Dissertation Madness

I'm about ready to tear my hair out.

See, I thought I had a bit of an "in" with one of our schools here (and really, I knew it wasn't much, but it was more a foot in the door, a contact, someone to broach the subject with...heck, just call it a place to start) but that went out the window when I could never establish contact with my contact and, well, she moved out of the area when school was out.

No biggie, I thought, I'll see if I can just rearrange my study a little and do it at the school where I teach. And so I fired off a few emails to see if that was a possibility and got back several encouraging replies (encouraging in that they provided the rules for research and IRB requirements etc...so it didn't immediately seem unfeasible.) And then came the one that makes me want to throw up my hands (though I've never cared for that image since throw up = vomit and well, hands are all pointy and such, so I can't imagine that throwing them up would be pleasant.) The dean of curriculum - so really the end all as far as curriculum - says that any modification to a class is a deal breaker.

Well.

First, one wonders how they do any research at all. Clearly they don't do experimental research. (Since you'd have to have modifications to have any kind of experiment group vs. control group comparison.) And really, non-experimental research is...well, I guess it's nice if you want to just present papers at conferences. But it doesn't get you a PhD.

So now I'm left considering a very empty box of options. I have a few lines to tug to see what I can see, but right now I'm wondering if I'm going to have to find a completely different topic if I want to get it done. And not because there's something wrong with my topic, but because I just can't find a population to study.

Grr.