March 30, 2005

My Old Child

Yesterday, I went to have another chat with my university mentor. I left the meeting with mixed emotions. On the one hand, it takes way more time, adjustments and meticulousness than I expected to put together a good research proposal. It takes way more juggling possible questions (judging their coherence, relevance, clarity, etcetera) than I envisaged. I guess that’s just part of the learning experience.

On the other hand, my mentor told me that judging from the talk we had, some of the information I need is already in my head. The two most important things I have to do now are: making my proposal more explicit (no, not in that way), ie adding graphs and figures, explaining phenomena (rather than just mentioning them and giving a source reference) adding a conceptual model to it, and to structure the information that I have already gathered. That should lead to a provisional chapter structure of my report. As soon as I have that, I can dump the knowledge bits in my head under the appropiate headers.

As I was leaving, I told my mentor that I liked studying the subject. Ah, he said. Pricing policy in transport, my old child (he researched it himself for his postgraduate thesis).

Indeed, the subject is at once endearing and paradoxical...

Christof

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