Northern Exposure… interesting show. I remember watching that a lot when it came on. And now it is making me afraid of defending my dissertation 🙂 Not really, but it makes you think about the radically different paradigms you will have to deal with on the path to completing the degree and beyond if you so choose. Mot places that I have worked with were all about compromise and working together, so it is still hard to wrap my head around a system where one professor could hold up the process because they don’t agree with your project design. Its just a different world to adjust to.

I am also surprised to see so much quantitative work from so many professors. I’m hoping to see a qualitative balance this next week to give me some hope that I won’t just be crunching numbers the whole time I am working on my degree. I don’t have a problem with numbers completely, but I like to know more about why people chose “5” on the scale than just the fact that they chose “5”. I can convert their opinions into numbers, but once you get those numbers,  there is no way to go back and find out what they meant by that number when they picked it.