This week is not as busy, but I've decided to not stress about running because I've got to stress about my dissertation instead ;) My advisor went on a 10 day trip and scheduled a meeting with me for this Thursday, right when he comes back. While he is vacationing he expects me to make great strides on something that I've gotten nowhere with in 2 years ... go figure.
Anyway, I mentioned before that he told me to do "exploratory interviews" and gave me no guidance or help ... and then took off on his trip. I freaked. I didnt know what to do or how to go about it. It took me a lot of work to get together a huge pile of documents I needed for my school just to get approval to do the interviews, and today I got word that I've been approved to conduct my research. Last week I pulled together a list of Chicago-based companies that fit my profile and did lots of Googling to find contact information for people at those companies.
Today I sent out emails - since I'm afraid of human contact :) I figured I would do a round of email, a follow-up email, then resort to the phone if I didnt get any response. I only sent about 15 emails ... and I've already gotten two responses from people who said they would like to help! Sometimes this world can be so frustrating, but sometimes it can be really amazing. I asked people to donate their busy time to me, a student, to chat about some things their company does. They dont get anything out of the talk except that good-old-heart-warming-I-helped-somebody-feeling. Honestly, if I got an email like I had sent I would have either A) ignored it or B) responded with some line about being too busy.
So perhaps I will actually (someday) get somewhere on this dissertation.
2 comments:
I love when people actually respond to an e-mail and help! I too hate actually picking up the phone to contact people I don't know :)
Sounds like dissertations are alot like training for a marathon...baby steps, baby steps. Hang tough!!
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