Round 1 - OK

I had my proposal (version 1) review with Dr. S Wednesday.  Few surprises as I had already figured out a lot of what he commented on.

The take-aways:

1. As I've written before in this blog, my research problems really need some attention.  Dr. S says (and I agree!) that as outlined, the research behind the problems would, in his words, "take about 75 years."  OK, well (I suppose), better to have too many rather than too few.  My research problems are more themes of problems rather than individual ones.  I just need to drill down on one or two, then "discover" the problems from those themes.
2. Subsequently, my hypotheses need to be re-worked, based on the new set of research problems, of course.  Besides, Dr. S pointed out that my first round of them are written in inconsistent form.  I didn't see that, so that was new.

Biggest issue:  I don't have primary, but secondary, data for my study.  What that means is that the data I have has been gathered by others (secondary data).  That's a problem.  I need to gather data myself (primary). But we are both scratching our heads a bit on this one. Dr. S is a qualitative guy and can counsel on surveys, interviews, etc.  But any surveying I could do would be of current or potential customers, and that would be a no-no professionally.

So, with that revelation, Dr. S decided to check in with a man who I think will be my thesis adviser.  He earned his PhD at Northwestern but is a professional in finance in Manhattan not an academician.  He thinks that this man - Dr. H - will be able to guide me better than he can.

In the meantime, Dr. S said to not trouble with another proposal draft until I've spoken to Dr. H.  But he agreed that it wouldn't hurt to continue with the literature review.

Traveling for work this week, but that's what I'll do next week.