My friend Marsena introduced me to this quote from One Continuous Mistake:
Staying focused on who you are (with all your faults) requires maturity, perseverance and tremendous self-compassion. —Gail Sher
A related quote:
Be patient and kind to yourself. —Jeannette Curtis
Just returned from Agent 2007: Complex Interaction and Social Emergence at Northwestern University, where I presented my paper The Evolution and Persistence of Dominant Roles in Interorganizational Relationships. Here’s the abstract:
Recent application of role theory to economic behavior (Montgomery 1998) has provided new insights into interorganizational relationships (Heide and Wathne 2006). In particular, role theory offers a framework for investigating the source of seemingly contradictory accounts of economic exchange, including Uzzi’s (1997; 1996) finding that embeddedness enhances firm survival in the apparel industry and Wathne, et al.’s (2001) discovery that embeddedness does not insulate a firm from price competition in the commercial banking industry. The key to understanding these discrepancies lies in the divergent evolution of dominant relationship roles. This paper investigates the evolution and persistence of roles in interorganizational relationships from a role-theoretic perspective using agent-based modeling.
If that sounds interesting, you’re welcome to read it when it’s published in the conference proceedings.
If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be research, now would it? —Albert Einstein
Thanks for the quote, Matt!
From Scholars Before Researchers: On the Centrality of the Dissertation Literature Review in Research Preparation by Boote and Beile (2005):
We have all heard the joke before—as we move through graduate school, we learn more and more about less and less until we know everything about nothing.
I hadn’t heard the joke before, but I think it’s hilarious. Must be the limits reference.
If you have the right tools, you can do amazing things. —Udi Manber
My religion is kindness. —The Dalai Lama
In An Introduction to Mathematics, Alfred North Whitehead speaks to the value of notation:
By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and, in effect, increases the mental power of the race.
Before the introduction of the Arabic notation, multiplication was difficult, and the division even of integers called into play the highest mathematical faculties. Probably nothing in the modern world would have more astonished a Greek mathematician than to learn that … a large proportion of the population of Western Europe could perform the operation of division for the largest numbers. This fact would have seemed to him a sheer impossibility … Our modern power of easy reckoning with decimal fractions is the almost miraculous result of the gradual discovery of a perfect notation. […]
By the aid of symbolism, we can make transitions in reasoning almost mechanically, by the eye, which otherwise would call into play the higher faculties of the brain. […]
It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilisation advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.
Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle—they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.
Lest we become too enamored of notation, however, Abraham Kaplan, in The Conduct of Inquiry: Methodology for Behavioral Science, offers the following words of caution:
[T]he complexity of a notation does not of itself endow the notation with scientific importance. Behavioral science has suffered often from the illusion that a commonplace formulated in an uncommon notation becomes profound—rich with scientific promise.
I recently read an article by Chris Golde of the Carnegie Foundation titled Preparing Stewards of the Discipline. As a doctoral student, I find her definition of the Ph.D., as outlined in the following excerpts, inspiring:
[T]he purpose of doctoral education is to prepare stewards of the discipline. …
A Ph.D.-holder should be capable of generating new knowledge and defending knowledge claims against challenges and criticism; of conserving the most important ideas and findings that are a legacy of past and current work; and of transforming knowledge that has been generated and conserved by teaching well to a variety of audiences, including those outside formal classrooms.
Students should understand that the Ph.D., at its heart, is a research degree. It signifies that the recipient is able to ask interesting and important questions, formulate appropriate strategies for investigating these questions, conduct investigations with a high degree of competence, analyze and evaluate the results of the investigations, and communicate the results to others to advance the field. …
Stewards have a responsibility to apply their knowledge, skills, findings and insights in the service of problem solving or greater understanding. Self-identifying as a steward implies adopting a sense of purpose that is larger than oneself. One is a steward of the discipline, not simply the manager of one’s own career. By accepting responsibility for the care of the discipline, and understanding that one has been entrusted with that care by those in the field, on behalf of those in and beyond the discipline, the individual steward embraces a larger sense of purpose.”
Victor A. Barger 