Monday night ALM thesis writers' meeting

Last night I attended the ALM thesis writers' meeting for history and government concentrators. There were six of us there, all preparing to start history-related proposals or theses. We were all given a chance to discuss what we were working on, and ask Dr. Ostrowski (the research advisor) process- or topic-related questions

When it was my turn, I asked him something related to my in-progress proposal, which describes an analysis of Sino-Viet relations during the Deng Xiaoping era using a computer-assisted content analysis of New China News Agency output. Last week, I had gotten back the draft version of part II of the proposal (the part in which I put forth my hypotheses, and my methodology) from Dr. Ostrowski, with his comments. I was relieved to see that the comments related mainly to a few missing details, which can be added to the next draft relatively easily. But one of his comments did ask how much quantitative research had I already conducted.

At the ALM thesis writers' meeting, I had a chance to ask him about that. The basis of my research will consist of the data gleaned from several thousands searches on LexisNexis Academic and pasted into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. I told the group that it will take "two solid days of number crunching" to complete this step. It may be even longer -- under one scenario that includes "United States" as a variable, along with "Vietnam", "Soviet Union," "ethnic Chinese", and conflicting South China Sea territorial claims [probably "*sha", as China frequently refers to these islands by their Chinese names, Xisha and Nansha] the total number of searches including these terms singly and in combination would be more than 5000. Wouldn't it be better to wait until my proposal has been accepted, and a thesis director assigned? My concern is that I would complete all of this research in advance, only to be told to go back to the drawing board by the thesis director because my methodology or source material is flawed.

Dr. Ostrowski believes that this research should be done now. He said when he shops my finished proposal around to potential Harvard faculty, one of them will hopefully be intrigued enough by my findings and hypotheses to agree to become my thesis director. Additionally, even though I am quite certain about the general outcomes of my research, completing the research up front removes some of the uncertainty that the research advisor and potential thesis directors may have.

So that's my next step -- finding two full days to plow through my searches. As I remarked to the group, it's very hard to find the time owing to work and family obligations, but I can take a few hours here and a few hours there over the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays to get this critical step done before returning to my draft proposal.

One other interesting note from the thesis writers' meeting: After it was over, someone who actually reads this blog came up to me to tell me he likes it. It was a pleasant surprise, because I honestly have no way to gauge the readership of Harvard Extended, other than comments, emails, and the four other RSS subscribers through Bloglines. This Harvard Extended fan is another history concentrator in the ALM program, and said a colleague of his at the Harvard Business School had shown him the blog. He especially liked the entry about President Summers' 8,500-word letter to the Harvard Community that neglected to mention the Harvard Extension School. It was a nice ego boost, and also encouragement for me to keep blogging about Extension-related issues.