the view from the hill

Greetings!
Welcome to "the view from the hill." I've decided to start writing in a blog because in the past, it's been a very effective way to communicate my experiences to those I love and care about, in a way that feels a little less egocentric and in-your-face than sending mass emails about my life. I want to document this experience, this adventure that I am embarking on now, in this effort to make new friends, develop new skills, and gain new knowledge that will hopefully equip me with the tools that are required to make the change I want to make in the world around me.

Why the title?

Well, academia is often described as "the ivory tower" or some other description of a secluded space protected from the rigors and circumstances that often characterize everyday life. A hill is secluded (and also suggests elevation, hinting at the egotism and self-importance that can also be found in the academy). Plus, the academic institution where I will be spending the next several years, Cornell University, is literally on a hill. A massive hill that feels like a mountain and is a rude awakening each morning when I have to walk up it to get to my class...

...but it's beautiful :)

 

Why a PhD?

I've been asked this question so many times by others and have asked myself the same question so many times now that I can answer it quite easily now. It's a fair question. A doctoral degree requires 5--8 years of foregone wages, the duration depending on life circumstances and the nature of one's field of study, it requires hundreds, thousands of hours hunched over problem sets and esoteric or insanely theoretical literature, and a level of endurance and commitment to research and academics that I believe even the most education-oriented and geeky of us will struggle to maintain.

But I want to do it and I will do it. In the three years that I spent recently as a social policy researcher, I learned a lot of things. I learned that the acronyms ACS and RFP stand for "American Community Survey" and "Request for Proposals," respectively. I learned that it's faster to code a recurring command in STATA using loops than to manually type in the code for each variable. I learned that the progressive movement is not as unified as we like to think it might be and that feminism has a long way to go before it becomes as committed to racial equity as it is to gender equity. I learned that there are lots of people out there who want to tell you how to do everything and will yell/gripe at you even if they're wrong, whether it's out of pride or sheer ignorance. But the things I learned that led me down this winding path into upstate New York were:

• Until I develop more subject matter expertise and technical analytical skills, I will not have the opportunity to answer the questions or attempt to answer the questions that I find to be the most interesting or among the most important, and
• I love mentoring and teaching. I want to teach. 

I think most people would agree that with these motivations for continued education, that the PhD is the way to go...I guess we'll see! 

My hope is to be able to better understand and help policymakers and communities to better understand the wide range of factors that affect the transitions of young adults to financial independence from their parents (the "the transition to adulthood"). In addition to the standard demographic variables such as educational attainment, gender, race, ethnicity, state of residence, health factors, family type, etc., I would argue that there are major cultural differences in how different communities and families approach the stage of "adulthood" or how they interact with the credit industry, financial institutions, educational institutions, and other agents in the infrastructure of adult responsibilities and milestones. Identification of these differences would provide a basis for making policies surrounding such things as credit reporting, mortgage-related decisions and allowances, etc., more sensitive and considerate of the varying ways in which people understand the systems. 

Please feel free to check back on this page anytime to keep abreast of the boring details of my time here in Ithaca :)