Christina's LIS Rant

Comps day 3

Posted by Christina Pikas on July 17, 2009
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Sigh. TGIF and TG I have 2 days free before the next 2.  I really felt like I was very, very familiar with these articles but I had a really hard time.

I think when I look back on my response, I’ll see it really wanders and doesn’t make a good case.

Here are the questions. Choose one of:

- Olson and Olson (2000) Distance matters is a seminal [sic- for feminists, I know] paper. Describe why they said distance matters. There have been a lot of technological advancements since 2000, does distance still matter?

or

- Researchers argue Social network analysis is either a theory base or a methodology. Give the reasons for each of these, then pick one the other or both and say why you think that. (paraphrasing).

So my problems were that I remembered a lot about distance matters – one of my readers mentions this paper frequently, but I wasn’t sure that I remembered all of the reasons they gave and that I could differentiate points made in this paper from ones I’d read elsewhere. The second problem is that I’m totally not familiar with the term “theory base.”  I have a lot of opinions on SNA, but …

So I picked the first. Now that I’m home, I  pulled the paper up (big mistake) and CRAP, forgot there is a huge aspect of technology readiness. Pretty important to the paper. 

My response might be good enough (I hope), but I’m sure it is not great. Now off to think of something else before I review information retrieval and research methods for Monday!

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Comments

  1. #1 bill
    July 18, 2009

    I’m not sure I understand why you’re expected to memorize such volumes of material, anyway. By your own lights you’d have written a better analysis with the source material to hand — why not have you write *that* for assessment? Surely critical thinking and communication skills are more important than sheer memory power + the ability to function in a horrible, unnatural, stressful environment. (OK, that last one is actually pretty relevant…)

  2. #2 Christina Pikas
    July 18, 2009

    wrt stressful – heh, just a little queasy whereas I was sick and freaked out for my Navy nuclear power interviews. In fact, all my Navy boards were much worse, not to mention my various exams to get the physics undergrad. Maybe it’s just because I’m a lot older. Really, there’s not much they can do to me now.

    In any case, a lot of people agree with you. That’s why they’ve done away with this after me. Well, one other student could take comps – she’s grandfathered in, too – but has decided to do an integrative paper. I probably could have done the paper, but I’ve basically gotten this far by doing really well on exams and I had the old style doctoral seminars for preparation.

  3. #3 Dorothea Salo
    July 18, 2009

    So… you could have avoided this ordeal and chose to go through with it?

    Dude. Are you INSANE?

  4. #4 Christina Pikas
    July 18, 2009

    I don’t *have* to get a PhD at all. But yes, yes I’m insane.