Theory Application

I'm visiting my family in Chicago this weekend before heading to the regional EDUCAUSE conference Mon-Wed of this week. I've started telling the fam, reluctantly, about my new dissertation topic. Reluctant not because they are not supportive, rather because I am still searching for the words to describe the topic itself.

However, it was very helpful to sort of struggle through finding the words to describe things with my family over dinner last night. My mother is a fellow educator and seemed to quickly pick up on whatever I was blithering about. My brother-in-law and sister wanted a clearer explanation of things, and I'm grateful for their questioning. These are two intelligent individuals, both of whom have gone through the developmental process (I think) that I'm going to explore with this dissertation. I know that if I cannot explain it to them, then I'm not finding understandable wording. This was a good exercise.

In a later discussion with my mom, I was able to use the basic components of the theory I'm developing to describe my sister, brother-in-law, mother, friends, etc. That's kinda cool. I hope to keep finding opportunities to practice these types of applications and to work with the theory to "profect" out this idea some more.