3 Things I Learned in Grad School This Week ~ Oct 28 2016

Bioecological Systems Model
Developed by Urie Bronfenbrenner, this theory is applied to how children and maturing adults. Here is the helpful image below:

This system is helpful to see how components of each level interact with the other components and across levels. I am going to try and incorporate this into SocioEcological Systems Theory and figure out where Maslow's Hierarchy fits as well.

ANOVA Tables and Linear Regression
Analysis of Variance and seeing where points fall on an estimated line. This is actually way less difficult than anything else I’ve done in statistics and more important than that, actually useful. It still seems like magic when the wizard of my professor scrawls the incantations, the numbers, on the board but this is the first time the alchemy came together to make sense. The ability to predict where a data point can occur within some level of certainty is to me absurd. To think that I can do that is an odd concept
 
Contractor vs Scholar Thinking
I had my first official meeting with my committee this week and I can’t imagine a more distinct clash of paradigms. Three scholar sitting at a table and me. I prepared for the meeting fairly well and set out the agenda, the draft research questions, and what I was comfortable with and what I wasn’t. I felt good navigating this meeting. Twenty minutes into the meeting I realized that I wasn’t dealing with clients or employees. I began to realize that I was dealing with academics, with scholars. Instead of focusing on answering a question we focused on a theory to further, instead of focusing on how we could apply my research we focused on what methodology we could use. This to me seemed like a complete backwards way to go about it, like putting the cart before the horse. When I realized that I was thinking like a contractor, I told my committee so and asked them how I should change my thinking. They started with a “welcome to grad school” statement saying that whatever research method we choose should apply to a theory we’re interested in exploring and if the place or problem we’re looking at works, then it works. I’m going to need to think about this a lot more – this is new territory.