The post wherein I detail my future plans

I spent a good deal of the morning working on a "this is what I've learned in/about graduate school" and wasn't making good headway on it until I realized that without some context, the post would be too generic and not that interesting. Probably the most important piece of information are my future plans, and here they are for your amusement.

Short term (summer 2007)

I may have turned in my last paper on Thursday, but I have a number of pots on the stove that need tending and stirring. In no particular order, these are my plans for the summer:

1. Write a paper with a faculty member about a new information collection method we developed earlier this year and have been using since. (This description is vague for a variety of reasons.)

2. Begin work on creating a better notification system for modern personal computers. This is related to the work I'm beginning in the area of human-computer interaction and will be described in further detail in a future post.

3. Do a couple of things for the Oyez website. I spent the bulk of last summer creating the latest iteration of the Oyez website and while it is presently being run by good hands, I decided that I would like to continue my relationship with that project and its principal, Jerry Goldman. Jerry has been good to me as long as I've known him in a variety of contexts, and this is my way of saying thanks for the continued friendship and support.

4. Catch up on reading things I had to set aside throughout the school year. On one hand, I still have yet to read Neal Stephenson's "Baroque Cycle". I've been itching to find a decent block of time to knock these three books out and summer may be the ideal time. On the other hand, I have a number of books that I've discovered in my classes on a variety of topics that I'd like to read and digest before the next year begins. These includes Bardini's biography of Doug Englebart and Kurzweil's Singularity books. You can follow along using my "summerreads" tag  on LibraryThing.

5. Launch Chicago Stubs. I and a team of other students developed Chicago Stubs as a Chicago-based online ticket swapping site for our Online Communities course. I think that the idea has legs and I intend to get the code up to shape and launch the site later this summer.

6. Continue working and releasing Books. The academic year has kept me busy and I've had to put off quite a bit of development on Books throughout the year. I'd like to get back to the project and continue putting out good releases for the users out there. In my role as a Mac software developer, I'll be paying close attention to tomorrow's SteveNote to see if there's anything of interest in the new release of MacOS X Leopard.

Medium term (through the end of graduate school)

During this last quarter, I did an independent study with a faculty member on the topic of human-computer interaction. The independent study was intended to give me a survey of the classic and current HCI literature and really enjoyed what I read. In particular, I found Mark Weiser's essay "The Computer for the 21st Century"  to be both prescient and inspiring. (I'm not alone, as this single essay spawned the ubiquitous computing field.)

One of the most valuable things that I learned during this year is that at my core, I am a "builder" more so than an "observer". I would separate the two classes of people by looking at their motivations. The builder is someone who has a distinct personal vision of what things should be and takes the direct steps to make that vision a reality. In contrast, an observer is someone content to leave the building to others and instead study and dissect that which has already been built to discover post-hoc theoretical insights and other findings. My current department overwhelmingly consists of observers and it's been fruitful for me to discover that I don't want to spend the rest of my life primarily studying things other people build. (I do find such scholarship to be extremely interesting and extremely valuable inputs into the building process, though.)

In the ubiquitous computing field, I've found a really nice spot that allows me to be a builder while being able to make the most of observations and theories coming from other fields such as psychology, sociology, and history. The field is also rich in ideas and potential for original, and  I'm looking forward to applying myself in that capacity.

After this summer, I'll be working on doing the things that I need to accomplish in order to earn my Masters degree. This in no way signifies any disappointment or desire to leave my program before earning the Doctorate degree. I figure that going through the process of assembling a committee, forming a proposal, and executing that plan will be a valuable experience that I can do once I finish up with classes and qualifying exams and start to work on the dissertation. (Plus, having a Masters degree apparently results in pay increases when doing an internship.)

Long term (after graduate school)

In the long term, I really want to stay in Chicago and raise a family with Holly here. I think that this city is a tremendous place to live and I think that as a parent, I'd really enjoy taking the kid out to do fun stuff around here. I believe that I would be more bored and less happy if I lived anywhere else and given this discovery, it would be idiotic to go elsewhere looking for happiness. I'm frequently susceptible to the "grass is greener on the other side" views of things, so it's doubly significant that I haven't found another place to live that I think is better than the Windy City.

This decision to remain in Chicago leads to a not insignificant conflict with my current program of study. The department I am in is very much a "publish or perish" place and it's been emphasized multiple times that the primary goal of the program I am in is to develop scholars that can get jobs in top tier departments at research universities. The "publish or perish" philosophy is pushed to doctoral students as part of the process of training to be one of these scholars. The problem arises when the two constraints (live in Chicago, take a research-track job) are combined. Chicago has a tremendous number of good universities, but it is probably fair to say that the local pool of research universities consists of Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. There are quite a few local teaching universities (Loyola, DePaul, University of Illinois), but these are not necessarily on the same tier as the institutions I'm being prepared for, research-wise.

On the other hand, I don't know if going into academia as a career is the right move for me. I enjoy being both a researcher and a practitioner and believe that there are some great opportunities for someone who can bridge the theory-practice divide. I find the prospect of building up a nice little business to be intriguing and I think that I would do well doing something like "going indie" as a local tech consultant/independent software developer. I'm a big fan of what Joel Spolsky has built in Manhattan, and I'm keeping a close eye on the guys at Humanized here in Chicago. In the few years since I've moved here, I've built up a decent local network and I believe that I could build a nice little business, should I decide to go that route.

"But, if you're planning to do that, isn't graduate school a waste of time? Are you wasting your professors' time if you're not going to planning on pursuing an academic career?" These are two questions that I struggle with regularly. To answer the first one, I do not believe that I'm wasting my time in graduate school, even if I choose the capitalistic sell-out route. My time in graduate school has been extremely productive, and I think that I've learned as much in the last three quarters of classes as I learned the three years before. I've certainly been exposed to a body of literature that contains a ton of useful knowledge that can be exploited by a practitioner that understands it. In addition to access to the literature, there are quite a few skills that I've picked up during my stint in graduate school that can serve me well outside the ivory tower.

As for the question of whether I'm wasting the faculty's time if I don't go into an academic job, that's a tough one. To be perfectly honest, I've been extremely hesitant to write the previous two paragraphs in a public venue, for worry that one of my instructors would read them and decide to write me off as an unserious student. There is a strong expectation that they are training future professors. I know that this sentiment is not universal, but there are more than a handful of people who I will disappoint by admitting that the life of a tenure-track professor may not be the one I want. I can't do anything to change that, but I have no intention of slacking during my studies or working any less hard researching or publishing. I've fairly been accused of hedging in the past, and I'm not going to do anything to take a potential job in academia off of the table unless there is a good reason to do so. Having my name out on papers and conference presentations will lend legitimacy to me inside the academy or out.

I apologize for the extended digression on what I'm thinking of doing after getting my degree. However, it illustrates the point that my career is not going to be the defining element of who I am and that a good career is only the means to an end. That end is setting up a nice life for me and my (future) family where we can make the most of this great environment we are in. If I find that I'm happiest in an academic setting and it supports a decent life style, I'll choose an academic route. If I find that I'm more invested and interested in building a business of some sort, I'll choose the entrepreneurial route.  At this point in my life, I'm primarily interested in keeping my options open while building a solid foundation for whatever I choose to do.