and I like any power of 2. 10 is a good number. I am not so crazy about most of the prime numbers and negative numbers just suck.
We have a house rule that the stacks in the center area have to be lined up in alternating red and black suits because I have such an advantage in peripheral vision (and general pattern recognition) that without some predictable layout as a guide, Robert gets his ass handed to him the majority of the time. With the house rule, the game is competitive.
He (and hell, I) might go catatonic if he tried to play the ultra-fast, cut-throat, chaotic game that the S. family plays. We play a very genteel, civilized game in our house. Well, Robert does. I suppose I do occasionally say something like, "You blocked me, you fucking fucker. Fuck you. Hah! Take that, you jerk! Hey, that was my ace! Waaaah."
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Neck Brace Options
I was happy to see, via the Go Fug Yourself website, that Tam need not fear that her neck condition will shut her out of all formal venues - she can always wear this dressy (if somewhat funereal) classic-black neck brace at her next ceremonial outing. I can totally see her boyfriend Ed in the matching cumberbund and other appropriate accessories, too. Stylin'.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Do Pluses and Minuses Matter?
My slightly irksome feeling that my 99% in Calc 1 is not going to be reflected in my grade made me wonder whether the Rice plus/minus system helped or hurt my GPA compared to the regular 5 grade system UT and Texas State use. I'm assuming the pluses and minuses will basically cancel out, but I got a good number of A+ my junior and senior year, so it's worth testing.
My total GPA using the Rice system: 3.643
Using the UT/Texas State system: 3.635
My last 60 hr GPA using the Rice system: 3.917
Using the UT/Texas State system: 3.836
Some B- early in my Rice career hurt me, but the A+ from the latter part of my career helped me, so that overall, it's a wash. But it does impact the "last 60 hour" GPA that many grad schools like to look at (since they know how ridiculously common a relatively poor showing in the first year or two of college is).
Despite the relatively inconsequential impact on the overall GPA, I still am in favor of the plus and minus system. I think 5 categories of scholastic performance, especially when the bottom 2 are used so infrequently, does not discriminate enough. As a person reviewing someone's transcript, I would like to know, for instance, whether the student got an A+ in statistics or an A-. (I may not give a rat's ass what variety of B she got in German.)
In further fun with my Excel spreadsheet:
If I add in the 9 post-Rice classes I plan to take and get A's in all of them (2 of which I have already finished for A's), my new (UT/TSU-method) total GPA will go up to 3.71 and my last 60 hr GPA will go up to 3.95.
(That damn B+ in public finance that I got my very last semester at Rice will haunt me forever. The B+ I got because I failed to see a required reading on the syllabus and was screwed when I took the final exam that had an essay question on this reading that I was not able to adequately finesse. Argh.)
Now back to studying for my psychology essay test tomorrow. The party never ends.
My total GPA using the Rice system: 3.643
Using the UT/Texas State system: 3.635
My last 60 hr GPA using the Rice system: 3.917
Using the UT/Texas State system: 3.836
Some B- early in my Rice career hurt me, but the A+ from the latter part of my career helped me, so that overall, it's a wash. But it does impact the "last 60 hour" GPA that many grad schools like to look at (since they know how ridiculously common a relatively poor showing in the first year or two of college is).
Despite the relatively inconsequential impact on the overall GPA, I still am in favor of the plus and minus system. I think 5 categories of scholastic performance, especially when the bottom 2 are used so infrequently, does not discriminate enough. As a person reviewing someone's transcript, I would like to know, for instance, whether the student got an A+ in statistics or an A-. (I may not give a rat's ass what variety of B she got in German.)
In further fun with my Excel spreadsheet:
If I add in the 9 post-Rice classes I plan to take and get A's in all of them (2 of which I have already finished for A's), my new (UT/TSU-method) total GPA will go up to 3.71 and my last 60 hr GPA will go up to 3.95.
(That damn B+ in public finance that I got my very last semester at Rice will haunt me forever. The B+ I got because I failed to see a required reading on the syllabus and was screwed when I took the final exam that had an essay question on this reading that I was not able to adequately finesse. Argh.)
Now back to studying for my psychology essay test tomorrow. The party never ends.
Two Math Test Grades
Calc 2 Test #1 - 99%. (I missed a sign which, if I'd looked more closely at the messy final answer, I would have known had to be the case.)
Calc 1 Final Exam - 98%. I have a 99% as my final grade. I now get to feel that UT is extremely lame for not giving A+ in undergraduate courses. All the same, even a straight up A is helpful to my overall GPA and is a big improvement over my Rice Calc 1 grade (B-). I hope that they manage to get the exam in the mail to me this time so I can see what I did.
Woo fucking hoo, people.
Calc 1 Final Exam - 98%. I have a 99% as my final grade. I now get to feel that UT is extremely lame for not giving A+ in undergraduate courses. All the same, even a straight up A is helpful to my overall GPA and is a big improvement over my Rice Calc 1 grade (B-). I hope that they manage to get the exam in the mail to me this time so I can see what I did.
Woo fucking hoo, people.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Symptoms
Since Friday night, I have had all the symptoms I usually get from pain killer withdrawal (sleeping all the time, body aches, nausea, extreme congestion, overall major fatigue, headache, stomach ache) even though I haven't been taking any pain killers for months. It's kind of weird to consider that my withdrawal symptoms are just a collection of illness symptoms and not some kind of extra special syndrome specific to withdrawal. In any event, it sucks. But I have now been out of bed for 3 straight hours, so maybe it'll turn out to be some 24 hour thing and not ruin my entire weekend. Waaaah.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Making Impulsivity Work For Me
Recently, I have noticed that I have been less responsive to my usual techniques to "get things done / act in accordance with my longer-term desires." For example, historically successful approaches have included making an appointment for myself for slightly in the future to do something I have been avoiding and planning out every detail of my meals, snacks, and exercise in advance. But lately, I often can't seem to take the first step of imposing the schedule, and when I do, I later don't take the plan seriously enough to follow it. It's no wonder I've been pondering whether a person can experience psychological reactance - a response to the feeling that one's behavioral freedoms are being threatened that often results in the person adopting an attitude or engaging in behavior opposite to that being advocated - to behavioral limitations one has placed on oneself.
I have also been somewhat more impulsive than usual. (Of course, given my baseline level of impulsivity is pretty low, this still leaves me in the category of Ridiculously Scheduled and Over-Considering, but I am moving toward Sane Level of Planning.) Although this has its obvious downsides, such as idle thinking along the lines of "three slices of bacon would make this salad much more delicious" resulting in almost immediately cooking and eating bacon (an act made extremely easy when one possesses a package of pre-cooked bacon that only needs 1 minute in the microwave to be crunchy and perfect), it's also meant that I find myself acting immediately on conscious thoughts like "I should write my psychology paper" and "I need to pay my bills" as well as acting almost before thinking on impulses like (the event that partly inspired this post) suddenly deciding to make the beef stew this morning, something I have been intended to do for a couple of days, while I happened to be up to wash my face. I'm also finding it generally more common to abruptly stop doing some leisure (time-waster) activity - I will often shut down my web broswer after a short period of time or stop reading a novel in mid-sentence and not really realize until afterwards that I wasn't enjoying the experience a whole lot.
Socially, I wonder if this lowered emphasis on following through on commitments to myself will make me more likely to be the kind of person who is willing to blow off the kind of agreements that I used to find binding, like saying "Yes, I will see you at X's party." Given that my impulsivity toward making social contact is arguably not significantly different from zero, this might make me even more of an introvert than I have been. On the other hand, I have been having conversations with random people more frequently (which is easy to do in the university environment), so maybe it's a wash.
Anyway, after noticing these changes, today I read this well-timed blog post on overcoming procrastination, which I suffer from to an average, to somewhat below average, degree, but that is still arguably a kind of bad thing in any quantity.
I have used the "set aside time to do things" approach in the past for Robert and me to clean the apartment, but it has fallen to the wayside with the increase in Robert's dissertation hours on the weekend (where he is totally rocking this very technique on something much more important than vacuuming). I am now operating on the "do it at whatever random time I think of it" principle and this has definitely resulted in less cleaning, though I do occasionally surprise myself with a sudden decision to thoroughly clean the kitchen and I do a much better job than when cleaning on schedule. We (read: Robert the Laundry and Dishwashing Elf) have stuck to the Sunday morning laundry time, so we are not running out of clean socks and such. My daily treadmill session is absolutely set in stone, but I have reached the point where even if I don't want to get started, I know that I want to be doing it / have done it (since it does wonders for the random pain and aching I experience basically every day), so it's not usually very tricky to get myself to do it; I only skip on the rare occasions I am very sick (as in, so sick I cannot actually stand up / stay awake for more than a few minutes) or my fucked up knees are acting up badly enough that I fear instigating another major injury.
"If it comes to mind, then do it" is something I'm doing more and more of. So far, it seems to be the second or third time I think of it, not the very first, so I appear to be setting the stage to act on this impulse through previous decision-making. But last week, this resulted in my sending my grandmother a get well card on the same day that I first thought to do it, rather than waiting several days and then rationalizing that it was stupid to send a card at this late date, and basically being a bum. I got to feel good about making a kind gesture (which, you know, is not exactly something I do a lot of) and using up one of the approximately 849 free cards sent to me by environmental organizations trying to guilt me, through the application of the reciprocity norm, to send them money in return.
To make this technique effective (and not a way to increase the amount of popcorn that I eat and other counter-productive actions), I need to think about what I can do to diminish the amount of effort necessary to move me from "not doing the desirable activity" to "doing the desirable activity" while continuing to maintain barriers/inertia against those other behaviors. I've been successful with this in small things like keeping a full array of cleaning supplies in both bathrooms and the kitchen so that the need to walk 20 feet to get the Windex is never an issue; having stashes of plastic trash can liners in all rooms, so I can take out a full bag of trash and replace the liner easily right when I notice it; keeping my checkbook on the top of my desk at all times so I can write bills; having a post-it note with my library card number next to my computer so I can renew my books easily. I have also made a point of making certain things more difficult by not keeping the most crave-worthy snacks in the apartment, not keeping my credit card number anywhere near my computer so I have to make a special trip to the other end of the apartment (and dig into a pocket of my backpack that has an annoying zipper) if I want to buy something online, and keeping my list of Internet bookmarks to a minimum so I don't fall into the habit of checking 17 blogs every day. No doubt there are many other things I could do to influence the likelihood of following through on sudden thoughts for the better.
"Use a timer to get back to reality" is a funny one for me, just given my insane borderline super-power ability to judge the passage of time, but it's a good idea for normal humans.
"Do not multi-task" - amen. I basically do not even believe in multi-tasking, which is a method of doing 3 things in a one-quarter-ass way, taking twice as long, all at the same time.
I'm not sure what I could do to "modify [my] environment to eliminate distractions" at this point. I definitely don't keep my email browser open on my computer - even now, when I am goofing off, though with a goal in mind - and am lucky that I no longer have a job that requires me to be ready at any moment to deal with someone else's emergency phone call.
I have not thought of "comparing my actions to my personal values" as a technique to fight procrastination, and it's not that unconsidered action is a value of mine. I suppose this is intended as a way to force oneself to confront the contradictions and motivate change through a cognitive dissonance or self-perception mechanism. But it seems to me that I am putting a lot of effort right now into the things that are most important to me.
The "Take Back Your Brain" site is rather interesting and has a series of posts on Robert Cialdini's excellent book on persuasion. I do not feel particularly jazzed to put the effort into creating an advertising campaign to make myself do the things I am putting off, partly because it seems easier for me personally to just do the things than create this campaign (I might feel differently if I were more into playing around with Photoshop or artistic endeavors) and I don't think I have any big goals that I am not already spending a perhaps crazy amount of time and effort and mental energy working on. If I were to implement this approach, the most likely goal would be to reduce the amount of anxiety and generally mental futzing that I am doing around the whole grad school thing. But given my current state of psychological reactance, and my general sense of things as famously summed up with my outraged statement "How can you say that when you know it isn't true!" and the fact that I think that it is entirely rational to be concerned about how my plans will turn out, it's hard to believe that some advertising campaign around the idea of "Relax, it'll be fine" is likely to be effective; I anticipate a reaction more along the lines of "Fuck you, you patronizing, lying asshole." Anyway, I am too busy (and enjoying too much) channeling my fear of ultimate failure and creative energy into thinking of scenarios for Ally to face in the book I am not writing about a terminal masters program at an obscure school taking a turn for the very strange indeed.
And now it's time for lunch. I'm going to have an omelette, just as I planned, and a little something else, which I will choose when the time comes.
I have also been somewhat more impulsive than usual. (Of course, given my baseline level of impulsivity is pretty low, this still leaves me in the category of Ridiculously Scheduled and Over-Considering, but I am moving toward Sane Level of Planning.) Although this has its obvious downsides, such as idle thinking along the lines of "three slices of bacon would make this salad much more delicious" resulting in almost immediately cooking and eating bacon (an act made extremely easy when one possesses a package of pre-cooked bacon that only needs 1 minute in the microwave to be crunchy and perfect), it's also meant that I find myself acting immediately on conscious thoughts like "I should write my psychology paper" and "I need to pay my bills" as well as acting almost before thinking on impulses like (the event that partly inspired this post) suddenly deciding to make the beef stew this morning, something I have been intended to do for a couple of days, while I happened to be up to wash my face. I'm also finding it generally more common to abruptly stop doing some leisure (time-waster) activity - I will often shut down my web broswer after a short period of time or stop reading a novel in mid-sentence and not really realize until afterwards that I wasn't enjoying the experience a whole lot.
Socially, I wonder if this lowered emphasis on following through on commitments to myself will make me more likely to be the kind of person who is willing to blow off the kind of agreements that I used to find binding, like saying "Yes, I will see you at X's party." Given that my impulsivity toward making social contact is arguably not significantly different from zero, this might make me even more of an introvert than I have been. On the other hand, I have been having conversations with random people more frequently (which is easy to do in the university environment), so maybe it's a wash.
Anyway, after noticing these changes, today I read this well-timed blog post on overcoming procrastination, which I suffer from to an average, to somewhat below average, degree, but that is still arguably a kind of bad thing in any quantity.
I have used the "set aside time to do things" approach in the past for Robert and me to clean the apartment, but it has fallen to the wayside with the increase in Robert's dissertation hours on the weekend (where he is totally rocking this very technique on something much more important than vacuuming). I am now operating on the "do it at whatever random time I think of it" principle and this has definitely resulted in less cleaning, though I do occasionally surprise myself with a sudden decision to thoroughly clean the kitchen and I do a much better job than when cleaning on schedule. We (read: Robert the Laundry and Dishwashing Elf) have stuck to the Sunday morning laundry time, so we are not running out of clean socks and such. My daily treadmill session is absolutely set in stone, but I have reached the point where even if I don't want to get started, I know that I want to be doing it / have done it (since it does wonders for the random pain and aching I experience basically every day), so it's not usually very tricky to get myself to do it; I only skip on the rare occasions I am very sick (as in, so sick I cannot actually stand up / stay awake for more than a few minutes) or my fucked up knees are acting up badly enough that I fear instigating another major injury.
"If it comes to mind, then do it" is something I'm doing more and more of. So far, it seems to be the second or third time I think of it, not the very first, so I appear to be setting the stage to act on this impulse through previous decision-making. But last week, this resulted in my sending my grandmother a get well card on the same day that I first thought to do it, rather than waiting several days and then rationalizing that it was stupid to send a card at this late date, and basically being a bum. I got to feel good about making a kind gesture (which, you know, is not exactly something I do a lot of) and using up one of the approximately 849 free cards sent to me by environmental organizations trying to guilt me, through the application of the reciprocity norm, to send them money in return.
To make this technique effective (and not a way to increase the amount of popcorn that I eat and other counter-productive actions), I need to think about what I can do to diminish the amount of effort necessary to move me from "not doing the desirable activity" to "doing the desirable activity" while continuing to maintain barriers/inertia against those other behaviors. I've been successful with this in small things like keeping a full array of cleaning supplies in both bathrooms and the kitchen so that the need to walk 20 feet to get the Windex is never an issue; having stashes of plastic trash can liners in all rooms, so I can take out a full bag of trash and replace the liner easily right when I notice it; keeping my checkbook on the top of my desk at all times so I can write bills; having a post-it note with my library card number next to my computer so I can renew my books easily. I have also made a point of making certain things more difficult by not keeping the most crave-worthy snacks in the apartment, not keeping my credit card number anywhere near my computer so I have to make a special trip to the other end of the apartment (and dig into a pocket of my backpack that has an annoying zipper) if I want to buy something online, and keeping my list of Internet bookmarks to a minimum so I don't fall into the habit of checking 17 blogs every day. No doubt there are many other things I could do to influence the likelihood of following through on sudden thoughts for the better.
"Use a timer to get back to reality" is a funny one for me, just given my insane borderline super-power ability to judge the passage of time, but it's a good idea for normal humans.
"Do not multi-task" - amen. I basically do not even believe in multi-tasking, which is a method of doing 3 things in a one-quarter-ass way, taking twice as long, all at the same time.
I'm not sure what I could do to "modify [my] environment to eliminate distractions" at this point. I definitely don't keep my email browser open on my computer - even now, when I am goofing off, though with a goal in mind - and am lucky that I no longer have a job that requires me to be ready at any moment to deal with someone else's emergency phone call.
I have not thought of "comparing my actions to my personal values" as a technique to fight procrastination, and it's not that unconsidered action is a value of mine. I suppose this is intended as a way to force oneself to confront the contradictions and motivate change through a cognitive dissonance or self-perception mechanism. But it seems to me that I am putting a lot of effort right now into the things that are most important to me.
The "Take Back Your Brain" site is rather interesting and has a series of posts on Robert Cialdini's excellent book on persuasion. I do not feel particularly jazzed to put the effort into creating an advertising campaign to make myself do the things I am putting off, partly because it seems easier for me personally to just do the things than create this campaign (I might feel differently if I were more into playing around with Photoshop or artistic endeavors) and I don't think I have any big goals that I am not already spending a perhaps crazy amount of time and effort and mental energy working on. If I were to implement this approach, the most likely goal would be to reduce the amount of anxiety and generally mental futzing that I am doing around the whole grad school thing. But given my current state of psychological reactance, and my general sense of things as famously summed up with my outraged statement "How can you say that when you know it isn't true!" and the fact that I think that it is entirely rational to be concerned about how my plans will turn out, it's hard to believe that some advertising campaign around the idea of "Relax, it'll be fine" is likely to be effective; I anticipate a reaction more along the lines of "Fuck you, you patronizing, lying asshole." Anyway, I am too busy (and enjoying too much) channeling my fear of ultimate failure and creative energy into thinking of scenarios for Ally to face in the book I am not writing about a terminal masters program at an obscure school taking a turn for the very strange indeed.
And now it's time for lunch. I'm going to have an omelette, just as I planned, and a little something else, which I will choose when the time comes.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Monday, September 17, 2007
Wildlife Outside Our Door
It's been a crazy summer for butterflies and moths and we are still finding all sorts of interesting moths hanging around the hallway outside our apartment. This one actually scared me, though, with its gigantic size. The body alone seemed hugely substantial for a moth; I am used to moths seeming like all wing. It was actually rather more daunting at a distance than close up, because with my mediocre eyesight, I felt that I should not have been able to see any kind of moth so far away so clearly. I found Robert rather brave in his willingness to put his hand so close to it. This is not based on any rational expectation that the moth could do anything damaging to a human, but it could decide to fly at you, which would be extremely distressing. Robert was able to ID the moth but I can't remember what it was called.
Another creature that has been hanging around on the ceiling for a while now is this stick bug. I have seen various stick bugs before, but have never seen one move, and while its presence on the ceiling maybe should have been indicative of flying ability, it could also just be a lively climber, right? One evening, this "does it fly" question was answered with an emphatic yes as it leapt into hyper motion and attacked a ladybug that was flying by. In the last few days, the stick bug has gotten browner in color and I haven't quite decided whether this is some kind of aging process or whether the green one has left and been replaced by a brown one.
Another creature that has been hanging around on the ceiling for a while now is this stick bug. I have seen various stick bugs before, but have never seen one move, and while its presence on the ceiling maybe should have been indicative of flying ability, it could also just be a lively climber, right? One evening, this "does it fly" question was answered with an emphatic yes as it leapt into hyper motion and attacked a ladybug that was flying by. In the last few days, the stick bug has gotten browner in color and I haven't quite decided whether this is some kind of aging process or whether the green one has left and been replaced by a brown one.
In Praise of Blue Stripes
In addition to the flowered Keds, I also bought a pair of blue striped Rocket Dog sneakers on Ebay (new in box) last month for about $22. Comfort in the extreme. Overall, I think the dark plaid ones are more useful, but I am a total sucker for blue and white stripes and I like the summery vibe. Leo enjoys their "pre-chewed" quality, which gives him a good place to start tugging and further deconstructing them. This is only one of the many ways in which rabbits are such useful pets.
Stupid Test Errors
Friday evening, after my math test, Robert and I used Maple to find the answer to two problems I knew I had screwed up somewhere. On the graph of y=e^t*sin t, I somehow managed to screw up my substitution of -t such that I thought the function was symmetric around the y axis; um, not really. On an integral problem that I called "finding the volume of the infinite sombrero," I couldn't figure out how I got the answer -2pi, but apparently, at the very end, I thought ln 0 = 1 (when it's ln 1 = 0 and ln 0 = -infinity). Who knows what other elementary math errors I managed to make on the exam?
On my marketing test this morning (50 questions, multiple choice), I really agonized over one question, finally answered one of the two possibilities I had narrowed it down to, and left the room, upon which I almost immediately realized that I should have been able to figure out that the right answer was the one that I rejected. I should have gone with the logic, "If he is going to ask one question about an anticompetition act in American history, it will be the Sherman Antitrust Act, even if this doesn't seem to be quite right to you. Do not let the fact that you feel sort of familiar with the Sherman Act fool you into thinking, 'If this were the Sherman Act, I would know it.' He obviously is not going to ask you about the Clayton Act instead of the Sherman Act."
The problem was that I did not know that the Sherman Act was passed in response to farmers complaining about railroad price fixing; I had associated it with the desire to break up trusts in the oil industry - Standard Oil and all of that. Aha, and I am not the only one who thought that; the Wikipedia entry for the Sherman Act states, "Despite its name, the Act was not aimed at trusts in particular, but at any form which would create a "restraint of trade". The word "antitrust" was used because the Act was initially proposed to break up the Standard Oil trust." Indeed, this site claims, "The Sherman Act was strengthened in 1914 with amendments known as the Clayton Act that added further prohibitions against price-fixing conspiracies. " However, this more thorough description of the history of the Sherman Act does attribute it to farmers' displeasure with railroad pricing.
Robert pointed out that only agonizing over one question is a good sign, and that's true, but we'll see how many other questions I answered incorrectly with confidence. There were at least 3 others that were somewhat iffy.
To apply to business school, I will be taking the GMAT, a test with which I have heretofore been unfamiliar. But upon looking at the description of the GMAT in a guide to business schools I got from the library, I am now thinking I might like it better than the GRE. The main sections are:
Analytical Writing - Two 30 minute essays on "Analysis of an Issue" and "Analysis of an Argument" - measures ability to think critically and communicate complex ideas
Quantitative Section - "Data sufficiency" (reasoning ability) and "Problem solving" (work with numbers) questions
Verbal Section - "Reading comprehension" (analyze written information), "Critical reasoning" (evaluate an assumption, argument, or inference), and "Sentence completion" (understanding of basic rules of English grammar) questions
Notice the lack of analogy and advanced vocabulary questions. So no "Raven is to writing desk as apotheosis is to a) chicanery, b) bombast, c) encomium, d) panegyric, or e) effluent" type questions.
But one source says that the GMAT's data sufficiency questions are considered "more difficult to master" than the GRE's quantitative comparison questions and suggests that the GMAT is overall easier for those with strong math skills. I'm working on it.
And one kind of nice thing is that not having taken the GMAT before, I am not trying to meet or exceed some previous score, the way I feel that I "should" be able to get at least a 1530 on the GRE. Scoring above 700 (out of 800) is where I need to be.
On my marketing test this morning (50 questions, multiple choice), I really agonized over one question, finally answered one of the two possibilities I had narrowed it down to, and left the room, upon which I almost immediately realized that I should have been able to figure out that the right answer was the one that I rejected. I should have gone with the logic, "If he is going to ask one question about an anticompetition act in American history, it will be the Sherman Antitrust Act, even if this doesn't seem to be quite right to you. Do not let the fact that you feel sort of familiar with the Sherman Act fool you into thinking, 'If this were the Sherman Act, I would know it.' He obviously is not going to ask you about the Clayton Act instead of the Sherman Act."
The problem was that I did not know that the Sherman Act was passed in response to farmers complaining about railroad price fixing; I had associated it with the desire to break up trusts in the oil industry - Standard Oil and all of that. Aha, and I am not the only one who thought that; the Wikipedia entry for the Sherman Act states, "Despite its name, the Act was not aimed at trusts in particular, but at any form which would create a "restraint of trade". The word "antitrust" was used because the Act was initially proposed to break up the Standard Oil trust." Indeed, this site claims, "The Sherman Act was strengthened in 1914 with amendments known as the Clayton Act that added further prohibitions against price-fixing conspiracies. " However, this more thorough description of the history of the Sherman Act does attribute it to farmers' displeasure with railroad pricing.
Robert pointed out that only agonizing over one question is a good sign, and that's true, but we'll see how many other questions I answered incorrectly with confidence. There were at least 3 others that were somewhat iffy.
To apply to business school, I will be taking the GMAT, a test with which I have heretofore been unfamiliar. But upon looking at the description of the GMAT in a guide to business schools I got from the library, I am now thinking I might like it better than the GRE. The main sections are:
Analytical Writing - Two 30 minute essays on "Analysis of an Issue" and "Analysis of an Argument" - measures ability to think critically and communicate complex ideas
Quantitative Section - "Data sufficiency" (reasoning ability) and "Problem solving" (work with numbers) questions
Verbal Section - "Reading comprehension" (analyze written information), "Critical reasoning" (evaluate an assumption, argument, or inference), and "Sentence completion" (understanding of basic rules of English grammar) questions
Notice the lack of analogy and advanced vocabulary questions. So no "Raven is to writing desk as apotheosis is to a) chicanery, b) bombast, c) encomium, d) panegyric, or e) effluent" type questions.
But one source says that the GMAT's data sufficiency questions are considered "more difficult to master" than the GRE's quantitative comparison questions and suggests that the GMAT is overall easier for those with strong math skills. I'm working on it.
And one kind of nice thing is that not having taken the GMAT before, I am not trying to meet or exceed some previous score, the way I feel that I "should" be able to get at least a 1530 on the GRE. Scoring above 700 (out of 800) is where I need to be.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Irreplaceable Me
I just got an email from my ex-colleague K that they (by which I assume she means the marketing director D, with D's boss's agreement) have decided not to hire a replacement for my position (consumer research manager), but are using the money to hire someone from another division to do other marketing related duties. If the funding works out, they may look to hire another research person (though not necessarily at my level) in 2009. This leaves K as the only researcher and she works only 20 hours per week. This is quite a dramatic shift from several years ago when we had 2 full time people.
I had joked about being irreplaceable, but I actually thought they should not have much difficulty finding someone. I was quite wrong about the quality of the applicants (who overall sucked), but still, I had not foreseen that they wouldn't hire anyone at all.
They are planning to outsource the analysis and reporting for the huge 5 year survey project that I spent a lot of time on. I am glad that they are not going to let the data rot.
I had joked about being irreplaceable, but I actually thought they should not have much difficulty finding someone. I was quite wrong about the quality of the applicants (who overall sucked), but still, I had not foreseen that they wouldn't hire anyone at all.
They are planning to outsource the analysis and reporting for the huge 5 year survey project that I spent a lot of time on. I am glad that they are not going to let the data rot.
One Thing Finished
I took my calc 1 final this morning, so that is over. Yay. I feel that I did about the same as last time, so barring major disaster, my A should be fine. I am hugely happy to have this class behind me, finally.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Operating at the Wrong Level
I felt bad for my marketing professor today, as he was having very little luck getting the class to engage in discussion. I wasn't feeling particularly motivated to join in myself (partly because I caught the apathy that was going around and partly because it was Monday morning) and found myself failing to respond to simple questions I knew the answer to (e.g. that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett oppose the abolition of the estate tax).
The primary problem I have in the class overall, though, is not lack of interest in the topics or a creeping malaise, but a difficulty in engaging at the generally extremely simplistic level that seems appropriate to the context of a group of average college juniors (who, let's face it, are in many respects dumb kids who know nothing). As Tam has pointed out to me many times, I struggle with answering "easy" or "obvious" questions, and in this class, I often feel that the answer he is going for (when I do see where he is leading) is easy, obvious, and sort of wrong, since what are to me very important nuances are ignored, such that the bald statement is not one I can actually support without qualification.
For example, a couple of classes ago, Dr N asked the question, "Why did communism fail?" Given the A+ I received in comparative economic systems, in which unsurprisingly this topic was examined a great deal, I think I am probably more qualified than anyone in the room (including the professor) to answer this question and yet... this is not something that is easily summarized in a soundbite, and the short answer that came to mind - "Because the success of communism was at a minimum dependent on the complete remaking of mankind, which is not fucking possible with the tools they had at hand" - didn't seem quite the thing to say. I did manage eventually to offer some comments but it was awkward.
Today, we were discussing the political situation, and I know that his intent was to make us consider the fact that politics provides a part of the external environment in which businesses operate and thus, is an important consideration for businesspeople when considering what the future is likely to hold, what risks to take, and so forth. But my god. I do not think I have ever been involved in such an unsophisticated discussion of politics in my life. Even when I knew what he was going for, I was unwilling to respond to questions like "What is the underlying philosophy of the Republican party?" with an answer like "A commitment to small government and the free enterprise system" (note that this response would not include anything about moral authoritarianism since it's a business class) because no rational person who has watched e.g. the Bush administration in action could say this without gagging and because the Republican party itself is in turmoil over what it stands for, as the old coalition of free market libertarians and social conservatives threatens to break down.
The unfortunate byproduct of my unwillingness to be complicit in a reductionistic discussion of political stereotypes is that the only people who were willing to speak up to any significant degree were, yes, you guessed it, the two Ron Paul supporters in the room. This brings its own amusement, of course, but sort of leaves the professor stranded, having to work with such paltry (and often crazy) material.
I would like to take the class as an excuse to get better at answering simple questions with simple answers. Wait, this makes me sound like John Kerry trying to emulate George Bush. (Nooooooo!) What I am really interested in is being able to generate short responses that capture some essence of the truth, even if limited in extent and application. This seems like a useful skill to possess and this class is definitely a low-risk place to practice it.
And I would like to throw Dr N a bone for the good karma if nothing else.
The primary problem I have in the class overall, though, is not lack of interest in the topics or a creeping malaise, but a difficulty in engaging at the generally extremely simplistic level that seems appropriate to the context of a group of average college juniors (who, let's face it, are in many respects dumb kids who know nothing). As Tam has pointed out to me many times, I struggle with answering "easy" or "obvious" questions, and in this class, I often feel that the answer he is going for (when I do see where he is leading) is easy, obvious, and sort of wrong, since what are to me very important nuances are ignored, such that the bald statement is not one I can actually support without qualification.
For example, a couple of classes ago, Dr N asked the question, "Why did communism fail?" Given the A+ I received in comparative economic systems, in which unsurprisingly this topic was examined a great deal, I think I am probably more qualified than anyone in the room (including the professor) to answer this question and yet... this is not something that is easily summarized in a soundbite, and the short answer that came to mind - "Because the success of communism was at a minimum dependent on the complete remaking of mankind, which is not fucking possible with the tools they had at hand" - didn't seem quite the thing to say. I did manage eventually to offer some comments but it was awkward.
Today, we were discussing the political situation, and I know that his intent was to make us consider the fact that politics provides a part of the external environment in which businesses operate and thus, is an important consideration for businesspeople when considering what the future is likely to hold, what risks to take, and so forth. But my god. I do not think I have ever been involved in such an unsophisticated discussion of politics in my life. Even when I knew what he was going for, I was unwilling to respond to questions like "What is the underlying philosophy of the Republican party?" with an answer like "A commitment to small government and the free enterprise system" (note that this response would not include anything about moral authoritarianism since it's a business class) because no rational person who has watched e.g. the Bush administration in action could say this without gagging and because the Republican party itself is in turmoil over what it stands for, as the old coalition of free market libertarians and social conservatives threatens to break down.
The unfortunate byproduct of my unwillingness to be complicit in a reductionistic discussion of political stereotypes is that the only people who were willing to speak up to any significant degree were, yes, you guessed it, the two Ron Paul supporters in the room. This brings its own amusement, of course, but sort of leaves the professor stranded, having to work with such paltry (and often crazy) material.
I would like to take the class as an excuse to get better at answering simple questions with simple answers. Wait, this makes me sound like John Kerry trying to emulate George Bush. (Nooooooo!) What I am really interested in is being able to generate short responses that capture some essence of the truth, even if limited in extent and application. This seems like a useful skill to possess and this class is definitely a low-risk place to practice it.
And I would like to throw Dr N a bone for the good karma if nothing else.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
A Proper Respect For the Difficulty of Math, or Barbie Was Sort of Right
I think I've already mentioned how much I like my calculus 2 instructor Dr P, who is like a really great high school teacher in many ways, including obviously treating teaching us math as his job (and who I do not think that I like simply because "Dr P" has such strong positive associations with my favorite soft drink of my childhood). I have found him inspiring enough that when he mentioned that he also teaches the differential equations class, I had this feeling like, maybe I will take that class after all. (We'll see if this feeling survives contact with Taylor series.)
Another thing I like is how he respects the fact that math is not, generally speaking, extremely easy. He does not present calculus as something you were either born "smart" enough to understand and do instantly or not at all. Amazingly enough, math is something you can practice and get better at doing.
On Tuesday, he said that in addition to the homework (which is not graded, you may recall) that he has specifically assigned, he would encourage us to do all of the odd-numbered problems in the section review section, and then do the even ones and get the answers from himself or the TA. Today he said that after doing about 100 integrals, you will quickly see how to do new problems from the cummulative experience of solving other problems and that things will start to "pop out" at you. So I figure if I can there after doing less than 100 integrals, I am just ahead of the curve. (I've actually gotten pretty good at doing integrals already.)
So whatever the sexist implications of Talking Barbie telling its girl owners "Math is hard!", I'm not sure that some alternative message, like "Math is easy (so you're just stupid)" is any better. For me, thinking of math as difficult and approaching it with the proper appreciation of that fact is actually much more useful in giving me the mental fortitude to keep working at math when it feels challenging. There is an important difference between something being hard and being too hard for a person ever to achieve. Why denigrate the accomplishment of mastering some element of mathematics by pretending that it's easy and obvious?
This is not to say that I think girls are not (at least sometimes) shortchanged when it comes to math education, etc., but that the framing problem goes both ways - it is just as possible to position math as being too easy, such that the girl (or boy) who does not immediately get it will feel dumb, incapable, and just not a "math person" as it is to scare someone off by saying how hard it is. Really, it's not very helpful when mathematical ability is seen as some inherent trait of the individual. While yes, individual differences exist in this as in everything, one does not actually need to be a math genius to learn enough to earn a bachelors degree in mathematics, let alone become competent in the fundamentals of college-level math. The fact that Mozart composed his first symphony at age 10 (or whatever) does not mean that a normal person cannot learn to play the piano.
Another thing I like is how he respects the fact that math is not, generally speaking, extremely easy. He does not present calculus as something you were either born "smart" enough to understand and do instantly or not at all. Amazingly enough, math is something you can practice and get better at doing.
On Tuesday, he said that in addition to the homework (which is not graded, you may recall) that he has specifically assigned, he would encourage us to do all of the odd-numbered problems in the section review section, and then do the even ones and get the answers from himself or the TA. Today he said that after doing about 100 integrals, you will quickly see how to do new problems from the cummulative experience of solving other problems and that things will start to "pop out" at you. So I figure if I can there after doing less than 100 integrals, I am just ahead of the curve. (I've actually gotten pretty good at doing integrals already.)
So whatever the sexist implications of Talking Barbie telling its girl owners "Math is hard!", I'm not sure that some alternative message, like "Math is easy (so you're just stupid)" is any better. For me, thinking of math as difficult and approaching it with the proper appreciation of that fact is actually much more useful in giving me the mental fortitude to keep working at math when it feels challenging. There is an important difference between something being hard and being too hard for a person ever to achieve. Why denigrate the accomplishment of mastering some element of mathematics by pretending that it's easy and obvious?
This is not to say that I think girls are not (at least sometimes) shortchanged when it comes to math education, etc., but that the framing problem goes both ways - it is just as possible to position math as being too easy, such that the girl (or boy) who does not immediately get it will feel dumb, incapable, and just not a "math person" as it is to scare someone off by saying how hard it is. Really, it's not very helpful when mathematical ability is seen as some inherent trait of the individual. While yes, individual differences exist in this as in everything, one does not actually need to be a math genius to learn enough to earn a bachelors degree in mathematics, let alone become competent in the fundamentals of college-level math. The fact that Mozart composed his first symphony at age 10 (or whatever) does not mean that a normal person cannot learn to play the piano.
Saving Money
Livingdeb noted that it's sometimes hard to gauge how much you "save" by making a particular purchase.
I always appreciated my dad's (tongue-in-cheek) approach to "savings" when my mom would take my sister and me shopping for new school clothes each year. We would frequently shop at an outlet store with tags listing the original price and when we got home, Dad would ask "So how much did you save me this time?" and I would add up the difference between original prices and the prices we paid and come up with some crazy figure like $413. Fortunately, this was in the context of a solid money management environment, so I did not take any stupid lessons from this.
Once when I was a young teenager, I went to dinner with my dad and his friend RK; RK fulminated against the idiocy of people actually characterizing getting stuff at less than full price as though they are saving money, when obviously they are spending money. But people do rationalize purchases in this way and are sensitive to discounts. I can even sort of see the logic behind the heuristic - if you interpret the full price as the market clearing price, the price that people in aggregate place on the item (the price at which market supply = demand), you do get a sense of its (public) value, which is often enough correlated to quality to validate the general rule. This is something every budget furniture exploits on a regular basis with their famous "Half Price" sales.
I think trying to compute a real "savings" figure would be difficult, but I sometimes think of the consumer surplus I get from something I've bought by considering how much money I would have been willing to spend on the item (or on another item that yielded similar utility/served a similar function). This isn't always easy either and can be complicated by price awareness - I mean, how much would I be willing to spend on a box of instant oatmeal? I get a sense of that from what the usual price is - but it is often very easy to see that I am getting a really good deal on something that is worth more to me than I spent.
My current reading-at-the-library book is Influence by Robert Cialdini, a psychology professor at Arizona State who did indeed "write the book" on the subject of persuasion, and a story he tells in the book came to mind when Livingdeb mentioned the fact that the 80-cent present didn't seem like quite enough somehow.
I am probably mangling this story, but the gist of it goes like this:
A man wanted to buy a nice gift for his girlfriend so he went to a jewelry shop owned by someone he knew. The jeweler decided to do the guy a favor and give him a 50% discount (which still leaves a healthy profit margin for any jeweler), so he showed him an item for $250. The man was like, Well, a $250 gift feels kind of cheap. I don't know. The man left the store and said he'd be back later. This time, the jeweler wised up. When the man returned, he showed him a similar item at the full retail price of $5oo. The man accepted it. Then the jeweler said, As a favor, I will give it to you for $250, and the man was thrilled at getting a $500 piece for half price.
Another story he tells kind of blew me away with how obvious this technique is in retrospect, but that I never realized it before. In January, he found himself at the toy store to pick up a toy for his son that he had promised him for xmas but had been unable to secure at the time, and he ran into an acquaintance of his doing the same thing; he hadn't seen this other man since the previous January, when they had met at the toy store buying the same toy then too. When he mentioned this encounter to a friend who used to work in the toy industry, the friend said, No coincidence. Cialdini said, Huh? The friend said, toy manufacturers will advertise the year's hot toys before xmas to get kids to make their parents promise to get them one, but will then purposely undersupply the market so that the toys are not available when parents go shopping. At this point, parents have to purchase alternative toys for xmas (which the toy manufacturers have made sure are in good supply). Then after xmas, they start advertising the toys again, to remind kids how much they wanted one and so they will go screaming to their parents "You promised!" And parents, wanting to behave consistently, will frequently go out and buy the originally desired toy now that it is available. Now the toy manufacturer has sold both the original toy and the alternative toy. Nice. I had no clue that the usual lack of hot toys around xmas time was a strategic undersupply. In this case, the rule of thumb that one should not attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity led me astray. Those dudes are insidious sons of bitches.
I always appreciated my dad's (tongue-in-cheek) approach to "savings" when my mom would take my sister and me shopping for new school clothes each year. We would frequently shop at an outlet store with tags listing the original price and when we got home, Dad would ask "So how much did you save me this time?" and I would add up the difference between original prices and the prices we paid and come up with some crazy figure like $413. Fortunately, this was in the context of a solid money management environment, so I did not take any stupid lessons from this.
Once when I was a young teenager, I went to dinner with my dad and his friend RK; RK fulminated against the idiocy of people actually characterizing getting stuff at less than full price as though they are saving money, when obviously they are spending money. But people do rationalize purchases in this way and are sensitive to discounts. I can even sort of see the logic behind the heuristic - if you interpret the full price as the market clearing price, the price that people in aggregate place on the item (the price at which market supply = demand), you do get a sense of its (public) value, which is often enough correlated to quality to validate the general rule. This is something every budget furniture exploits on a regular basis with their famous "Half Price" sales.
I think trying to compute a real "savings" figure would be difficult, but I sometimes think of the consumer surplus I get from something I've bought by considering how much money I would have been willing to spend on the item (or on another item that yielded similar utility/served a similar function). This isn't always easy either and can be complicated by price awareness - I mean, how much would I be willing to spend on a box of instant oatmeal? I get a sense of that from what the usual price is - but it is often very easy to see that I am getting a really good deal on something that is worth more to me than I spent.
My current reading-at-the-library book is Influence by Robert Cialdini, a psychology professor at Arizona State who did indeed "write the book" on the subject of persuasion, and a story he tells in the book came to mind when Livingdeb mentioned the fact that the 80-cent present didn't seem like quite enough somehow.
I am probably mangling this story, but the gist of it goes like this:
A man wanted to buy a nice gift for his girlfriend so he went to a jewelry shop owned by someone he knew. The jeweler decided to do the guy a favor and give him a 50% discount (which still leaves a healthy profit margin for any jeweler), so he showed him an item for $250. The man was like, Well, a $250 gift feels kind of cheap. I don't know. The man left the store and said he'd be back later. This time, the jeweler wised up. When the man returned, he showed him a similar item at the full retail price of $5oo. The man accepted it. Then the jeweler said, As a favor, I will give it to you for $250, and the man was thrilled at getting a $500 piece for half price.
Another story he tells kind of blew me away with how obvious this technique is in retrospect, but that I never realized it before. In January, he found himself at the toy store to pick up a toy for his son that he had promised him for xmas but had been unable to secure at the time, and he ran into an acquaintance of his doing the same thing; he hadn't seen this other man since the previous January, when they had met at the toy store buying the same toy then too. When he mentioned this encounter to a friend who used to work in the toy industry, the friend said, No coincidence. Cialdini said, Huh? The friend said, toy manufacturers will advertise the year's hot toys before xmas to get kids to make their parents promise to get them one, but will then purposely undersupply the market so that the toys are not available when parents go shopping. At this point, parents have to purchase alternative toys for xmas (which the toy manufacturers have made sure are in good supply). Then after xmas, they start advertising the toys again, to remind kids how much they wanted one and so they will go screaming to their parents "You promised!" And parents, wanting to behave consistently, will frequently go out and buy the originally desired toy now that it is available. Now the toy manufacturer has sold both the original toy and the alternative toy. Nice. I had no clue that the usual lack of hot toys around xmas time was a strategic undersupply. In this case, the rule of thumb that one should not attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity led me astray. Those dudes are insidious sons of bitches.
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Giant Rabbits
I enjoyed this section from the (mostly lame) fantasy novel If I Pay Thee Not in Gold. A group of people are on a quest through unfamiliar territory, which at this point looks mostly like a "spinach-forest" consisting of giant, leafy plants:
She turned back to look at the growth. It really did look like some giant vegetable patch. What kind of menace could be lurking there? Giant rabbits?
For a moment that seemed hysterically funny, until she remembered that when things grew that large, even herbivores, they could be just as dangerous as any carnivore. And an animal that looked like a herbivore might not be one.
A rabbit the size of an elephant could easily bite the head off a man. And the fur, proportionally thick, could defend it against arrows and even spears to some extent. Suddenly the idea of giant rabbits was no longer funny.
The kind of "giant rabbits" that we see in our world these days are these 17 to 20 pound Flemish Giants. (I love the fact that Herman's favorite food is lettuce, which is famously low in calories; good thing he doesn't have Leo's obsession with calorie-dense carrot.)
But apparently, the earth did once bear a truly huge rabbit during the era of Big Animals:
The Minorcan Giant Lagomorph is an extinct rabbit that lived in the island of Minorca from the Messinian until around the middle of the Pliocene, when it became extinct. During that time, both Majorca and Minorca were united in one large landform, allowing the Myotragus balearicus to colonize the Minorcan Giant Lagomorph's habitat.
Fossils have been found of individuals which could have weighed up to 23 kg [51 pounds]. They had short legs and a short, straight and rigid vertical column, very different from its living relatives.
Robert and I can barely keep the under-5-pound (mini Rex) Leo under control. He kicks hard and likes to pick things up with his teeth and toss them. He'd be a real monster at 20 - 50 pounds. Only we've noticed that the bigger bunnies seem to be much more docile and easy-going. Maybe the primary risk would consist of being sat upon.
She turned back to look at the growth. It really did look like some giant vegetable patch. What kind of menace could be lurking there? Giant rabbits?
For a moment that seemed hysterically funny, until she remembered that when things grew that large, even herbivores, they could be just as dangerous as any carnivore. And an animal that looked like a herbivore might not be one.
A rabbit the size of an elephant could easily bite the head off a man. And the fur, proportionally thick, could defend it against arrows and even spears to some extent. Suddenly the idea of giant rabbits was no longer funny.
The kind of "giant rabbits" that we see in our world these days are these 17 to 20 pound Flemish Giants. (I love the fact that Herman's favorite food is lettuce, which is famously low in calories; good thing he doesn't have Leo's obsession with calorie-dense carrot.)
But apparently, the earth did once bear a truly huge rabbit during the era of Big Animals:
The Minorcan Giant Lagomorph is an extinct rabbit that lived in the island of Minorca from the Messinian until around the middle of the Pliocene, when it became extinct. During that time, both Majorca and Minorca were united in one large landform, allowing the Myotragus balearicus to colonize the Minorcan Giant Lagomorph's habitat.
Fossils have been found of individuals which could have weighed up to 23 kg [51 pounds]. They had short legs and a short, straight and rigid vertical column, very different from its living relatives.
Robert and I can barely keep the under-5-pound (mini Rex) Leo under control. He kicks hard and likes to pick things up with his teeth and toss them. He'd be a real monster at 20 - 50 pounds. Only we've noticed that the bigger bunnies seem to be much more docile and easy-going. Maybe the primary risk would consist of being sat upon.
Only 46 Programs Left to Investigate
I spent all day yesterday and all morning today looking up the marketing PhD programs on the AMA web site, which has been a long and sort of mind-numbing experience. My total list was 88 schools, some of which I had already examined pretty thoroughly. The factors I looked at in this investigation were:
- Faculty research interests
- Background of current students
- Whether a masters degree is required as a prereq
- Whether (and how many) general business courses would be required as part of the program for those without an MBA
- Other prerequisites (like specific math or econ coursework)
- Average GMAT scores of accepted students
- Specific coursework in the program
I was able to eliminate 42 schools as follows:
- No faculty with compatible interests (16)
- Must have masters degree (7)
- Entire program in an area that I don't care for - e.g. supply chain management (5)
- Too econ/math focused (4)
- Location - NYC, Alabama, Mississippi (4)
- No PhD in marketing (4)
- Requires make up of 30 hours of business coursework without MBA (1)
- Could not get a handle on faculty interests at all (1)
Of course, I will need to do a lot more pruning to get 46 down to a reasonable number to apply to, but it's a start.
Remember that when I performed a similar analysis of social psychology PhD programs, I only came up with 16 that had faculty working in a compatible research area, with a survival rate of 19%. My survival rate for marketing programs is 52%. Which only goes to emphasize the degree to which research that attracts me has shifted from psychology to marketing. I have found more professors working in the area of attitude change in marketing departments than psychology departments, for instance. It was a kind of odd but nice experience realizing the degree to which my interests are totally mainstream in marketing.
So I am basically coming to the decision that I should apply exclusively or primarily to marketing programs rather than psychology ones. My reading on the topic has already brought me fairly far down this road, but I am now seriously considering just not bothering with psychology programs at all. I'm finding it difficult to see the upside to a psychology program, even if I could get in to a halfway decent one and eventually be so lucky as to get an academic position in a psychology department.
There is an online Q&A session later this month, hosted by a consortium of business schools, to try to convince people like me that we should apply to marketing PhD programs. I'll be curious to hear what they have to say.
There is a funny contradiction between what these business schools say and what they do. They are really getting out there with the message that there is a shortage of qualified applicants for academic jobs in business schools and hence, the job market is wide open for someone who wants to be a marketing professor. But it's not as if they don't have many dozens to hundreds of people applying for each slot in PhD programs.
The big problem is that demand for marketing professors is increasing (as more people seek undergrad and MBA degrees in the subject) while the business schools themselves are decreasing the total number of PhD students they enroll and decreasing the percentage of PhD students who are US citizens (and are thus more likely to stay in the US to teach rather than go back to India, China, or wherever to work for the people who paid for the PhD to begin with). And since business PhD students are very expensive for universities - we require much higher stipends than other students (because the opportunity cost of school is much greater for somebody who qualifies for a business program compared to your typical French literature or biology candidate, I assume) and to do it right requires keeping faculty-student ratios at 1:1 - they (as a group) quail at the idea of spending yet more money, to produce yet more PhDs who take jobs in industry or overseas and consider (as an individual business school) that they don't want to spend money to produce a professor for a competing university.
Of course, there is nothing stopping them (so far as I know, other than the fact that it goes against absolutely everything academia has been about in this country and would be basically impossible for people to accept and a nightmare to implement and manage) from offering "extra" positions in the program to people who are willing to commit to stay at the university for some period of time post-graduation to teach. What am I saying - that wouldn't work at all given that even if all the other issues could be resolved, universities always want to hire faculty who got their PhDs at a more prestigious program than their own; their own graduates would not be good enough for them, unless they happen to be #1.
But to end on a more amusing note (since this blog has been low on amusing lately with long-winded discussions of poorly-designed research studies and other stuff that results from my finding it more efficient to re-purpose school-related work into blog posts than come up with something new): I enjoyed these two things encountered during my review of business school websites.
#1: In one professor's profile, he was reported as having been characterized in a very glowing way as a marketer by Lubricant World. But this didn't turn out to be nearly as exciting, impressive, or sexy as it might originally have seemed.
#2: One professor (an older, grey-haired guy) concluded his profile by writing: "Significant personal failures include never really learning to speak Spanish or play the guitar, among others too numerous to list."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
