Suicide

I hate days like today. One of our students decided to commit suicide last night. In addition, he was a graduate student in my academic department and therefore had an assistantship in one of the functional areas in my division of the university. This one hit particularly close to home.

I had met him only once or twice at larger events like orientation programs earlier this fall. But even then it was easy to tell this was a vibrant, intelligent young man. It's a tragic loss not only for my university and for this student's family, but also for the higher education field as a profession.

I don't understand why people choose to go through with suicide. Look, I'd be lying if I said that I've never considered it myself, but those were some extremely dark, horrible moments for me in the past. I just can't imagine actually following through with it, though. What would drive someone to do that?

For those of us left behind, there's a mix of emotions ranging from sadness for the young man, his partner, his family and friends, to a feeling of anger toward the person who is now dead. And then there are subsequent feelings of feeling horrible for feeling angry, and things just spiral around from there.

Personally I think it's normal to feel some anger in these situations, and certain expressions of anger can be healthy. I just hope and pray that the group of master's-degree students I advise allow themselves to feel however they want to feel in this situation and don't become too restricted by other social norms that may tell them to behave in a certain, specific manner.

Light a candle. Say a prayer. Hug your loved one. Do whatever, but consider just taking a moment and being thankful for what you have.

Updates

Nothing major to report, other than that I continue to make progress. OK, with my track record, I suppose that is rather major.

I'm enjoying the process of watching the theory unfold. That seems a bit passive for someone creating a theory, but considering the theory is based upon the words out of the mouths of my participants, I do think it's safe to say the theory unfolds itself every time I work with the data. It's pretty cool. I love the study, love the participants, and I just wish I could work on nothing else but the study until its completion.

Back to work-work now. Hope to keep plugging away on dissertation-work tonight.

VW Angst

For the EIGHTH time in ten years, one of the window regulators on the VW broke this evening. This means that the window in question will not roll up. In fact, if I attempt to touch it, there's a good chance it will just fall into the door thus exposing my car to elements and thieves. Man I would love for the thief to steal this piece of shit. But hell, even the insurance money probably wouldn't even help very much with the down payment on the Mini. I will get absolutely no money whatsoever for this pile of bolts. 

The sorry thing is that the car drives just fine. It's 'fun' to drive, and the engine has never let me down, EVER, in a decade. A battery died once, and fortunately I was at home and the car was parked in the garage. Show me car where that DOESN'T happen: that even happened on Toyotas I've driven. The issue here is with the electrical and mechanical systems for dumb, cheap-ass plastic parts that require VW owners to have wallets the size of the grand canyon to maintain these little fuckers. And to think I actually considered buying another VW. The fucks. 

VW, upgrade your fucking mechanical and electrical systems. I doubt you're listening, but you've officially lost a potential customer forever. 

There, I feel better now. Of course the angst will all come back when I pay to get the window fixed this week. It's supposed to rain on Wednesday. 

He Grew

I keep forgetting to write about this here: Moose had a doctor's checkup about a month ago. He goes about every three months, so once per quarter. 

He grew two inches between June and September. Two. Inches. He is 4' 1" tall, or at least he was a month ago. Oh yeah, and he weighs 52 pounds. 

As my father would say, "Seems like only yesterday when I could hold you in the palm of my hand."

And the winner is...

Contrary to recent polling results, the winner of the car search was the Mini Cooper. Wife and I await its (his? her? not sure yet) arrival sometime in the next 6-8 weeks. I will post a photo or two.

Here's to hoping the VW makes it that long without requiring any other repair work.

Dissertation time now. More later.

Debate

It will be no surprise to those of you who have read this blog that I'm going to vote for Obama in November. I watched the first debate this evening. I have been ignoring the political scene best I can till tonight, because I no longer care about what others think about all this. I just want to hear the candidates' opinions. 

I kept listening to what Obama had to say and the manner in which he was saying it. And I kept wondering why people would not vote for him. I mean, his words were perfect. I don't get why there is any discussion about it. 

The thought of him actually getting elected is sort of overwhelming. I mean, can you imagine how good everything would be if he actually got elected? Wow. 

Open Coding Complete

I finished the open coding process for the fourteenth and final interview this afternoon. I'm glad I'll never have to do any open coding for the dissertation ever again. That's certainly worthy of celebration. 

I now know how long forever is. It's the length of time from when I started the open-coding process till today. 

This is the first of numerous steps I will need to complete between now and the end of the data-analysis process, but at least I can check it off the list. Off to celebrate! And also, I absolutely have to get my brain away from this for a few hours...brain hurts...must take break! 

Automobile 2

Thanks to the handful of people who voted for my choice of car. The winner was the Honda Civic, at five votes. 

Honda Civic? Really? Yawn! Isn't there something more interesting? OK, truth be told, this is the car I think I should buy. Doesn't mean I will. Haha. 

So, I propose a revised poll (version 2.0, if you will). Please see the box to the right. I've done a bit more research and have added a couple of different cars (I removed the Subaru and the VW). Am looking for something relatively inexpensive, high-quality, fuel efficient, fun to drive, and perhaps a bit different from normal. I kept the Civic on the list, but am deciding between the hybrid or the coupe (that coupe looks pretty cool, I must say). 

Oh yeah, the poll is anonymous. I did not seek IRB approval on this study since the results will be used only for assessment purposes. Yawn. 

Beautiful

For a while, a long while, I've been nervous about how I would weave together the 14 stories of the participants in my dissertation study. Would I be able to pull out all the nuances successfully? Would I leave out crucial information? What if I totally miss the mark on something?  

But today, as I code the 13th of 14 interviews, I realize something pretty basic, but also is easy to lose sight of during this process: It's all right there in the text. The participants are telling me the story. I don't need to make up this stuff. The information is all in there. I just need to organize it, present the findings, and finish it up. This is BEAUTIFUL. 

In rereading these paragraphs, some of what I've written seems really stupid and basic. But when I think about it, it's not stupid. I've read a gazillion articles and books on data analysis, and I haven't really seen anyone discussing the natural, and admittedly emotional, process that I'm seeing occur as I'm getting deeper and deeper into this analysis. Hell, maybe I just missed it (that's definitely possible!). The connections among the participants are suddenly just leaping off the page and coming together into related containers, like nesting Tupperware (wait, it's not sudden at all: I've been doing this for a YEAR). Researchers talk about using a constructivist epistemology, meaning that we make meaning of the world by creating our learning structures around us and understanding the nature of how we know based on what we're creating. OK, OK, I get it. I guess that's a fancy way of saying, "No shit Sherlock! Now that you're intimate with your data, don't you see that this connection should happen HERE, and that one happens over THERE?" It's natural. This isn't a contrived process, and for some reason I guess I thought it was. I guess I've interpreted the data-analysis articles as building a series of steps that must or should be taken in order for the analysis to be Successful. But it isn't lock-step. Again, it's just natural. 

Funny, I don't recall reading anywhere that the researchers need to lose themselves in the data analysis, be taken away by it, become part of it, and learn from it. But only when that happens can we really understand what's happening in the data. It's all about intimacy. Why is that missing from the data analysis literature??

I see the problem here: how the hell does a researcher TEACH this process in an article? In a textbook? How do you write about becoming intimate with your data in way that researchers will appreciate? I guess I can understand the problem now, but still...seems like a big hole out there to me. And I'm talking about both qualitative and quantitative processes here. I feel like I can only truly know enough to write about data results once I know every inch, nook, and cranny of these interviews. I'd likely say the same thing about a set of numeric survey results, too. OK. Rant over. Guess I know what I'll be writing about in my budding scholarly career. haha. 

In spite of the fact that this post turned into a bit of a rant, I'm in a good place today. I'm feeling like this dissertation is just a big paper due at the end of the semester. And it's only September. Why wouldn't I finish this on time?

Automobile

I am in the market for a new car. I was going to wait till I finished the dissertation. However, as the process has taken longer than I thought, I'm now at the point where I'd rather not spend more money repairing the old VW Jetta.

I'd like to hear your opinion on which car I should buy. Please respond to the poll I've posted somewhere in the column to the right.

I'm thinking of something relatively inexpensive yet reliable. Small and fuel-efficient, yet something with a little bit of class. Typically, I am the only person in the car, and I use it mostly to drive about 20 miles per day to and from work. I take an occasional trip by myself to visit relatives, but that's pretty rare. When we travel as a family, we usually take Wife's small SUV.

I'm really leaning toward the Mini Cooper, though I have some concerns about it blowing around too much in the winter when driving at high speeds on the Interstate. Again, it's pretty rare that I drive on the Interstate out of town, but it's a concern nonetheless.

I welcome your thoughts and am open to many ideas.

Moving Quickly - Making Connections

When I wasn't ranting about politics today, I was working on my dissertation. The change to dissertating on Wednesdays has really paid off. Am just about completed with the preliminary coding of data, and I've started rounding up peer reviewers to help keep me on track with all this, hopefully sometime early next month. If I can have a skeleton draft of the results chapter, even if it's horrible and not complete, before Thanksgiving, then I will feel like I'm well on my way to finishing up in the early wintertime. 

I'm pretty excited for the connections I've been able to make with these last few participants, and I'm looking forward to going back into the ones I coded a while back and hopefully finding similar connections among those as well. At some point I'll need to throw a bunch of big key concepts onto the floor again, mess them around into one of my office/prison piles (just figuratively), and then pull them back together into something more cohesive. Seems like things are coming together, though, so this is good! 

Wife subscribed to a service that delivers a "word of the day" to her e-mail each morning. Today's word was (are you ready for this?): 

Dissert

Pronunciation: 

(di-SUHRT)

Meaning:

verb intr.: To speak or write at length on a subject. 

Etymology: 

From Latin disserere (to arrange in order), from dis- (apart, away) + serere (to join). Ultimately from the Indo-European root ser- (to line up), that is also the source of words such as series, assert, desert (to abandon), desert (a dry sandy region), sort, consort, and sorcerer.

I can hardly believe the timing of this! 

Palin's Unacceptable Decision

I don't like to discuss politics very often because a) it's really not the focus of this blog and b) I'm no political expert. But this is my diary, and when political events collide with one of my areas of expertise, then sometimes I feel compelled to comment. 

Barack Obama said that the candidates' families are off limits to the press. I agree almost completely. I say "almost," however, because I do believe that people who make foolish decisions regarding their home lives are likely to do the same at their place of work.

I think Sarah Palin's decision to run for the VP seat at this time in the life of her family was unacceptable. The Palins have two special-needs children: an infant with Down Syndrome and a pregnant teenage daughter. Neither of these children need or deserve any media attention, and that's where I agree with Obama. However, it is the action of the Palins themselves that is bringing on the media attention in the first place. The children need their parents' full attention at this time, and they also need some privacy from the rest of the world. How could any parent intentionally place their children's special needs into the spotlight of the media? How is that good parenting?

This was a poor, thoughtless decision that appears to be only for political gain. This decision alone trumps any other reason for why I would never consider Sarah Palin to be qualified for the VP role. 

While I'm no political expert, I've been a parent of a special-needs child far longer than the Palins. Reasonable parents, especially those with almost two decades of parenting under their belts (the Palins' oldest child is 19), should at least have a notion that parenting special kids involves entering an entirely different, uncharted world. Therefore, reasonable parents should be able to determine that no other major life-changing decisions are made till things at home become stable. Trust me, the Palins have several years ahead of them till the word 'stable' would be an appropriate descriptor for their home environment. That's just a comment on the situations life has handed to them. It's not even considering the hell they are inflicting upon their children for thrusting them into the media spotlight.

All parents of special kids make sacrifices which change their future plans. I normally don't like to speak in such absolute terms like "all," but based on my experiences and knowing numerous other families in similar situations, I believe I'm simply reporting the facts. All of the special-needs families I know have made major changes in their lives to accommodate their children. Some change their jobs, or they choose not to take a new job in order to keep their children's lives stable. Other families decide not to have additional children, thus severely changing the face of any family's future plans. But I simply don't hear about families ignoring their children's needs, let alone exploiting them, for their own personal gain. Normally the behavior is completely the opposite. 

If the Palins are unable to make these sorts of decisions in a reasonable way at home, then how can Governor Palin be trusted to make reasonable decisions as a VP? 

I'm already hearing supporters of the McCalin/Palin campaign saying that any comment against Palin is a comment against women. Bullshit. My argument has nothing to do with differences between the sexes. It has everything to do with being good parents and making reasonable decisions to support children. Period. 

Again, I'm no political expert, but I am a parent of a special-needs child. And I am also a voter. 

Moose and Headaches

First things first, Moose is making great improvements lately in several different ways, one of which is pretty major. He's finally beginning to tell us when he needs to use the bathroom. And he's finally beginning to do everything in the actual toilet. That's amazing. He's 7, so that means 7 years of diapers. Wife and I change diapers better than most anyone else I know. What a skill! Now in my opinion, we're a year behind on toilet training due to TFD (the fuckin' diet) that failed for Moose and thus earned its esteemed TFD title. The failure of TFD manifested itself in about a year's worth of diarrhea (I've mentioned this before, and I'm still not joking), which is tough to control and thus makes it almost impossible to teach potty training techniques. So anyhow, I'm glad we're back on track with potty stuff, and I'm hopeful he'll keep making progress in this area this fall. I'm really proud of him! 

I've also written here about allergies in the past. Now I'm just frustrated. In SCT, my allergies were worst in the springtime and I learned I was allergic to molds and dust. Things must be different here in LSC. There isn't any mold in the air this time of year, but they're flaring up again big time. My head feels stuffed, my ears feel clogged and I'm constantly draining crap down the back of my throat all the time. Sorry if that's gross, but it's my blog and I'll do what I want. Fortunately the meds I'm usually on the spring are coming in handy, and I'm pretty much keeping things at bay. At least my face doesn't hurt how it has in the past. None of this is stopping me from living my life, but it's sort of nagging at me nonetheless. 

What? Can't hear you: ears are too clogged. 

I may do some more coding this afternoon before some friends join us for an early-evening cookout. Or I may just take a nap to relieve the pressure on my head...

Library Day 2

Am back in the library today, one week later. Things are going well. I was able to do some more coding over the weekend, and a lot more this morning. Am really on a roll now, and it's about time. 

What's even better is that I'm getting better at analyzing these interviews as time goes by. They're going more quickly, and truly using the "constant comparative" analysis techniques I wrote about in my methods chapter. I guess it's not all bullshit after all! No, I mean I realized it's not bullshit when I wrote about it, but it's nice that the stuff really works after all. 

This morning I completed coding the second of my two most difficult interviews in the study. I wasn't looking forward to those two, though in the end they weren't as bad as I had remembered. After coding several other interviews where I could easily see how the students were learning about their identity development, I was better able to understand why these two problem children, if you will, are just a bit behind their peers. All is not lost for these two, but for various reasons they are off track. I wish them well. I wish them good therapy. MAJOR therapy. One in particular is dealing with a LOT, and is doing remarkably well given her lot in life. She'll eventually be OK. The other... well I haven't heard anything that leads me to believe she's even aware there's a problem. In some ways I worry more for her than the other with the tough lot, and I don't even know what the issue is. 

It's funny how highly-tuned my ability to read seems to be today. Words just seem to leap off the page, and I'm making all sorts of connections left and right. An hour has passed since I'd had lunch and I'm not falling asleep. Yet. Watch me crash with my head on the table in the next minute after I finish this post...ZZZZZZZZ....

Today actually feels like a day where I can say with some confidence that I am going to finish up this beast by next spring. Kind of a nice place to be. Still have a LONG way to go, but there is definitely a light on at the end of the tunnel, I can see it, and it's getting a little brighter today.

Really getting somewhere

This is a nice blog. Perhaps I'll make a comment here...

Oh YEAH, this is MY blog! 

Hi. Remember me? 

June and July were fast-moving months, and then August has been, well, uh, August has been a blur and it feels like it's not a day past August 6. What? It's August 20th? What? Are you fuckin' kidding me? 

Summer...over. Buh bye. My boss suggested I take a lot of time off in June and July because it's "quiet" and I would have no problem setting aside the time. Hmm. We both seemed to have forgotten two divisional retreats, both of which involved the sharing of data. Seeing that I'm Data Boy for the division, I WAS A LITTLE BUSY!!! 

Quiet, my assets.

I still LOOOVVEEEE my job, don't get me wrong, but boy was the summer a reality check. Wow. I basically lost the time between blog posts here, dissertation-wise. I've had a very productive time at work, but the dissertation didn't move very far, till yesterday. 

I decided that Wednesdays will be a better Dissertation Day for me this fall semester. I figure I'll still mentally nimble at that point in the week, and if I have to work from home I have the place to myself all day long. I used to take Fridays, but Moose and Wife are usually home Friday afternoons, so that wasn't working out well. 

Yesterday I camped out in the newly-renovated library downtown (well, it was completed about a year ago). That place rocks. It's a true 21st century library, allowing for pleasant work stations, food options (yes, I said FOOD) allowed to be consumed all over the place, and a great view of the downtown skyline. I could focus on the dissertation and yet still feel like I was a part of 'something'. Can't stand working alone in a box. 

There were all sorts of people, of all sorts of ages, colors, levels of knowledge, etc., since it's located in the middle of downtown. I guess I find that diverse atmosphere comforting and inspiring. I will pretty much plan on camping out each Wednesday of the semester and try to get as much done on those days as I can. 

The outcome was that I'm finally able to start having preliminary conversations about what I'm finding in the data. Yes, most of the conversation at this point are with myself. Haha. However, one of my trusted colleagues from SCT came up to LSC and joined me for the work session in the library. Every once in a while we'd interrupt our focus to bounce ideas off each other. It was a very good collaborative work environment, and both of us were making good connections for our respective dissertations. For me, it was my first time sharing these ideas with someone else, and I think things actually went OK. 

It was the first really good work day for me in quite a while. Perhaps I will actually finish this study... someday.

Comparisons

OK, so I finished coding the interview broken up by my bagel sandwich and am now plowing through another interview which is actually twice as long. Still very engaging. I'll be frank: I've had a couple of rather difficult interviews to get through, so perhaps one of the reasons why my work is going so well today is that I've been working on some of the more positive, upbeat interactions I had during data collection. The next couple of interviews are going to be doozies, though.

Anyway, now I'm far enough along that I'm able to make decent comparisons among the participants. I can tell who is higher along on certain concepts than others, who I think is going to go far in their careers, others for whom I worry just a bit. It's pretty neat to feel like I know these interviews well enough that I can start organizing them that much better. I'm not as far into the woods as I was, even 24 hours ago. Weird how fast that happened.

I moved out of the office/prison and onto the screen porch. Am still really focused. I have other industrious neighbors who's yards are adjacent to mine, and their work is helping me focus, actually. One couple is going to town on their garden while another neighbor is repairing his boat. Guess we're all hard at work, outside in the back yard on a Sunday. Working in a community of other workers always keeps me focused (see any posts done in the cafe in SCT, and you'll remember why I said this).

Back to it. Just made more coffee. Bye.

FINALLY

Hi. I'm finally feeling like I'm getting somewhere fast with the data analysis. One of the concepts I'm exploring with my participants is that of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). It's pretty funny to have my own flow experience when I'm looking at the responses related to this concept. A few minutes ago, or at least it felt like it was a few minutes ago, I started coding a 23-page transcript. I said to myself, "OK, get to page 8 so you'll be just over a third of the way finished before lunch." I started getting hungry for lunch at the end of page 11...almost halfway finished. Too funny! Total in-the-moment experience of flow.

Back to it, while eating my bagel sandwich, ignoring the perfect Sunday weather...

Coding and Memory Bursts: Undoing the Closet

Hi. It's been a while. I've been working like a puppy digging under a fence.

I actually started some of the content for this post way back at the end of April. Not sure why I didn't post it, but here it is. I'm editing it, updating it, and finally posting it.

Today, July 3, is one of the days I'm working on dissertation-work, and on work-work, from home. I'm really glad it's raining and muggy out today: keeps me focused and able to sit in my office/prison without getting distracted by house chores. OK, anyhow: onto the bulk of the post as related to the dissertation:

I've been coding coding coding interview transcripts these last couple of months. Months, yes. Not doing all that much in one sitting, but am making progress. Things are moving along well enough. What I'm finding interesting is the level of detail I remember from the interviews themselves while re-reading the transcripts. In a way, I'm re-living the actual interview experience with each person as I do this. I interviewed 14 undergraduates for this study. Some of the participants have insight that seems beyond their years, at least with regard to the direction of their studies and careers. Others do not, which is actually pretty normal.

Either way, I find it exciting to hear how they conceptualize their future based on the work they've done in college. I typically feel really positive about the world and our society when I'm finished coding an interview, probably because most participants found my topic to be upbeat. I'm asking them to think about themselves, after all, and most people don't mind chatting with someone else who seems to be interested in their experiences. Some are saying that they were glad to have had a chance to participate in the interview because it helped them to reflect on their college experiences, something they do not take the time to do very often. Hey, if they get something positive out of the interview besides just the gift certificate I gave to the participants, then that's all the better!

A week or two ago, a friend asked how the data analysis was coming along. I compared it to when you have a large storage closet that you know you need to clean. There are useful things in there you're not using because the closet is too full and cluttered. At some point, you need to just pull everything out of the closet, lay it on the floor, sort through it, and repack the closet with only the things you'll use. Comparing that to data analysis, I'm at the point now where the crap is out of the closet, spread all over the floor. I'm slowly wading through, throwing things out I no longer need, and sorting through that which is still relevant. I'm now in a good place, especially because for a while I think I was in the, "Holy shit, I have to clean out that damn closet," stage. I'm through the fear and anxiety, and I'm just cleaning house now. Finally.

Well OK, there's still some fear and anxiety. For example, I've no idea what sorts of shelving, storage boxes, hangers, or anything that I'll need for repacking the closet. The thought of organizing everything into something that's understandable is a bit daunting. I do know from experience, however, that the closet's organization will define itself as I move through the cleaning process. It's not a perfect process: I'm probably going to buy some storage boxes I think I need now, but later I'll return and exchange for something different. I'm probably going to start organize things as I'm moving forward, but later on may change the whole order of things. That's alright. Part of the process, I suppose.

OK, gotta get back to digging under the fence.

Updates/Summer Focus Time

There is much on which to report since the last time I wrote. Most activities were expected, planned events, though a couple of others were not.

The weekend of May 23 Wife and I went to Chicago for the Autism One conference. We were very fortunate to have Wife's parents ("Grandma-mama and Granpa") stay with Moose here at Chesterley. We learned a great deal and met some other parents in the same boat. There is a certain energy found in being surrounded by 1,800 others who also have a close connection to a person with autism disorder. It's pretty intense. Jenny McCarthy was the keynote speaker…she's really an amazing spokesperson for the cause. And yeah, she's a hottie too. Hey, just being honest!

We came home Sunday the 25^th. On Wednesday the 28^th we had Moose's official meeting at the local public school to determine if he is still eligible for special education services. Well DUH – of course he is! Haha. Seriously, the meeting went very well. We continue to be pleased with the available services in our local schools, and the general knowledge that all of the staff members have, from the principal to the teacher's aides, that seems to be consistent among everyone we've met this year. They even allowed me to put on my researcher's hat and really question some of the instruments they use to assess his developmental level. The good news is that we all have similar views on how to use these sorts of data sources: no one instrument can tell the entire story. This is a good thing.

Later that day, I went back to Chicago to help a friend prepare for his wedding. I was the best man. Suzanne and Moose joined in later that weekend. We had a GREAT time. The groom was the best man in my wedding to Wife 11 years ago, so we enjoyed having a couple of days to catch up on old times. We've been good friends for 21 years, but we had not spent that much time together in a long while. Thing is: I caught a nasty head cold on Thursday, and then I wasn't really a good steward of my body the rest of the weekend (I was up too late, eating/drinking too much, should have been in bed). I made a darn good feverish best man, lemme tell ya! LOL. But I've had trouble knocking the cold ever since. Almost gone, but I ended up missing last Monday & Tuesday of work, which is throwing off another part of my summer schedule…

Last week was supposed to mark the beginning of a focused dissertation work time for me. I'm taking a significant amount of time off from working at LMUU each week in order to focus on the diss. Unfortunately the first week of that focused time was thrown off by my illness. Silly thing, being sick, isn't it? So this week will really be the first. My goal is to get a big part of the data analysis done before the end of next month. It's definitely possible. Not sure HOW at this point, but it's beginning to feel sort of like the end of a semester. Usually in the last two weeks of a term, I wonder how the hell I'll get it all done. But then when push comes to shove, I always managed to get by. This will likely be the same drill, I suppose.

Some good news: allow me to toot my own horn for a moment (wait a minute, it's my blog, I can toot my horn as much as I damn well please!). Just before the first trip to Chicago, I learned that I won a dissertation award from my department! Basically I'm getting reimbursed for expenses I've already paid related to conducting the study, like gift certificates to participants, purchasing the tape recorder and tapes, getting the tapes transcribed, and driving to & from SCT last fall multiple times. Thing is: they actually gave me a good amount more money than I had requested. Huh? Did that really happen? Honestly, the most humbling part of this whole thing was that this was a decision of a faculty committee in my program. The faculty read my dissertation proposal, and they liked it enough to actually throw some money my way. Wow. That was a good way to wind up the month of May. Woohoo!

Well, I hope to be updating this blog quite a bit more starting this week, especially since I'll have more time devoted directly to the dissertation work. Yay.

To Share or Not To Share?

I have a post saved here in the "drafts" folder from a couple of weeks ago that describes some of the things I'm finding when coding the interview transcripts for my dissertation. I go back and forth as to whether or not I should share these things up here, so that's why I've not published that post just yet. On the one hand, the whole point of keeping the blog is to get practice with writing and to do it in a way that it's presentable for an audience. Perhaps writing about my findings would allow me to create a sort of rough draft for my dissertation?

On the other hand, I'm paranoid that someone else will use the findings for their own studies. I fear getting robbed, in a sense, like getting plagiarized. Typically I err on the side of trusting people, so I usually don't mind sharing my dissertation research in person with colleagues I trust (and hopefully I'm not putting them to sleep with these things!). Here in the blog…I dunno. That's another story.

If people have some insights as to whether or not they think I should share these findings up here, please do speak up here. I'm all ears…or eyes, as the case may be. I'm leaning toward telling all.