The Field
When I started graduate school four years ago, parties in the cubicle area and jokes about Poisson probability distributions took up much of my time. There was a lot to look forward to, like passing the comprehensive exams, attaining candidacy and turning in an approved dissertation prospectus. There were a lot of authors and articles to memorize in order to cite and reference at the most opportune moment. There was a lot to fear, like meetings and elevator rides with my advisors. And then there was The Field.
The Field… in my discipline, those who go there overplay it as a one-year credential builder, and those who don’t mistrust it as a one-year paid vacation.
As I progressed in my graduate school career, The Field became an increasingly awe-inspiring and elusive concept for me. I was supposed to prepare for The Field, yet I was also supposed to expect that my dissertation topic would change entirely once in The Field. Students came back from The Field with fascinating anecdotes, impressive job offers and I've-been-there auras at workshops that always intimidated me. The Field was a rite of passage I truly anticipated.
I knew I, too, would go to The Field one day, yet I didn't know what to expect. My ideas for fieldwork destinations varied widely over the past two years, from Fiji and Malaysia to South Africa to Zambia to Nigeria to the current West African medley. It was challenging, in particular, to explain The Field to my family. My plan was to go to a few West African countries, find communities of immigrants, and ask them about their experiences integrating and getting expelled. No problem.
Today, I am in The Field. So here’s where I chip in.
On a day-to-day level, The Field is entirely unglamorous. I go to sleep, wake up and get out of the shower sweating. I walk around with a fake $5 wedding ring on my left hand, which I hold up when my respondents tell me they want to take me on as their second wife. The other day, apparently, I even had two children waiting for me back in California. I break down and scold the last random local who dares to call me obruni at the end of my day, because I was called "white", "white man", "white lady", "Chinese", "German", "Japanese", “Holland” and "Jamaican woman" over the last five hours. I run around a labyrinth of alleys and sewage water, seeking respondents who will remain focused for 8 pages and 76 questions while market women shout, trucks roar by way too fast and way too close, and dozens of children congregate at my side, peer over my shoulder and occasionally touch my arm with the tip of their finger to see exactly what the white lady’s skin feels like. I wait… for my enumerator to arrive, or the rain to stop, or the 1pm prayer to end, or the 3pm prayer to end, or traffic to move, or the generator to start.
On a more general level, The Field is a place I both love and hate intensely. The Field is my laboratory, except that it’s a different continent and I also have to live in it. I realized recently that when JAB disappeared to the lab for hours to work on her Physics dissertation, she was going to her very own “Field”. The only difference is that while they get to explain 99.99999999% of the variation they see in some measurement, we’re perfectly content when we explain 5% of it. And I suppose that makes sense – the random walk is never truly random; the translation is never as literal as you’d wish; the respondent is never as patient and thoughtful as you’d hope; the questionnaire is never as clear as respondents need it to be (a reality I was confronted with recently when a respondent asked me what "gender" meant); opportunities for added noise abound, and The Field really feeds you both renewed appreciation for and skepticism toward social science datasets.
I love the Field because it is ever humbling. Just when I think I’ve got a great story to tell my advisors, I find contradicting data. Just when I think I know my way around this city, I face plant in the trotro.
I love the Field because it is all data: conversations with taxi drivers, Doris and Dan, my enumerators, the university campus guard (who, it appears, is constantly high on some kind of curry powder he sniffs on the job). There is so much to code and record. I am limited only by my own stamina.
Ironically enough, those are also the very reasons why I hate the Field.
So yes, the Field, in my experience so far, is a challenging year. It builds character, confidence, and hopefully credential. It offers both an honest attempt at telling a sound and relevant story, and an opportunity to BS your way through a dissertation. The line between the two is actually quite thin.
Or maybe I am entirely wrong, and after one too many strange interactions with locals, I sometimes wonder if The Field is nothing more than that isolating and alienating 12 to 18 month experience that guarantees you come back just socially awkward enough to be a real academic.
The Field… in my discipline, those who go there overplay it as a one-year credential builder, and those who don’t mistrust it as a one-year paid vacation.
As I progressed in my graduate school career, The Field became an increasingly awe-inspiring and elusive concept for me. I was supposed to prepare for The Field, yet I was also supposed to expect that my dissertation topic would change entirely once in The Field. Students came back from The Field with fascinating anecdotes, impressive job offers and I've-been-there auras at workshops that always intimidated me. The Field was a rite of passage I truly anticipated.
I knew I, too, would go to The Field one day, yet I didn't know what to expect. My ideas for fieldwork destinations varied widely over the past two years, from Fiji and Malaysia to South Africa to Zambia to Nigeria to the current West African medley. It was challenging, in particular, to explain The Field to my family. My plan was to go to a few West African countries, find communities of immigrants, and ask them about their experiences integrating and getting expelled. No problem.
Today, I am in The Field. So here’s where I chip in.
On a day-to-day level, The Field is entirely unglamorous. I go to sleep, wake up and get out of the shower sweating. I walk around with a fake $5 wedding ring on my left hand, which I hold up when my respondents tell me they want to take me on as their second wife. The other day, apparently, I even had two children waiting for me back in California. I break down and scold the last random local who dares to call me obruni at the end of my day, because I was called "white", "white man", "white lady", "Chinese", "German", "Japanese", “Holland” and "Jamaican woman" over the last five hours. I run around a labyrinth of alleys and sewage water, seeking respondents who will remain focused for 8 pages and 76 questions while market women shout, trucks roar by way too fast and way too close, and dozens of children congregate at my side, peer over my shoulder and occasionally touch my arm with the tip of their finger to see exactly what the white lady’s skin feels like. I wait… for my enumerator to arrive, or the rain to stop, or the 1pm prayer to end, or the 3pm prayer to end, or traffic to move, or the generator to start.
On a more general level, The Field is a place I both love and hate intensely. The Field is my laboratory, except that it’s a different continent and I also have to live in it. I realized recently that when JAB disappeared to the lab for hours to work on her Physics dissertation, she was going to her very own “Field”. The only difference is that while they get to explain 99.99999999% of the variation they see in some measurement, we’re perfectly content when we explain 5% of it. And I suppose that makes sense – the random walk is never truly random; the translation is never as literal as you’d wish; the respondent is never as patient and thoughtful as you’d hope; the questionnaire is never as clear as respondents need it to be (a reality I was confronted with recently when a respondent asked me what "gender" meant); opportunities for added noise abound, and The Field really feeds you both renewed appreciation for and skepticism toward social science datasets.
I love the Field because it is ever humbling. Just when I think I’ve got a great story to tell my advisors, I find contradicting data. Just when I think I know my way around this city, I face plant in the trotro.
I love the Field because it is all data: conversations with taxi drivers, Doris and Dan, my enumerators, the university campus guard (who, it appears, is constantly high on some kind of curry powder he sniffs on the job). There is so much to code and record. I am limited only by my own stamina.
Ironically enough, those are also the very reasons why I hate the Field.
So yes, the Field, in my experience so far, is a challenging year. It builds character, confidence, and hopefully credential. It offers both an honest attempt at telling a sound and relevant story, and an opportunity to BS your way through a dissertation. The line between the two is actually quite thin.
Or maybe I am entirely wrong, and after one too many strange interactions with locals, I sometimes wonder if The Field is nothing more than that isolating and alienating 12 to 18 month experience that guarantees you come back just socially awkward enough to be a real academic.
posted by cla at 4:06 AM
3 comments
