On the Origin of madcowstupid
I named this blog while listening to the Top Tracks for Chumbawamba on Rhapsody, which is a web based streaming music service. One of the tracks in the stream [I Want More] features a laughing British woman referring to someone she thinks is "madcowstupid." The phrase awakened me from a graduate school induced stupor, and I decided to make it the name of my blog. I think it fits the times.
For the last year, I've used this service to listen to music since my CDs were lost in the basement during the move to our new home in 2003. Because I manage the family budget, I know there is no money to replace the 20 years of CDs which may re-surface at any time anyway, but I can afford 10.00 per month for this unlimited subscription.
For most of the last year, I'm afraid I've used my Rhapsody subscription to listen to the Chumbawamba song "Tubthumping" over and over,
"I get knocked down, but I get up again, you're never gona' keep me down..."
This has been my theme song for getting through this lonely phase of earning my PhD --the dissertation process. Since that is the track I've needed the most for the last year, I probably could have afforded to buy the one album, and would have come out ahead if I hadn't subscribed to Rhapsody. But then the Rhapsody computer would never have had the chance to tell me that my taste in music runs to political punk rock, and I would never have heard camper van beethoven admonish me to
"take a skinhead bowling..."
or ask me
"where the hell is Bill?"
I have been in graduate school since 1998. I'm now working on a PhD after having completed a Master's degree in nursing, and the coursework for a Master's degree in Medical Informatics. I have completed my PhD coursework. I'm on my own now other than contact with my committee members who provide feedback and helpful hints on my research process, proposal, methods testing, etc. "Dissertating" has been a very solitary experience for me, fraught with complications, most of which occur due to the fact that the sane among us only ever do one PhD. There are many little crooks and turns in phd school. I've suffered many setbacks due to never having earned a PhD before. There are things you just don't find out about how to get a PhD until you are earning one.
I started this PhD in 2002, and the work has changed me in ways I never dreamed possible. I'm not sure that it's all for the best. I've spent the last 3 years sorting through Bourdieu, Derrida, Foucault, Rorty, Habermas, Haraway, Butler, Laclau, Mouffe, and many others as well as critical theory, social constructionism, discourse analytic approaches, corpus linguistics, etc., for ideas I can use to help me build health information systems that promote social justice in healthcare. One of my more traditional informatics research professors sends me taunting emails about postmodernism and poststructuralism, as if I am to be an apologist for all of them since I've been reading them for my research. They can defend their own work. I'm just reading them for ideas to improve health information systems. I am a pragmatist at heart, at least until I finish this PhD.
If that wasn't enough, I've had to take classes in Java, LISP, databases, advanced biostatistics, both qualitative and quantitative research methodology, and a bunch of other stuff I can't even remember. When I look at my unofficial transcript online, I'm dumbfounded at the classes I've taken along the way. I've cultivated a highly specialized and frankly weird world view.
I'm at the point in graduate school where people no longer ask me what I'm doing, or how long until I finish. Their eyes glaze over if the subject of my research comes up. I prefer to talk about the architectural salvage we are using in the remodel of our home, the great Seattle Storm, my dog, cat or parrots, or pretty much anything else I can think of.
On dark days I wonder if starting the PhD was a madcowstupid thing to do, and if it's too late to quit. Then last week, I overheard myself talking excitedly about my research to an undergraduate informatics student, rose1986, who interviewed me for an "informatics career" assignment. As she hurriedly scribbled down my answers to her questions, I heard myself talking about the power associated with the development of information systems in general, but health information systems in particular. I heard myself speak with renewed enthusiasm about the politics of knowledge production, representation, management, dataveillance, etc. How knowledge is power. I did not insist that rose1986 read Foucault yet, but I'm thinking about it. I emailed her my Surveillance reading list on Amazon. She's young and usually has the good sense to ignore messages like that one.
I heard myself telling rose1986 about mistakes that we can make using computers to automate classifications of people and knowledge based on what we think is going on, even when we've done the best research we could think of before we automated our classifications.
Case in point: Rhapsody-the-music-computer concluded that since I've listened to Tubthumping one trillion times in the last year, I must be a punk rocker-anarchist and it routinely directs me to the latest and best in punk rock music. Unlike me, Rhapsody has never seen the CDs that are currently lost in my basement, and has no way to know that I didn't even know that Chumbawamba was a punk rock band until Rhapsody-the-music-computer told me. I'm too much of a control freak to ever be an anarchist. I've just needed the lyrics from Tubthumping to get me through graduate school. Of course, now that I know that Rhapsody is always attending to my music choices, I feel compelled to continue listening to the same Chumbawamba stream, lest it learn anything else about me, and sell the information to ChoicePoint who will then sell it to the US government. Other days I try to fake out the music-computer by listening to music I hate. Foucault might call this resistance. Trekkies are familiar with the borg assertion "resistance is futile," and equally aware that "resistance" is the most common plot of any good Star Trek episode. Resistance is the subplot of my dissertation research.
I heard myself telling rose1986 that I'm interested in automated-classification-mistakes that may lead to reproduction of existing social injustice in health care through the National Health Information Infrastructure. [They say that you are near graduation when you can summarize your dissertation research in one sentence or even better, one clause. The end may be in sight.]
When rose1986 asked me if I could imagine doing something completely different in 10 years that "didn't have anything to do with social justice," my answer was No. I can see doing all kinds of different jobs in medical/health/nursing informatics based on the strange training I have, but I will always want to work for social justice.
Apparently, I've still got the juice for my project. To recall it, I just need the stimulus of a young inquisitive mind asking me questions about what I call myself, what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, and whether I can imagine doing something else in 10 years. I just hope I'm not still working on this PhD in 10 years. If so, I'll graduate just in time for retirement.
For the last year, I've used this service to listen to music since my CDs were lost in the basement during the move to our new home in 2003. Because I manage the family budget, I know there is no money to replace the 20 years of CDs which may re-surface at any time anyway, but I can afford 10.00 per month for this unlimited subscription.
For most of the last year, I'm afraid I've used my Rhapsody subscription to listen to the Chumbawamba song "Tubthumping" over and over,
"I get knocked down, but I get up again, you're never gona' keep me down..."
This has been my theme song for getting through this lonely phase of earning my PhD --the dissertation process. Since that is the track I've needed the most for the last year, I probably could have afforded to buy the one album, and would have come out ahead if I hadn't subscribed to Rhapsody. But then the Rhapsody computer would never have had the chance to tell me that my taste in music runs to political punk rock, and I would never have heard camper van beethoven admonish me to
"take a skinhead bowling..."
or ask me
"where the hell is Bill?"
I have been in graduate school since 1998. I'm now working on a PhD after having completed a Master's degree in nursing, and the coursework for a Master's degree in Medical Informatics. I have completed my PhD coursework. I'm on my own now other than contact with my committee members who provide feedback and helpful hints on my research process, proposal, methods testing, etc. "Dissertating" has been a very solitary experience for me, fraught with complications, most of which occur due to the fact that the sane among us only ever do one PhD. There are many little crooks and turns in phd school. I've suffered many setbacks due to never having earned a PhD before. There are things you just don't find out about how to get a PhD until you are earning one.
I started this PhD in 2002, and the work has changed me in ways I never dreamed possible. I'm not sure that it's all for the best. I've spent the last 3 years sorting through Bourdieu, Derrida, Foucault, Rorty, Habermas, Haraway, Butler, Laclau, Mouffe, and many others as well as critical theory, social constructionism, discourse analytic approaches, corpus linguistics, etc., for ideas I can use to help me build health information systems that promote social justice in healthcare. One of my more traditional informatics research professors sends me taunting emails about postmodernism and poststructuralism, as if I am to be an apologist for all of them since I've been reading them for my research. They can defend their own work. I'm just reading them for ideas to improve health information systems. I am a pragmatist at heart, at least until I finish this PhD.
If that wasn't enough, I've had to take classes in Java, LISP, databases, advanced biostatistics, both qualitative and quantitative research methodology, and a bunch of other stuff I can't even remember. When I look at my unofficial transcript online, I'm dumbfounded at the classes I've taken along the way. I've cultivated a highly specialized and frankly weird world view.
I'm at the point in graduate school where people no longer ask me what I'm doing, or how long until I finish. Their eyes glaze over if the subject of my research comes up. I prefer to talk about the architectural salvage we are using in the remodel of our home, the great Seattle Storm, my dog, cat or parrots, or pretty much anything else I can think of.
On dark days I wonder if starting the PhD was a madcowstupid thing to do, and if it's too late to quit. Then last week, I overheard myself talking excitedly about my research to an undergraduate informatics student, rose1986, who interviewed me for an "informatics career" assignment. As she hurriedly scribbled down my answers to her questions, I heard myself talking about the power associated with the development of information systems in general, but health information systems in particular. I heard myself speak with renewed enthusiasm about the politics of knowledge production, representation, management, dataveillance, etc. How knowledge is power. I did not insist that rose1986 read Foucault yet, but I'm thinking about it. I emailed her my Surveillance reading list on Amazon. She's young and usually has the good sense to ignore messages like that one.
I heard myself telling rose1986 about mistakes that we can make using computers to automate classifications of people and knowledge based on what we think is going on, even when we've done the best research we could think of before we automated our classifications.
Case in point: Rhapsody-the-music-computer concluded that since I've listened to Tubthumping one trillion times in the last year, I must be a punk rocker-anarchist and it routinely directs me to the latest and best in punk rock music. Unlike me, Rhapsody has never seen the CDs that are currently lost in my basement, and has no way to know that I didn't even know that Chumbawamba was a punk rock band until Rhapsody-the-music-computer told me. I'm too much of a control freak to ever be an anarchist. I've just needed the lyrics from Tubthumping to get me through graduate school. Of course, now that I know that Rhapsody is always attending to my music choices, I feel compelled to continue listening to the same Chumbawamba stream, lest it learn anything else about me, and sell the information to ChoicePoint who will then sell it to the US government. Other days I try to fake out the music-computer by listening to music I hate. Foucault might call this resistance. Trekkies are familiar with the borg assertion "resistance is futile," and equally aware that "resistance" is the most common plot of any good Star Trek episode. Resistance is the subplot of my dissertation research.
I heard myself telling rose1986 that I'm interested in automated-classification-mistakes that may lead to reproduction of existing social injustice in health care through the National Health Information Infrastructure. [They say that you are near graduation when you can summarize your dissertation research in one sentence or even better, one clause. The end may be in sight.]
When rose1986 asked me if I could imagine doing something completely different in 10 years that "didn't have anything to do with social justice," my answer was No. I can see doing all kinds of different jobs in medical/health/nursing informatics based on the strange training I have, but I will always want to work for social justice.
Apparently, I've still got the juice for my project. To recall it, I just need the stimulus of a young inquisitive mind asking me questions about what I call myself, what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, and whether I can imagine doing something else in 10 years. I just hope I'm not still working on this PhD in 10 years. If so, I'll graduate just in time for retirement.
posted by madcowstupid at Sunday, May 14, 2006
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