Disaprovingrabbit

I know the tools and I reject them. People aren't numbers and can't be modeled by numbers. Talk about narrow minded. End of story. I may not have letters behind my name, but last I checked in the US, no one respects scientists anyway or we wouldn't be struggling with dealing with climate change. You want me to respect you? Fat chance. I love how, at first it's that I'm stupid, and now that I've shown I'm not stupid and I do understand the methods, that's still not good enough. Go fuck yourself. None of you care about teaching the paying customers who are paying your tuition, you all think your research is more important. I can't wait till MOOCs put you all out on the streets. You're service providers, and you're antiquated. The CS kids have decided to destroy all our futures for quick cash, and if you think you will last much longer than the dreaded humanities you're fooling yourselves. the more reliance you put into quant, the more easily a computer can do your job for you, and the more replaceable you make yourselves.

I just want to be completely clear here. I *never* approached my professors and adviser with the idea that I wanted to go to grad school, at first, I approached them for suggestions of what to do after I completed my undergrad career was over and *they* suggested I pursue graduate school, and *they* urged me to pursue graduate school. The more research I did the more I realized I was being guided into methodologies that I didn't want to pursue, that *I* didn't see any value in, (not that they had no inherent value) and then was quickly written up as being problematic by the self same faculty because I refused to see it from their perspective and jump on board. I stand by what I said, if they didn't want me to view qualitative and constructivist work as valid they shouldn't have introduced me to it. It's not my fault that they erected a strawman to tear down and I found more value in it than in their outdated realism and poverty propagating neo-liberalism. So they suggested I come here to gain some valuable insight, since I wouldn't quit with the idea that if I was going to Grad school it was going to be at a school that would have a program that would be in line with what I wanted to study. And yes, I am tired of being told that I don't have a future in this field because I choose to not make use of their chosen methodology (btw, I don't suck at Quant, I got an A in stat, both my quant heavy science courses, and my quant heavy sociology course, I just don't like applying those methods to people) and they don't like it. I've been told in this thread that I'm wrong for not wanting to do something I see no value in, I've been told I'm wrong for wanting to maintain human dignity, I've been told I'm wrong for wanting to study what I want to study, I've been told I need to leave my own country to study it, which I find even more frustrating because it will infer an enormous personal cost on me, even though I've been flat out told that I have no future in this field without a grad degree. So what exactly am I expected to do? If I go to school for what they feel I should, I won't enjoy it, and I won't do well at it because as you all state, it's a tremendous sacrifice. But I think I've started to understand what was meant by that, It doesn't really matter where I go, I was being told by my faculty and adviser that I have no future in the field unless I do exactly what they do. Well I stand by what I said before, I don't want to go to grad school, I've followed the advice of some previous posters and looked into the government affairs page and I think if anything some of those terminal degrees would be more what I need. You've all convinced me it isn't the right path for me, well done you. But you're telling me the exact opposite of what all of my faculty are telling me. I have no idea what to believe anymore, I'm even more confused now than I was when I came here. The amount of hostility that is clearly present here astounds me. So you know what? I realize this was a huge mistake and I'm gone.

Hard to work for a company you quit without giving 2 weeks notice though.. but I see your point. God I wish I had been born 50 years ago when the world still made sense. Honestly, I'm not sure why I believed my adviser and came here in the first place. Everything else they have told has been a lie, so their saying asking this question here would help shouldn't have been surprising that it wasn't. Plenty of you have been super friendly and helpful, but all things told it was a waste of my time and yours for me to ask this question. They pawned me off on you because they couldn't be assed dealing with my blowup/meltdown in their office when they admitted to lying to me for 3 years. And that is exactly what it has been, lying. Nothing about taking on a second major has done anything except run up my student loan debt. I haven't learned anything, my undergrad IA classes might as well have been regurgitated wikipedia articles. If I have to recover what realism or the prisoner's dilemma is I will puke. They screwed me out of thousands of dollars, a year of my life, and there isn't anything I can do about it. Thank you to those of your who offered genuine help, but this clearly isn't the place I need to be seeking advice.

If it's not a pursuit of knowledge, what the fuck good is it? I can't live at home and work, there isn't any work at home, that's why I went to university in the first place. I come from a town that was decimated by small minded globalization when all the mills shut down. there isn't fuck all here to work at apart from Walmart which I already quit. I don't have any interest in any career path, I just want to do something to pay the bills. I went back to school because I was told I had to or I had no hope of getting a job. It was a choice between school and a prescription painkiller addiction. I still think I made the right choice, but the more I read here and the more my advisers tell me the more I question that. Also, if they weren't shit holes they wouldn't need our help to be fixed would they? Still doesn't mean I actually want to go there and get bot-fly or dysentery or something.

That's fine. I'd rather have nothing than something I'm not happy with. I think I'm entitled to nothing, which is what I'm getting: nothing. The real world exists this way because people like us refuse to change it. But accepting rigid methodologies as fact is what this is all about right? At least that is what I'm getting from this whole conversation. *edited* that should have all been one post, not two. Sorry for double posting.

Well in that case at least, I've already taken a Stat class, I just took it 3 years ago and already forgot all of it because I never expected to need any of it again. I'm reluctant to take any more math classes at this point when they could still negatively impact my GPA. Language wise, I really have no interest in any that are considered "Critical" because I haven't got any interest in the regions they are from. I'd honestly rather work for Wal-mart at minimum wage (already done it) than be paid well to work in sub Saharan Africa or Asia or some 3rd world shit hole. I'm already from the rural Southeast US, I don't want to go to some place worse. I know they exist in theory, but I don't want to risk actually finding out via experience. I'm also significantly older than your average undergrad due to returning to school after working in the public sector for a long period of time. I'm quickly going to be "aged out" of entry level positions.

Yes, but I refuse to work long hours, sacrifice sleep, or social life. I'm not a slave, and I refuse to be treated as such. If that requires drastic measures so be it.

Look, I'm not trying to be mean or ungrateful here because at least an inkling of what you say is true, I'm not super ambitious because I have a rather mercenary approach to employment. I know I'll never enjoy what I'm doing, so it doesn't really matter what I'm doing. It's just a job. But exactly how am I supposed to combat some of these problems this late in the game? I'm already a second semester senior, next year I'll be a super senior. I haven't got endless hours of undergrad to devote to learning more languages, or taking more classes in the one I've already at least gotten to reading level comprehension in. I haven't got endless hours to take pre-reqs in order to unlock undergrad level quant classes. I have to take certain classes or else I won't graduate before my financial aid runs out. I haven't got endless funding to pay to live on while doing an unpaid internship. And I can't change my school's policy on honors, if my professors don't want to work for free, who can blame them? I wouldn't. It's extremely unfair of you to lay those things at my feet, but I'll happily own my lack of ambition and apathy towards my job.

Which I haven't got, but honestly if it doesn't pay then it's a complete non starter as I have no money to live on while doing unpaid work for someone and I can't work two full time jobs and commute since no job I could probably get during the hours I wouldn't be working at the internship would pay enough for me to live close enough the internship not to have at least an hour commute each way.. I unfortunately don't live in an area of the country that has plentiful internships, at least not in the sort of things I'm interested in, and the closest big city I might be able to find one in is at least 2 hours commute each way.

Thanks, I'll have a look at that. I'm not really sure how to go about getting an internship like that, I was generally given to understand that internships don't pay, which basically makes it impossible for me to get one since I would then have to have a second job in order to pay for living expenses while doing that, and is the reason I haven't really looked into it that much. General notation: Just going to point this out, downvoting my posts isn't going to make me change my mind in the slightest. So why bother?

That sounds fairly miserable, if I'm being honest. I'm not sure what an MPP is, but a thing a lot of people have mentioned to me is to get some sort of degree like an MPA or something but honestly i find those really confusing because they aren't uniformly available at all schools. I'm not really interested in domestic politics either, but I'm not sure if the MPA is a catch all that includes international stuff as well? since I'd probably be just as content working for an NGO or INGO or IO as I would a specific government agency. But again, no one in my department can really advise me on them specifically other than that they exist and I should look into them. Doing Quant work for a job is different than doing it for research or my education. With that I care deeply about it, or I wouldn't be doing it. For the job I'm just doing it to get paid, whatever they want is what I'll endeavor to give them.

No that comment was for the one specific poster who it followed, not for the general thread as whole which has been quite helpful and full of good information. So, here is the thing, as I mentioned just a minute ago, I'm not looking to ever be a faculty member. I don't want to actually teach, I'd really be happy just researching other people's projects or doing some sort of analysis job in government. If you had asked me a year ago I wasn't even considering a Master's degree in either of my fields, let alone a PhD. I'm only in school to get a piece of paper, I chose my majors because they were interesting and I read a lot of stuff in both of them in my free time. What I'm looking for is a qualification for a job, 90% of the jobs I have looked at that involve things I like, lots of sitting, working at a desk, decent pay and low responsibility, all require a university degree. Unfortunately in the 4 years I've been in school it seems it has now become mandatory to have at least a basic Grad level degree as well, and I'm already being told that by the time I finish that, having a PhD will be the minimum.. even though I see plenty of sites around the net saying that there are entirely too many PhD's and that PhD's don't prepare you to do anything except work in Academia. I'm not sure what other fields I could really do, as an above poster mentioned, even History is now jumping on the big data bandwagon, and I just attended a lecture saying that English is some how doing it too. Personally I don't know what they are expecting to find by doing it, but it's their time to spend however they wish.

Being told how to approach *my* education is a problem for me because it's just that, *my* education. If I'm going to invest years of my life, and tens of thousands of dollars, then I have the right to expect what I want out of it. You're right though that I went into the field expecting something that is proving to be very different. The undergrad IA major at my school does not require a single quant class beyond a basic intro to stat class, and then none of the actual classes use any quant methods at all. So in my opinion it's somewhat justifiable on my end to be frustrated that the major I picked specifically because it involved virtually zero math, suddenly turns into a math degree in the grad school level.. but that is what I have to have to get a job. I feel as though I've been lied to, and conned into taking on an extra year of school and thousands of dollars in additional loan debt for a second major that isn't any more valuable than my history degree. However, I think we are looking at this in cross purposes, I'm not looking for a faculty position, and I'm not looking to work in a theory heavy field. I am not looking to ask any questions, certainly not ones I have to write a 300 page book to attempt to answer. I simply have my own thoughts and opinions about what I want to study while working to earn my "Piece of paper ©" that says I'm qualified to do X job. I honestly don't know what qualifications I need to get X job, because I don't know what X job is. I just know that as a virtual certainty all of my faculty members and my adviser say I need a grad degree, but they also aren't happy with the ones that I'm picking that align with my world view, which makes it harder to get anything moving. As for why I can't get anyone in the department to oversee my projects, I thought I had mentioned earlier that is because all undergrad projects at my school are handled through the Honors department, which I am not part of because I didn't know I needed to join my first semester and missed out, which means that if the faculty do agree to oversee my projects, they won't get paid for it, and it's much harder to get academic credit for them. I am not actually that upset with them for not wanting to take them on, but if I'm not going to get academic credit for them then I see no reason to pursue them or to ask faculty members to go out of their way to facilitate it. So if I am simply mis-remembering and didn't actually include that detail I'm sorry and I guess that explains where a lot of confusion is coming from. As far as letters go, that's as I mentioned much earlier, already become something I feel is problematic because 90% of my professors are just PhD candidates and not actual PhD's since they are all too busy doing research to actually teach. In so far as my IA degree goes, I don't think I have a single person to ask for a letter from anyway, even though I feel I get on pretty well with most of them.

'You don't like what I like, therefore you are stupid'. Great advice, I'll keep that in mind.

I don't understand how I am being a "troll", I simply want to study what I find interesting rather than what you obviously find interesting. Oh boo hoo, life is full of dissapointments. I've just been told by half a dozen people that if I want to continue my education I basically will have little choice but to leave my own country to do so, or I just have to give up on my desire to learn more because no one will fund me even if I get into a school in the UK. It's not a very rosy picture, or I have to study something I have zero interest in studying, or hope to get accepted to a tiny handful of schools in the US that actually offer something similar to what I want.

Thank you for that well thought out reply. I again don't want to come across as saying that I'm totally against Quantitative methods, just that it is very difficult for me to do (thus I seek to avoid it) and also less interesting to me (as it doesn't focus on what I feel is most important, EG human psychological processes and their essential indeterminacy and irrationality) I'm not really looking to explain, I'm just looking for a clearer understanding, since I don't ultimately feel that people are knowable. I'd take another Quant class if it was offered just to shut my advisers up, but my school simply doesn't offer one at the undergrad level other than in the Stat department which has pre-reqs I don't meet. As for the technology, since I consider myself to be an anti-modernist and anti-positivist, I rather halfheartedly accept its place in my life, but have no especial love for it beyond its ability to aggregate vast sums of knowledge for my ease of access. I've been trying to get a class in GIS for a while, but again, pre-reqs I don't meet, and don't have time to take, combined with departments who aren't interested in me auditing their classes so I can learn the material but not have it negatively impact my GPA should I not be great at it, have somewhat curtailed my ability to pursue it. I've already looked at Minnesota, but their department seems to be, well, rather weak, they only list about 6 people on the department on the website. OSU is one I hadn't heard mentioned before but makes since considering Wendt is there that they would have a constructivist friendly department. Thank you for the suggestions, I'll do more research.

Well, no, I don't have the private means to fund myself. But I also don't feel I can do what I want to do without pursuing higher levels of education. As someone else pointed out earlier, why would anyone take me seriously as just an undergrad? Even with two BA's, it's still just a BA. This is amazingly disappointing to hear. I don't even know how to begin looking for jobs as an alternative to grad school because that's what I've been operating under the assumption I'd be doing this whole time. Everytime I've spoken to anyone at my school about it, as soon as they see my grades they immediately ask if I'm going to Law School or Grad School. I have no interest in being a lawyer, so that just left Grad School. I've been to my schools career center once, and their suggestion was just to get a Linkdin page, something I'd never heard of before, which didn't really help as all it did was confirm that the only jobs out there are computer programmers, nurses, and truck drivers; or things I don't qualify for because I don't have an MA/MBA/MPA etc. As far as a History PhD, the only ones I'd consider would be Ancient, Medieval, or Pre-Modern, and I just don't meet the language requirements. usually including at a minimum Latin reading proficiency and one other language. Depending on your sub field you have to have even more. that boat sailed when I decided to add the second major. While there are some good programs in the US for those topics, I don't think it would be worth the application fees to even attempt it. Though that was my original plan, I just got so depressed because i was being told constantly there were no jobs in that field. Honestly i wonder at this point why do schools even bother having these departments? It's like it's a trap to lure people into majoring in something that has no future. I've never considered Sociology because I'm not interested per say in how individual persons interact, or even societies of persons interact. I'm primarily interested in how the society of states, nsa's, mnc's, ngo's, etc interact. I feel it would be fairly difficult to find a sociologist who has the requisite IR background in order for me to be a good fit with that too. I'm not sure if there is such a thing as "Systemic Sociology", though I know there is Human Ecology and they are where World Systems developed.. so might be worth looking into. Human Geography might be an okay fit though, but they have their own Quant requirements with learning how to do GIS which requires programming. Everything just seems to require so much math, and the whole reason I went into the fields I went into was so I didn't have to do math..

I have had people tell me that, and it's difficult to weigh the benefits and downsides. Because if I can't find any place here in the US that is willing to fund me, then should I just give up and not bother? Because that seems to be where most of the people I've spoken with have leaned. The thing is, there are lots of people that I find very interesting who are turning out what is to me very interesting work, but they basically are all in Europe. Buzan, Waever, Linklater, Winn, and more. When all is said and done, if I decide to go to Grad-School it is an investment in myself and I don't have a problem with paying for it, I'd rather not have to, but I'd also rather pay than simply be rewarded for toeing some party line that I don't ultimately agree with. I figure I'll have to do plenty of that in the "real world", I shouldn't have to compromise on my education too. NYCBluenose: This is very helpful and thoughtful, and I suppose hits at one of the problems that I'm having. I struggle to differentiate between CP and IR, to me it's just too interconnected, and I am also looking at at least doing an MA in Europe, and most of my advisers are more than happy to encourage me to do that, they just then want me to come home, buckle down, and get serious with lots and lots of Quant classes ( I suppose now is as good a time as any to mention the reason my GPA is a 3.74 but my majors are 4.0's is because I failed a math class, so taking more is likely to result in similar grades and is the reason I haven't taken the GRE yet) I really appreciate your perspective on this and all I can do is offer you encouragement and moral support. It's seemingly much more difficult of a road than I anticipated..

I apologize if I offended anyone, it wasn't my intention, I was speaking purely out of frustration not out of malice. Again, my apologies. This is exactly what I prefer about the Holistic end of the spectrum, it allows for a wider variety of methodologies to attack problems and I get to learn about everything, I just don't want to get forced into using only one tool from the box. But as I said I haven't completely ruled out Quantitative research, I just don't want it to be a majority of my work. Some of the people in the department at my school may as well be Statisticians, they compare graphical front ends for 'R' just as much as they talk about anything else. And unfortunately while I know how to do some of that type of thing, though my school, for all it pushes Quant, doesn't offer a single undergrad Quant class in any of it's social science departments.. you just have to take it in the Stats department which requires you to have a whole host of pre-reqs like Calc and CS. To me I find the specs of munitions fascinating so if that is what they enjoy I won't fault them. World Systems isn't really my focus, it's just one of the things that is on my end of the spectrum according the graph that is in a couple of Wendt pieces. Yes Neo-Gramscianism Marxist theory is on that side as well but it's a bit lower down towards the individual factor (EG labor) rather than Holism on the Y axis of the graph than World Systems (which is heavily dependent on Ecology and Cybernetics for it's basis. But I'd say I'm dead on the Y axis between Holism-Materialism (World Systems) and Holism-idealism (World Society) and this makes me a very poor fit for my department and Slacktivist's mentioning of either no or poor recommendations is a serious concern of mine. Short of transferring, which isn't really an option at this point, I'm not sure what I can do about it. The key problem is that in my heart I'm a History major, but it was suggested to me that taking on the second political science major would make me more marketable. I didn't really understand when I did it that what they meant was, you will become more marketable by learning lots of Quant stuff, which even if I really wanted to, as I mentioned they don't even actually offer at the UG level. I've been looking at the UK degrees, as stated, but yes the cost of doing so is worrying. If I went to most state schools in the US, the tuition would be about the same but cost of living would be lower. On the other hand if I went some place like the mentioned New School (which I had never even had suggested to me) I imagine there are many locations in the UK that are less expensive than Manhattan. I don't have a problem with working in the UK, it seems like a nice country, but I am not sure I would fit in any better there than I would here in the US, that is for the future though. Thank you all for your suggestions and you have helped, if not fit in more pieces of puzzle, give me more clues as to where I might find them.

Hi, I'm new here, it was suggested by a professor that I come and check this place out and kind of crowd source advice. So here goes, I'm currently a 4th year UG with 1 year left to go, with a double degree in History and in International affairs. I am looking at following up with a MA and then a PhD in IA, (history is nice but I already know there are no jobs in that field, at least with IA there is the possibility of government work) I know that I don't want to go to my current school for grad school, even though I could probably get accepted without too much trouble (3.74gpa, 4.0s in majors) haven't taken the GRE yet, but will at some point. I've not attempted to publish anything, but I'd like to and I'll explain why not in a minute. The reason my current institution is completely out of the question is simply this, it's too quantitative. Everywhere I look in the US is too quantitative, in fact it's all any of them seem to care about. I've been flat out told by TA's that I'm wasting my time going to grad school if I don't want to do quantitative research. The problem is, I see no value in quantitative research, it's reductive and constraining and forces square pegs into round holes to make them fit rigid and inflexible models. I fall firmly into the holistic blocks of Wendt's matrix, and am probably right on the line of materialism. According to his matrix I fall somewhere between English-School and World Systems theory. This is where the research and publishing thing comes in, my school is weird in that all undergrad research is handled through the Honors program of which I am not part of due to being a transfer, and then pure independent research has been ruled out as none of my UG professors would agree to work with me on any of my prospective projects (and in order to have school backing I have to have a faculty "reader") because I wasn't using any quantitative methods in them, so it's made trying to bolster my CV a bit challenging. They were nice enough about it, but basically felt they didn't want to invest the time in mentoring me on projects they saw no value in. My school is staunchly neo-realist or neo-liberal with no room whatsoever for critical theory or constructivism (I didn't know I was going to be a constructivist when I started, it just happened, and if they didn't want me to become one they shouldn't have presented it as an option) and I've been getting more and more pushback about it as i've gotten into more and more advanced classes. Again, I don't have a problem with using quantitative methods as one tool in a box, but I don't want to rely on it. Not everything is a nail. I don't have a problem with incorporating quantitative methods, but I don't want to focus on it. So I started looking at schools overseas, and almost immediately started to get pushback on that too. "Don't waste your time going to the UK/Germany/Denmark/Canada" no one will hire you with a PhD from those places. So I started to do some digging on schools in the US that had, if not a strictly constructivist approach, at least a holistic-materialist one like world systems theory. I've gotten more and more confused about where to look and the professors in my department are totally unable to help me because they 1) think I'm wrong for doing what I'm doing, 2) don't want to encourage me, 3) aren't familiar with a lot of the people working in these topics. Which is what lead me here, so if anyone has any advise at all, I'd greatly appreciate it.. even if it's just more re-iteration of what my department has already been telling me. At this point I'm having a hard time justifying my desire to go to grad school to my advisers because they are starting to see it as simply an avoidance strategy. So, thank you in advance for any/all help offered.