dude, like what omar said

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Fabio

In response to my recent post on course work in graduate school, Omar has this useful comment. In response to jimi, who found courses useful because his graduate work was in a different field than his undergrad, Omar wrote:

Thanks for your comment. It does bring up a good point. If you have no background in the discipline taking courses is extremely important; after all, it is impossible to be an effective producer if you do not master consumption first (after all, the most avid producers in every culture production field tend to also be the most avid consumers). In fact, that is what your first few years in grad-school should be all about.

That said, I think that by the second to third year of grad school, you should already have begun to develop a “taste.” These are the things that I like, these are the things that put me to sleep. These are the articles that I consider exemplars of good research and theory, these are the ones that I do not. Notice that some of the habitus of the critic is necessary here; however the problem with the critic is that he stops at this stage.

In addition to developing a taste, you should already begin to look at the intellectual products that you are consuming not simply as “pieces” that may be fodder for classroom (or drunken bar) conversation, but as products that can be reverse-engineered. When looking at a paper you should not be focusing purely on logical, argumentative, rhetorical errors or other purely verbal circumlocutions (the critic’s favorite tack) but instead be asking “If I wanted to write something like that, how would I go about it?” “How can I get data like that?” “I am familiar with that method/technique?” “How did the author frame his or her argument?” “Is that an effective organizational device that I can use in my own work?” In other words, you want to begin asking practical production questions, rather than superficial finished product questions revolving around vague allegiance to metatheoretical precepts (this article is too rat choice or too macro…) or chic allegiance to this or that methodological dogma (I am SI and I would never touch Stata, etc.), which is once again a critic’s thing not a producer thing.

So get this in your head, grad skool kidz. Criticism is good. But like the rest of life, being constructive is better. Shouldn’t you get back to work now?