Day 9 Report

About halfway through Day 10, I remembered to write up the Day 9 report.

Day 9 was fine. I'm a poet. Should I write this post in verse? Well, it could be worse.

Aw, horseshit.

I was grateful for Lemming's comment in my last post, warning me not to lose my stride. Almost did in the morning, but I got things back together. I had a conference call I had to do for an hour at 11AM, and it distracted my focus more so than it should have, I suspect.

However, I actually ended up having a pretty major breakthrough on how I think I can connect all the theories I've read about into the one I'm creating. Yahoo! It just sort of came out all at once: there was a key code on my screen, practically staring at me, laughing at me. I thought about moving it from its current home under my newer construct with hardly any supporting literature to a different home under a construct with a ton of literature. And then it hit me: this code could fit under EITHER construct. Ah ha! A connection! And it was right in front of my face the entire time (ergo, the reason for why it appeared to be laughing at me, like "Hello? I'm right here you idiot!" And suddenly about four other connections started appearing in the data that all lead toward this one connecting code. It was a cool moment. I was in the middle of Starbucks, too, so I tried to keep from jumping all over the place making a complete ass of myself. I found restraint. I didn't appear as strange as the man at the next table using an adding machine (see my Twitter posts). That was pretty darn funny.

Refocusing: It's really remarkable how these things just leap out at me, as if they have a mind of their own. The only thing I can relate it to is when looking at those designs that your mind can sort of flip over and they suddenly become three-dimensional. Remember those? That's exactly how this process has been for me these past few days. I stare at these codes, and suddenly part of my brain just flips over and this great connection emerges.

That connection emerged when I was organizing quotes from one of the interviews where the participant was highly engaging, highly complex, and highly directed on his future career path. The next interview I will work with today has been my mode of comparison to him throughout this data analysis process, as she is pretty much the polar opposite. She's not very connected, not very engaging, etc., and yet she is VERY important to this study because she brings up an opposing point of view. Should be interesting, the comparisons I can made and where she may end up in the study.

Am back at the library, this time by myself. I would rather be outside on our screened-in porch with today's gorgeous weather, but I've not yet set it up for the spring. It still has all the furniture stacked, the outdoor rug is rolled up, and the sun shades are still in the basement, not to mention the furniture is filthy. That's probably a project for this weekend? Or perhaps I should just keep working on the diss.