Random thoughts

I am reading Alan Greenspan's autobiography "The Age of Turbulence" now and the making of an economist like Greenspan is especially inspiring to me. In the meeting with the SRC director Bob Groves, I asked a question that now I feel more like a mere consumer in both economics and statistics rather than a producer, and what is the process that will turn a consumer to a producer. Also, I was curious that what exactly distinguish a consumer from a producer.

Here was the answer that Bob gave to me:

The PhD program in any field is designed to train a consumer to a producer. In a PhD program, students will learn how to read literature work critically--not so much focus on what they have found but rather, what they have not.

After more than half a year exposure to research, I realized that I am capable to complete a task with the amount of training that I have got in Economics and Statistics; however, I am not able to see where the research is going. My advisors have been extremely helpful in terms of that, Prof Stafford could always foresee the problems even before I started working on some data and Prof Rothman would always tell me possible areas that I can look into and rationales behind. Although when I look back, all the suggestions seemed to be the most reasonable choice, I was not able to come out with anything close.

I was afraid to make conclusions too. Not confident enough, perhaps, but definitely I have not had enough experience in the field to make a sensible conclusion. I was glad that Greenspan mentioned in his book that he had been through the same stage. He mentioned it took him the depression in the 70s after being announced as the Fed Chairman for him to be comfortable making critical decision in the years after. I guess it's OKie for me to feel a bit shaky now, at least I have the next five years to slowly moving from a consumer to somewhat a producer...

Tomorrow will be my last day working as an intern and I will be heading for Chicago on Wed. Isn't that sweet?

Labels: eeks ECON

posted by panda xuan @ 10:45 PM