Deflated

One of my sister's friends, a second-year undergraduate, recently asked me: "What's the hardest thing about being a grad student?" I think she was rather shocked by my answer: "Not having anyone to tell me what to do."

And it's so true. The hardest thing is not the reading, the writing, or the hours in the library. The hardest thing is coming up with my own research agenda. I wish someone would just say "Do this" with the guarantee that if I did it, that would be enough. It was usually like that in undergraduate days. I've spent the last several weeks pursuing a thesis idea, only to discover that the data just isn't good enough to allow any meaningful conclusions. So I'm back to square 1.

Well, almost. I have to get this project done before my funding runs out. I've done a lot of reading already on the history of US minimum wage laws, so I'll stay in that subfield if I possibly can. Are there any stones left unturned? I've learned that it's a lot harder to discover what hasn't been written on a subject than what has. In hunting for a D.Phil. topic, one is hunting for something invisible -- a question that no one else has previously addressed. By definition, there won't be books about it -- you have to find the "hole on the shelf" and write the book to go there.
In this quest for a topic, I sometimes feel like I'm hunting the White Stag. Or maybe the Loch Ness Monster...