The Post Doc Search Continues, Also I Don't Know What I'm Doing

The search continues... I had a phone interview yesterday for a post-doc position with a professor who actually understands my dissertation research (Whoa.) I will be traveling to his boring landlocked Midwest city to interview and give a job talk in late April. It could be a perfect fit. It could be a boring city.

Meanwhile in the dissertation realm, I have encountered multiple statistical and software roadblocks. Naturally, this led me to request help from my statistician as well as the statisticians affiliated with the software that I'm using. In response from the first, "I really don't understand it either." Um, ok. When pressed, I am told to do it every which way and hope that the results are the same. When further pressed for conceptual rationale for these odd methods, I am told, "Well...you are really the expert here." Um, what?! From the software statisticians, my plea for help results in this reply, "At present, we do not any general suggestion in the case of [complicated crap] with [more complicated crap]."

Great.

Just a prediction here people: I will do basically whatever I want. Later I will be told by my committee it is wrong and will have to re-do it all. Then, when peer review comes up, I will probably have to re do it all over, again.

The joys of dissertating.