I had been thinking about applying for graduate school for a long time, but I decided I would not apply for admission in fall of 2009. I started questioning myself when I asked for a recommendation from a mentor of mine and he replied by asking me some hard questions about my goals.
I’ve got this research job right now that I like and that is teaching me; I am not sure that I want to give this up, especially when it can lead me into other similar work, and that’s why I wanted to go to graduate school anyway. Also I have a good Hindi tutor and if I start graduate studies, I know that my less-academic studies will have to stop. I spend a lot of my free time trying to learn to use various computer applications; this is time consuming because it is self-taught and cannot be streamlined, and definitely this kind of learning would have to stop for schoolwork. On the other hand, if I learn more about computer work, that would be a huge benefit for me for the rest of my life. I am continually having major disruptive problems because of my inability to manage and process data.
There is a common theme that is giving me trouble; I am finding a need to collect videos, pictures, and text descriptions of the same, edit them slightly, and post them online in a way that they can be manipulated. Flickr and youtube work wonderfully, but I really would like to be able to host this info on my own server. I see a huge demand for large collections of this kind of data, and I know that I can provide it because Nandan can hire Indian labor to collect it.
For example, there’s the public health survey work that I do. There’s this other guy who wants some public service announcement videos made in various languages. I have another friend who needs photos for aesthetic reasons. I have been talking to this Australian sex worker who is on board to work with Nandan and produce whatever crazy things she produces. I want to start using GPS to create a comprehensive map of where certain plants and animals can be found. It boggles me to think that I can get involved in so many varied projects, and from my perspective, the skill set required to make all these things happens depends on my being proficient in the same user-level technology.
I am continually enthralled with the power of the internet and the ways in which it disrupts previous social orders. I feel so fortunate to be alive at this point in history; blogging makes my head swim even when I am just rambling.