"Cat"astrphoic Conversations

You know those people that tell stories about their cat or their weekend of fishing in painstaking detail? They're on minute twenty of talking about Fluffy and suddenly you're hoping for a nose-bleed. an earth quake, ANYTHING to get you away from there.

Sometimes I feel like that person. It all starts innocently enough...

Them: So, Holly, what do you do?

Me: I'm a grad student. I'm getting my masters in Mass Communications.


Them: Mass Communications...so...that's...um...what is that?

This is the response I normally get when I tell people what I'm getting my masters in. If people know what mass communications is (I'll explain it in a second here) they usually ask what my emphasis is. That's because if you major in communications as an undergrad you pick an emphasis (advertising, public relations, journalism, broadcast, electronic media). But for your masters, you study all those areas.

Once I get people up to speed then the conversation usually goes like this...

Them: So you study all areas of communications? Like what do you study?

Me: Well, for instance, I did a study of blogging moms. We surveyed them to find out if blogging and reading other mom's blogs affected their self-esteem and if they feel pressure from comparing themselves to other moms.

(Usually at this point they're still with me, though some already have eyes glazed over.)

Them: Cool! So you do surveys and stuff. About blogging. That's neat. What else do you study?

Me: Um. Well, my thesis is on the effects of alcohol advertising responsibility messages on adolescents. I interviewed 120 adolescents and asked them what they think about "drinking responsibly." Then I have to transcribe the interviews and...

(at this point I've lost about 90% of people, so I switch tracks)

I wrote a paper about the discrepancies between American and Russian responses to human trafficking. You know, like that movie Taken?

Them: Oh yeah! Taken! Great movie.

(Aaaannnd they're back.)

I can't blame people. Looking in from the outside, it's boring as hell. Research is a labor of love. Finding and reading upwards of 40 obscure journal articles that can *hopefully be useful for a literature review. Doing statistical gymnastics to get your numbers to mean something. Thank goodness for SPSS. Writing and re-writing and re-writing and still not making sense. Sometimes by the end of it I think I'd rather have to stop drinking Diet Coke rather than read the draft again.

But when you have 20 pages of blood, sweat, and tears down on paper and maybe, somehow in a small way it contributes to the ever growing patchwork of knowledge of how we all talk and learn and interact and live...you feel on top of the world.

Researchers are curious and never satisfied and always learning. And sometimes boring. So, if you've ever asked me what I do, or what I study and I bored you to tears, I apologize. Consider it payback for when you told me stories about your cat.