PTSD

Why? Why not?

Ordinarily I’d leave the dramatic soul searching to Priya. But someone asked me a while ago why I was doing this. This RandomProf specifically meant my dissertation topic, which is a bit odd in the discipline we inhabit. But it could apply equally well to the methodology I’m using (also not quite kosher), the way I got here (let’s call it the “trial and error” method), or, you know, my decision to try and be an academic instead of something useful.

So, in an effort to keep this blog somewhere near the topic with which we began, my reasons for being here. Tongue firmly in cheek, of course. If you want all the angsty stuff, you’ll just have to figure out what my personal blog is. If you find it, let me know. I can’t for the life of me remember the address. But I know there was angst involved. And probably cake. In that order.

1) Why grad school?

a) I didn’t want to be a lawyer. Mind you, I didn’t figure that out until my third year of law school. But I did figure it out eventually, and so should get some sort of partial credit (maybe the government could knock a few grand off my sizeable student loan debt?)

Not that I didn’t love my internships (okay, when you’re talking about habeas corpus and death penalty cases, love is probably not the right word.) and think that lawyers are important. I just can’t picture wanting to spend the rest of my life in a courtroom or a law library. A classroom and the campus library, now that’s different. Seriously, it is. Totally different.

b) I like to teach. It’s sad, but true. It’s really cool when you see the light bulb go on and suddenly there’s something new that a student can take with them. Plus, one thing I figured out in law school is that I’m awfully enamored of the sound of my own voice. And a classroom provides a captive audience. They’re REQUIRED to listen. Or, at least, to pretend to listen.

c) There’s a lot of thinking going on in grad school. Thinking about the way the world works, and how we think, and whether it matters. Combine this with the beer and the constant discussion (see 1b), and it’s the perfect place to spend a few years in your twenties. It’d be better if there weren’t exams and that pesky dissertation requirement, but I don’t expect to have everything.

2) Why TUWSNBN?

a) It seemed like a good idea at the time. In retrospect, law school profs may not have been the best source for information on IR programs.

b) I’m all about the multiple methodologies. Oh, wait, we don’t do that here. We’re all social scientists and stuff. Back to stats class for me.

c) I thought I liked living in cities. Turns out it was just particular cities, and this is not one of them. But hey, there’s an ocean nearby, and it’s only temporary.

And when I’m done, I can try to find a job in a city that I like. Chicago, maybe, or Detroit. Or, given the current political climate, maybe Toronto. Geneva. Sydney. London. Somewhere people speak English and believe in socialized medicine.

d) The people. I didn’t know about the great people I’d meet when I signed on, but they’re a necessary resource when I’m ready to chuck it and go back to the real world. Smart, funny people make up for a lot of shortcomings in physical location.

3) Why IR?

a) The original plan was a PhD in history, but it turns out everybody important is dead.

b) I actually thought there was such a thing as international law. And that it would be fun to study it. Now I’m not so sure, but there’s some interesting research going on with rules and security that I wouldn’t get to see if I weren’t an IR student.

c) IR is about the whole world, and what happens in it. Anything else would be just details.

4) Why system dynamics?

a) Because not many other people are doing it. Makes for a short lit review.

b) I started out as a physics major in college, and never really got over quantum mechanics. Non-linear causality is my idea of a good time. No, really, it is. Just ask Priya.

c) I’m a sucker for a pretty picture and a good user interface.

d) The real reason: I haven’t found anything else that I think will work to answer the questions I want to ask. I’m trying to believe in the there and the social construction of reality at the same time. It’s an uncomfortable place, because mainstream quant and constructivism are not the bestest of friends with hearts and butterflies and smiley faces forever.

5) Why infectious disease? (Correlated question: why not HIV/AIDS?)

a) I’m not a really real realist. I don’t have to talk about states if I don’t want to. I can talk about NGOs, and individuals, and patterns of infection to my heart’s content. I plan to do just that. “The effects of epidemics on political cooperation” is right up my alley. “States as unitary actors in the creation of public health systems,” not so much.

b) I started out in history and hard science and English (see above). So I’m drawn to topics which involve all three—for instance, the interactions of disease and the social world and how we talk about scientific questions. Voila. Disease and IR.

c) Everybody talks about HIV/AIDS when they light on the subject of IR and disease. So I’d like to start somewhere else. Just to be contrary. Plus, in IR HIV/AIDS is considered a special case (for some strange reasons, and a few that I agree with) and I’m not interested in special cases. I want to think about what we do with the not-so-special cases. Influenza, for instance. Or typhoid, cholera, malaria, dengue fever, pneumonia. All the ones that kill people without being noticed. The ones that aren’t retroviruses or immediately linked to questions of morality in the actions of politicians.

d) My mom’s a nurse. So discussions of growths and phlegm at the dinner table don’t really bother me. I think it's fun to dissect the public response to H5N1. And I think it's important to figure out how we approach health emergencies. It's a little scary that for the first three episodes I thought "Medical Investigation" was a comedy. Not surprising, but disturbing on several levels.

posted by Elizabeth @ 2:28 PM