in the field, if by the field you mean sipping a latte in austin

With no disrespect to Lux and Veritas, I clearly picked the wrong grad school. Of course, if I'd come to the UT-Austin, I probably would never want to leave. Not only is this place the mothership of presidential communication studies, it's just damn cool. Unfortunately, I picked the worst hotel in the entire city. It's not so much that the hotel is that bad, but it's isolated and doesn't make up for it by being particularly nice. Also, initially they put me in a room that clearly had some issues. It smelled like mildew, and every surface was slightly damp, except for the carpet, which was soaking wet. The people at the front desk were very nice about giving me a new room, and the current room has a fridge, a microwave, and a wired internet port, which are all nice creature comforts for a 10-day trip. So I'm debating whether inertia (and avoidance of cancellation fees) will keep me at the crappy hotel for the duration of my stay. The alternatives seem to be equally isolated but slightly nicer, or near the university and insanely expensive.

What the hell are you doing in Austin, you might ask? The LBJ library is here, conveniently located on the UT campus (unlike the Reagan library which is located near some clouds and nothing else). As I expected, the collection is great, almost overwhelming in its thoroughness and ridiculously well-organized (an optimal combination). Most of the first few days of this type of research tend to involve going on a fishing expedition through the papers and memos of various presidential aides and helpers until I figure out which ones a) put their thoughts into informative memos and b) had their memos actually put into the collection. The second half is more targeted and usually involves researching the speechwriting process for stuff relating to policies that I have selected based for KKV-approved variation on my dependent variable, or relevance to my independent variable, etc. I will refrain right now from ranting about how silly it feels to talk about variables during the process of going through presidential papers. Although one could certainly talk about the ways in which "science" is employed in election and public opinion campaigns, or not employed in some instances. And on and on. As far as I can tell, no one has written a book about archival research in the social sciences, or in the study of politics specifically. Like an equivalent to that interviewing book that's sitting on most of our desks. Hmmm... I think I'll do it when I have amassed sufficient expertise in pretending I know what I'm doing... who's in as a co-author? (Steve, I know you are...)

Anyway, aside from the Austin sunshine and hipness, this trip better damn well be worth it. The flight here (Detroit to Austin) was a 3-hour adventure on a 50-person glorified prop plane. Actually, it wasn't really all that glorified now that I think of it. It was just a fucking prop plane packed with people, bobbing through the sky and wind and rain. Sweet. There was definitely a moment when I thought we were going to plummet, so I clutched my laptop and thought about how sad it would be that the last thing I ever did was write about presidential communication after mid-term elections.

Well, this latte has certainly kicked in, and I should return to the documents, where hopefully the surge of caffeine will bring me inspiration and help me sort through the 15 boxes of papers that await me.