Two and half years ago, our ethnographic interviewing methods professor walked us through what was to come, towards the end of the semester:
… What other classes your could take to complement ours? Hmm, I’d say, take statistics. No! Don’t take it here. No need to waste your tuition dollars on an introductory math course. Take a summer course at your community college. With the training you all have had this semester, you are all set up for graduate level research (or in a commercial setting), and usually they’d require you to have an M.A. to back it up, but a Masters is too expensive, not quite worth it, and you have the skills now.. so just get one or two years doing more field research, and get that stats course done. You won’t *actually* be doing any stats though, there will be experts with Ph.D. in stats doing the actual analysis. They won’t let you touch the database, they are very picky and don’t trust anyone else… If you don’t stay alert, you might forever staying behind the clipboard and asking “so did you mean ‘a lot’ or ‘lot’?”. How to get out of that cycle.. hmm (typical S smile), you figure it out.
I think we’ve got the Ph.D. in question. I’m glad we’ve got one though.
