Life After the M.A.

Life After the M.A. by Josh Rogers

Since I still have about a year left to go in this program it doesn't seem like there ever will be a life after graduation.
But, this year has gone by pretty quickly. What will be nice is that after this semester I will feel that I'm more in control of my course of study since I'll have most of my required courses behind me- Statistics, Theory, Research Methods, and Qualitative Research-I'll miss you.
One of the advantages of working on a thesis is reading the literature that is related to the specific topic one is studying. I'm not certain that writing a thesis about advergames will directly contribute to finding a job in a year. I am certain that since I'll have a pretty thorough understanding of advertising, social Internet use, and a pretty good idea of why people want to spend their free time puttering around playing a sponsored game like this one. This game will take awhile but you get to play pinball and jump a car.
After I graduate I've given some thought about working for the Chickasaw Nation. I attended a retention event hosted by the Chickasaws on campus last night. In addition to getting a small bag full of exam week swag (post-it notes, popcorn, hot cocoa, a scantron sheet) they also had a recruiter on hand as well. She explained that the Chickasaws are now becoming more sophisticated in tracking Chickasaw students who are on scholarship and checking to see if there are any possible job positions for newly graduated Chickasaws. The Rogers family has decided to stick around OK for a while so this might be a possibility. I used to belong to Rotary and would also hang around and volunteer at film festivals every so often so getting some free time back in my life would be great.
I am still thinking about trying to help out my sister-in-law's skateboard shop. I think that there website does not represent their brick and mortar operation or open up their business to new customers outside of the San Diego area. This website is pretty sparse and is not very interactive. There was an attempt a few months ago to start a mailing list but that sort of fell through. No Facebook, no Myspace, no updated features or social aspects to the website. The news is old and there is no sense of stickiness to the site that would make kids interested in skateboarding want to visit or spend time with the site. I am taking the interactive media course that is offered this summer so maybe I'll find out if such an undertaking would even be possible for me to start.
I am not sure that I would want to continue on to a PhD. I work with a few Doctoral candidates and those guys seem pretty stressed out all the time. Maybe if I take another ten years off of school I'll decide to go back to school again.

THE BODY OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE INTERNET

The Body of Knowledge and the Internet

by JR

I’’ll admit it-since I have started graduate school I have not physically handled one journal to find my research. How many people in class have? I’ve gone to the library to look for books but I have yet to actually crack a spine on a journal like this one or this one. I won’t ask for a show of hands to see if I am the only one who hasn’t but I would bet I am not alone.

Connecting to the body of knowledge begins with connecting my computer to the Internet. Like many others in class I also use Google, Google Scholar, and LORA for my research. Part of my development as a researcher has been in refining my Article1st, and EBSCO keyword selection. I use Google and Google Scholar because the search functions generally yield better results than the libraries databases. What has this done to my ability as a researcher if I haven't dug through dusty tomes of knowledge in the back of the library?

I wanted to bring up another idea that is related to key word search for journal articles. I believe that it was in Conceptual Issues class that we talked about journals and conferences and the perceived notion that some journals and conferences have more prestige than others. What happens to this idea of prestige and credibility when a generation or two of researchers have grown used to research by key word rather than journal?

In Conceptual Issues class we also talked about journals vs. conferences. I have seen that the debate of which is a more desirable method to connect to the body of knowledge depends on the field of study. In JMC, getting published in a journal is the goal of many researchers and conferences hold sort of a 2^nd tier status in the body of knowledge. In my work with RISE, which is concerned with underrepresented minority students in engineering education, conferences are the goal for researchers and journal articles generally fall into the lower tier. The best explanation that I have been given for this preference is that education conferences are looking for ideas, practices, and theory that can be directly tested or implemented in an educational setting .

For my topic, advergaming, I have used journals that are found in a traditional print version as well as online only journals. The Journal of Interactive Advertising was founded in 2000 and is an online refereed journal that is open to submissions and is free to access. This is a different model than the online sites of many print-based journals that require a pay per download or subscription to access. Like many others in class, after Google has done its work, I switch over to LORA to find an appropriate database to find the article since I have already paid (through my school tuition) to access the journal and download the research for free. Is free the way of the future?

Having access to online journals and print journals available online I believe is beneficial to the development to the body of knowledge. Being able to tap into the work of the field anywhere, anytime makes it that much easier for people to enter the academic conversation in a way that was not previously possible.

P.S. play this Indiana Jones-inspired advergame from Legos-it is harder than it seems (check out the Lego-skulls in background!)