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I love April 1st because it is a great opportunity to
have a little fun with people without them getting too upset. ORIGINAL EMAIIL SENT ON APRIL 1st
2005 Hi All, Last summer
I applied for, and just got, and NFS grant to study the impact of mobile
phones on the social networks of rural communities. This morning I was
surprised to find in my inbox that I was awarded the grant. But I can’t begin
to tell you how surprised I am about the second part. In order
to qualify for the entire grant, I have to spend 16 months on a potato farm
in While the
prospect of doing hard labor for 16 months doesn’t appeal to me, it has bee
suggested to me that refusing this grant would be bad for my future in
research. The grant also specifies that I start by May 14th in
order to be there for the first harvest. I don’t have much time to make a
decision and I would really appreciate some advice*. Pedram ------------------------------------------------------ http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pkeyani Human-Computer
Interaction Institute THE FOLLOWING RESPONSES --- Funny guy who figured it out --- Man, you should totally do
it. You will learn to appreciate your "high-tech" life more
afterwards. While you're gone can I borrow some of your stuff (my laptop is
getting old)? While you're out there can
you mail me a couple of potatoes each week via Fedex?
I really enjoy having fresh Oh,
and in case the farmer has a hot daughter I would keep your distance b/c
those farmers can be pretty handy with a pitchfork. --- Good advice --- if you want to come by this
afternoon, I'll be glad to talk about this with you. You should figure out
whether you want to do the research and get the experience. I think the mere
fact of turning this down will have no impact on your career. Indeed, no one
will know about it. But actually doing the research (and the opportunity
costs associated with being away from grad school and your advisor)
would. Sounds like a great
opportunity, if this is a direction you want to go in. --- No love --- You
say potato, and I say buhbye... --- Hedging his bets --- Sounds
like an April fool's joke to me. If so, I'd say go for it. If
not, I'd say don't do it. --- Lots of thought --- I seems like if you are
truly interested in pursuing this topic "studying the impact of mobile
phones on the social networks of rural communities", some part of you should be eager to
meet the requirement of the grant. As
you said, spending 16 months in potato farm seems reasonable for the project
and I think the labor component is also necessary to understand the lifestyle
and community and allow yourself to become part of the social network for a
short period. I imagine the labor,
stress, and uncertainly of the harvest plays a huge role in the lives of
these people and it's reasonable to believe the unless
you experience the labor component of it, you won't fully appreciate the
other components. From a more practical component (if this
isn't you life's goal come true), how money is the grant? do you really want
to turn this into your thesis work? is it enough
money to do that? NSF grants (from
what I remember or only two year things, and not full PhD career things). Then perhaps the investment in labor and
time is not worth it. If going to work
in a potato farm for 16 months to study in the impact of a technology in not
your dream come true, then perhaps this topic isn't
right for you because there might be someone out there who really does want
to and is willing and eager to do that.
Then the correct answer is to decline the grant due to topic change
reasons, and start looking for a new topic.
I think this is perfectly fine reason to turn down a grant, and correspondingly
makes it difficult for you to contin --- Lunch time --- Congratulations
on winning the prestigious NSF grant! I believe it is a hard decision for you
now. I will be glad to offer my opinions, if you are interested. We can have
lunch together either today or after you come back to discuss it. --- Informative link --- If you want to see what it is like, here's some info. :-)
I would be a really fun time. . --- Salt of the earth --- Pedram
– seriously? in my opinion, you’re getting an
opportunity to return to the salt of the earth, to reconnect with a simple
and pure way of life that few americans will ever
get the opportunity to experience, and all in the name of furthering your
career in hci. I think you just have to be willing
to accept that there will be many many times when
you’ll be potatoes farmin or whatever and you’ll be
depressed and angry and regretful, but that ultimately it will be a peaceful
and wholesome and maybe even spiritual memory. Of
course, all this idealistic crap is easy for me to say, since it won’t be me pickin potatoes. But that’s my two cents. Good
luck! --- Time to negotiate --- Are they crazy? That's an absurd
requirement: I don't even know if a majority of anthropological research
would fit that requirement. 5 hours a day hard labor for 16 months? That is
beyond the call of trying to gain phenomenological understanding, and on to
actively trying to make your project so difficult that it will necessarily
fail. If you feel a passion for
this project, and really genuinely believe that it would benefit your
research to spend 5 hours a day as a potato farmer for 16 months, I'd say do it. Otherwise,
turn in down, or try to negotiate the terms. No sane funding agent is going
to fault you for refusing an absurd condition on your research. --- Duration --- Can you convince them to let you travel around to some
different farms to get a broader range of experiences over the 16 months?
Seems like 16 months at one potato farm is a little excessive. --- logistics of the grant --- Three related thoughts. First, it sounds to me
like a miscommunication may well have happened, somewhere between the person
who conceived the grant (not necessarily the person who wrote it) and the
person who's executing it. For
example, perhaps the original author of the grant wrote a grant PRESUMING
that the researcher in question (you) would ALREADY be a farmer... leading
the the person in charge of giving out the money to
think that the researcher is REQUIRED to be a farmer. Second, the CMU HCI
program specifically trains us us to get the
context of a situation by interviewing the actual workers, videotaping them,
and considering their work from different perspectives. This can take, at most, many weeks, but not
years. Together,
these make me think that if you could TALK with somebody who knows both the
original language and the original intent of the grant, you might be able to
satisfy the ACTUAL needs of the grant -- by showing that the CMU HCI training
is designed to overcome exactly that sort of time barrier. * Note: that the original email had a misspelling of advice as “advise”. |