Statistics Test

I have a take-home exam in multivariate statistics this weekend. Yay!

Whatever.

I know I'm taking this class "for fun," but there ain't much fun about a test administered over a weekend. Oh well. I suppose I dug myself into this hole when I signed up for the class. The professor said it will only take two or three hours to complete. So if I crank on it now, then perhaps I'll be done by lunch? Yeah, done with about 50% of it. Everything always takes longer in a Ph.D. program.

At least the spring snow is finally melting.

I'm Missing People & Places

Gram's Greenhouse
Originally uploaded by chesterley.

My apologies for the multiple edits on this post to those of you using blog aggregators. I've had trouble with posting pictures from Flickr this week...

My mind has been wandering a lot this week. Mourning the loss of my 98-year-old grandmother I expected to die is odd: On the one hand, I'm happy for the prospect that she's moved onto a better place without the aches and pains of a century-old body. On the other hand I do miss her, stubbornness and all.

One strange thing is that the mourning process for my grandmother also brings me to miss, of all things, her house. It's an International Style ranch house in the woods that has always sparked my interest in architecture. I really love it up there, and we would spend time there in the summer when I was a kid. Whenever I'd speak to my grandmother on the phone, she'd provide all the updates like, "the weather is doing this," or, "the deer came to visit the bird bath today," or even, "the storm blew over 5 trees, but thankfully none hit the house." I miss those updates on one of my favorite places in the world. I sit here in the Midwest wondering what's happening up at the house right now. I find it sad that the house is empty. I can hear the wind blowing through the trees, the chirping birds, an occasional car out at the road, and even a distant heavy wave hitting the beach down the road. It's odd that my grandmother isn't there to see and hear it all, and to report on the goings-on.

Funny how years of connection with an individual is leaving me attached to the place where that individual lived. Not sure yet what that means, but I'm finding it rather odd.

Spring?

It snowed at least three inches in Small College Town yesterday. Here is the vast, winding pathway to the front gates of Chesterley, showing our daffodils covered in snow. I posted just a couple of other pictures under the "spring?" tag in my Flickr site (to the right). Yes, I actually had to shovel the driveway yesterday morning: March 21. Oy. I miss living in the Southeast.

I'm having trouble finding academic focus this week, but I find comfort in the fact that I can still be productive at my job (which doesn't require the highest level of brain power all the time...just some of the time). Perhaps it's because I essentially lost my spring break to being with my grandmother. I could use a vacation! Perhaps my lack of "thought" is just part of the mourning process. Not sure. Sometimes I feel like it's strange to mourn the death of a 98-year-old, since her death was expected and anticipated for some time. However, I know it's never "strange" to mourn someone I will miss, so deep down I know this is natural and I will regain my ability to think once again sometime soon. Looks like the funeral will be in a couple of weeks, so it will be good to have that closure.

One more thing: light a couple of candles for Lemming this week as she finishes her dissertation!

On Death

My 98-year-old grandmother died this morning. I feel fortunate that I was available to be with her all of last week. A week ago Friday my mother and I hurried across the country to be with her, as we were told her end was iminent. I think my grandmother surprised herself more than the rest of us by living an additional week. We moved her from the hospital to a beautiful hospice house last Wednesday afternoon. I traveled home this past Friday after we knew she was settled there. She died this morning. She led a long and very full life.

It's not a surprise to anyone that she waited for the family to leave before she died. She moved to her summer place in the woods years ago, away from a lifetime of friends and relatives, to live out the rest of her life in a peaceful environment. She enjoyed living alone, and it appears that when people die from natural causes, they hang on to take control over the time and place where they decide to take the next step.

Cheers to your long life, Gram. I hope your journey was a peaceful one.

Interference

I'm feeling a bit depressed, so don't read this if you don't want to learn more about it. Hey, it's my blog and if I want to be depressed, I have that right. So there. :-)

Too much interference in my head today. Probably because I'm coming out of a weekend that wasn't as productive as I had hoped. And now it's almost 4PM on Monday, and still I feel like I should be eating breakfast instead of having an afternoon cup o' java at Cafe right now.

I need to ignore the interference. I think my scholarly thoughts (if I do say so myself) get clouded by trying to set life priorities. I mean, I'm doing this degree to get myself and my career to a "higher level." Higher level of crap, perhaps? Who knows. But right now I'm just hoping I'll have a full-time job next year to be able to support the family and myself. Life will just go on: I'm not feeling like I'm waiting for a job to "get my life back," or anything like that. At the same time, am I a failure for wanting a full-time job? Did I fail this year because I've not yet finished up this proposal and can't seem to get over the hump posed by this pilot study?

I would like to have complete control over how I spend my time for one entire day this week. So far that ain't happening. At least spring break is next week; I think I'm going to take a day or two off...so I can work.

I hate college.

Progress & Plans

This was a pretty good week. I made good progress on the @#$% pilot study, and I've even crafted a visual model of my theory. We'll see how DC likes it.

Today I'm planning an office/prison work attempt. I'm actually kind of excited. Perhaps the prospect of yard work, spring-cleaning, and house-sprucing have inspired me to feel like a homebody today. Not sure. Regardless, it's been a while since I've had a good work session here at home, so I'm going to attempt it.

Got some feedback from a local journal to which I've submitted a different paper, and I need to complete revisions by Friday. So that's on my list for this weekend. Also, DC is traveling in a week, and she always likes to have reading material with her when she flies. I MUST finish up the @#$% pilot study by Friday as well so I can get feedback from her prior to when I submit that to A Prestigious Journal. I figure I'll get rejected from that journal, but I hope the rejection comes with some helpful feedback. So, busy weekend: wish me luck here in the office/prison today.

writing
planning

Spring is Springing!

I can't believe the daffodils, tulips, & crocuses are already coming up in our rather messy front yard. Note the "gumballs" that fell out of our next door neighbor's tree in the wintertime. Thanks alot, neighbor! Anyhow, I must get started on the yard work routine again sometime soon. In celebration of the first weekend in March, I brought our lawn mower into the shop for its annual tuneup. I'm looking forward to spring! This year I'm determined to just do a little bit of work every couple of days instead of letting it pile up (literally) till the weekends. Half of the weekends it rains, so things can really pile up. If I can get into a schedule, then the yard will stay clean and I'll be less stressed about it. I love yard work, but it stresses me out if I don't feel like I have the time to do it. It's the grad student guilt factor, I suppose.

Homeowner

One-man Band

I've been listening a lot to one of my Diana Krall CDs lately, and her music has really helped me focus. I've CRANKED these past couple of days, actually. And uh yeah, I've sorta kept the CD on "repeat" as a result.

I'm starting to equate my writing process to that of being a one-man band. The band practices until all the instruments are tightly-knit, the venue is such that the music sounds good, and the resources are all in line in order for the performance to happen. Writing, then, becomes a performance of sorts. This is not to say that each writing session must be a perfect, critically-acclaimed performance. However, I'm calling it "a performance" in that the outgrowth of a good rehearsal involves all of the pieces functioning together well enough to "perform." The performance itself doesn't need to be stellar every time, but in order for the show to go on the pieces at least need to be able to work together.

A jazz group would have a difficult time performing without its drummer, or its bassist, or its vocalist, and so forth. All of the components must at least "be there" in order for the performance to happen. Again, the performance may not be stellar, but the show must go on.

This is to suggest that if (er...OK, when) I'm having a bad writing day, it's not that I'm inherently a bad writer or a poor scholar. It's just that the vocalist in my band has a cold, or the drummer has an ear infection, or the bassist is just having a bad day and should really be playing the blues. One or more components is probably missing that day, so that day's performance may not win any awards. But I need to keep in mind that the show must go on. I need to at least complete the show and 'get it out there,' so I can then take the feedback from the local newspaper critic, learn from it, and work toward a better performance in the future. Without performance, others don't know you're doing much of anything. You can practice all you want in your own living room, but what's the point of making music unless you share it and let others hear it?

OK, it's time to kick my drummer's ass and get some more writing done today. Am determined to finish up this @#$% lingering pilot study before I see DC on Tuesday.

writing

Autism Success Story

Check out this VERY cool Autism success story, linked over at Three Bed Two Bath.

Cheeseburger, Fries & a Couple of Beers

Fuck the diet, I needed a break this evening.

I spent a good chunk of the day on a regression assignment for my multivariate stats class. I think I ran the data just fine, and I have till Thursday to write up the results. Took a while, though. While I can follow every word the professor says in class, and I understand the concepts, the act of actually applying the knowledge to something "real" and trying to remember all the details made my ass tired. Guess I'm more qualitative at heart. Nevertheless, I managed to figure it out. However, the part of the regression model I was most excited about ended up having absolutely no impact on the dependent variable at all. AUGH! If I weren't already bald, I would have pulled out my hair! That's life in quantitative research, I guess. Now I need to spend the next couple of days writing about how the data disproved my own theory. Nice. :|

Just before 6PM, I went downstairs and said, "OK, we need to go out and do something fun. I am not letting a bunch of numbers get me depressed on a Saturday evening!" So Wife, Moose and I went to a local establishment known for its burgers and cheap beers, located right on the county courthouse square. Even though it's so blasted cold (8 degrees right now), we enjoyed the time out. Had a chance to walk around the square a bit and even hit a local bookstore. I think Moose had fun as well; he actually kept his hood and mittens on for a change.

I enjoy cranking out a bunch of work on a Saturday afternoon if I can later celebrate with a meal and a couple of beers out in town somewhere. I think that's what got me through the last two college degrees, and it seems to be working for this third one too.

Weightwatchers? Huh?

A Bout with Academic Paralysis

If I were afraid of nothing, imagine how much more productive I would be. For me, fear is almost a paralyzing force, and it's one that I deal with in particular around academics. I think it's been that way ever since I was in high school. Sometimes I'm fearful even when I need to write about things I'm "good" at doing. I don't get it. Is it a fear of making an error? I doubt it - even as a pianist I was never too worried about being technically "perfect" all the time.

Fortunately, Academic Paralysis (AP) (hey, I just made up that construct!) has always been a temporary thing for me. One of the reasons I started this blog was to attempt to overcome this fear. I think it's worked to a point. When I finally start writing a paper (and I usually start later than I "should"), nine times out of ten it goes rather swiftly and ends with a decent-to-good result. An older and wiser colleague has said to me: Shooting for the stars is admirable, but you don't always need to hit the target to still be "good." It's excellent advice, and I should listen to her more.

I guess I fear the start of the dissertation proposal. I fear being alone without guidance, and I fear I'll drift too far down the wrong path and will never be able to swim back upstream. I realize these are probably not irrational fears: I imagine many other doc students go through a similar experience. It's just that this has been the longest case of AP that I've experienced do date.

I bet that many of these feelings of AP stem from the fact that my most trusted writing advisor and editor -- my father -- died unexpectedly about two years ago, during my second year in this doctoral program. The way he went was generous to him and horribly unfair to the rest of us still left. Basically, his heart just stopped one afternoon. On the one hand: write me that ticket! No major long-term illness traveling down a narrow road of disease or discomfort. On the other hand: his death left lots of un-finished business which he wouldn't care for very much. During the first year-and-a-half in this program I pictured the dissertation-writing process looking somewhat like: 1) write a draft of a dissertation chapter, 2) pass it onto Dad, 3) wait for him to rip me a new one with his feedback (as usual), and 4) off I'd go to write another draft with the end product being of thorough detail and succinct grammar. I'm feeling a little lost without that built-in structure in place. Dad operated with a nice blend of logic, organization, and philosophy in his work (I'll never know why he worked in sales and not academia), and I do miss his presence in my life.

I guess I need to keep the present day in mind. First, "life happens" and there isn't much I can do to control these events. The show must go on. Next, DC is turning out to be a fantastic sounding board for research ideas, and I know I'm very fortunate for that good relationship. Wife is always supportive and wonderful, and she's also a good editor too. Pink and a couple of other colleagues are trustworthy types who aren't afraid to argue with me about concepts and ideas. Argumentation was the way I would negotiate discussions with Dad, so finding this spirit in a couple of colleagues is good for me (and is probably not nearly as annoying as it was at times with Dad!). Hopefully things will start clicking again very soon.

Bloggiversary

Today is Chesterley's first birthday. Just one year ago I was in the depths of studying for qualifying exams. Seems like a very long time ago! Thanks to those of you who have been checking in either regularly or even just once in a while.

I'm a bit amazed that I've managed to keep up this informal writing habit on a regular basis throughout the year. I do think it's helped my writing process in general. Also, it's been a fantastic outlet for a wide variety of thoughts on the dissertation, the career, raising a child with special needs, being a husband, and many others. Being accountable to others with this public-and-yet-all-about-me sort of writing helps me organize my thoughts and even gain perspective when I'm going into a downward mental tailspin. So, thanks to anyone reading for being around and helping me stay focused.

I'm off to be a researcher for a few hours now before an actual date with my wife this evening. I can get used to this.

Cheers to another good year!

Kermit THEE Frog here!

Wow, I thought I was gonna be Rolf! My comments appear [in bold brackets].

You Are Kermit

Hi, ho! Lovable and friendly [aw shucks], you get along well with everyone you know. [well, not quite everyone] You're a big thinker, and sometimes you over think life's problems. [yep] Don't worry - everyone knows it's not easy being green. [well, not quite everyone] Just remember, time's fun when you're having flies! [yum!]

The Muppet Personality Test

Agenda: Research!

It's been a relatively productive week, though still not much progress on the dissertation. I've submitted a paper for publication (COMPLETELY different paper than the one I've discussed here before), ran a staff meeting in the place of my boss, helped meet a major deadline at my office, edited a paper for a colleague, interviewed two clients at our office on a new project we're starting, and I even submitted our tax documentation to our accountant (I've never done this so early!). Also, I'm breaking ground in some important areas for me, like learning more about research methodologies. On my to-do list for the weekend are:

1. act as a peer debriefer for a colleague as he decodes his dissertation data (qualitative)
2. "play" with a data set I've obtained for my multivariate statistics course (quantitative)
3. write a short paper for my stats class
4. plan a master's-level class I'm teaching next Tuesday evening
5. have dinner and a movie with Wife tomorrow night (wait, a DATE? What??)

It's interesting that I'm working on both qualitative and quantitative projects this weekend. I'm glad to be developing familiarity with both, though I think I'll always feel more at home in the qualitative world. It was cool, though: a colleague of mine cut this data set (no. 2, above) from a larger survey administered through our office. I was able to watch, and UNDERSTAND, how she pulled the data and even help make decisions on how to define things. It's just for a class assignment on multiple regression analysis, but this colleague and I hope this analysis could be the start of a larger project we'll work on together in our office this spring and summer. Much fun! And very geeky, which I sorta like. :-)

Sleepie

Greetings fellow bloggers and friends. I'm still here. It's been a long while since I posted last. We went to Chicago to see an opera last weekend and had a great time. Then, I've been swamped under a rock with work stuff. Things are going well, though, and I'm not feeling much stress. It's good to be busy again. I think my theory of having a few more things on my plate to kick my ass is actually working well, because I'm being productive. Somewhat. OK, not on my dissertation, but on the class I'm taking, the class I'm teaching, and the article I'm finishing up, all's going relatively well. I'm not sleeping much, though.

Starting this weekend I'm officially setting aside my Saturday for getting studying done. Of course I lost an entire weekend and a couple of days here & there with the trip to Chicago and a very busy time at work. Still, it's good to know I have that extra time carved out and scheduled in the calendar for working. Let's hope I can pull it all together sometime soon.

Loss!

I'm a loser! One more pound GONE this week. Honestly, it wasn't really that hard, and I didn't change the number of times I ate: I just changed the type of food I took in.

To work or not to work, that is the question.

I'm not talking about working on my dissertation! Of course I'm gonna do that...really!

I'm talking about working full-time, or not. I'm applying for a couple of full-time jobs right now. I've decided that I'm too old to continue to take out student loans. Besides, after this semester all of my courses and hours of "doctoral thesis," whatever that actually is, will be paid off as a result of having worked in assistantships for four years. So, I figure what's the rush? Why not take a job that can hopefully be in an area I'd like to work anyhow, stop going further into debt, and just plug away at the dissertation slowly. The thing I worry about, of course, is finding the motivation to finish.

However, I think I'm listening too much to others when I worry about this. Others say, "if you take a full-time job, then you'll lose the motivation to do the dissertation." I don't think I quite agree. I mean, it's not like I wasn't employed full-time prior to finding the motivation to come here. I chose to leave my job, and the salary wasn't so bad, as far as jobs in student affairs go. I was ready for a change, and most important, I was ready to conduct my own research. So why would I lose the motivation?

On the contrary, I think I'd stand to gain more motivation. Right now I worry, all the time (I've already used that word three times in this post!). Do we have enough money to make it through the next semester? Man, we really need a new oven. Will this doc student experience really move my career to a better place? Will Moose ever communicate and grow? If money weren't as much of an issue, it would be one less stressor. The position would be some stability in my life. Perhaps that stability would allow me the serenity to actually focus on finishing up, knowing that I would no longer have any barriers in my way for moving up in my field...at least, no barriers over which I have any control.

I will miss doing what I'm doing now: working for a half day, and then coming to the cafe, or wherever, alone to get my work done. But there's always vacation time. If I can really plow through the proposal this spring, then I do think I'd be able to work on collecting the data during the next school year and then spend some good chunks of time in the summer of 2007 writing up the results. Perhaps I'm dreaming with this schedule, but I'd rather risk extending the time on the dissertation even further than risk going into yet more debt and more worry.

We'll see what happens with these coupla job applications.

Four Things Meme

Tagged by Lemming, a fellow doctoral candidate (though in a different field, and not necessarily at LMU).

4 jobs you've had in your life: gate guard at the Ravinia Festival, summer home of the Chicago Symphony, stage manager for an opera company, resident advisor at my undergraduate institution, director of first-year student services at a university

4 movies you could watch over & over: Dead Poets Society, Apollo 13, Back to the Future, O Brother Where Art Thou?

4 television shows you love: Desperate Housewives, Friends, Law & Order, many of the home improvement shows on TLC

4 places you have lived: Glencoe, IL; Rochester, NY; Columbus, OH, Richmond, VA

4 places you have been on vacation: Leelanau County, MI; Galena, IL; Disney World; Outer Banks, NC

4 Web sites you visit daily: my.yahoo.com, my blog roll, weightwatchers.com, chronicle.com

4 places you'd rather be right now: Leelanau County, MI; Disney World; in my bed; on a beach

4 bloggers you are tagging: Cousin Dave, Padg, and that's about it for now.

Moose on a Horse!

IMG_0265,
originally uploaded by chesterley.

I've posted a few pictures of Thomas's first horseback riding trip last week. Once he got accustomed to sitting on a living & breathing beast, he ended up having a great time.

I was supposed to comment Monday night

...but Moose got sick again. Another stomach virus. It was totally out of the blue. Boy was that fun. The poor kid. He's feeling a little better now, but thankfully he realizes he can just stay in bed all he wants.

Monday afternoon I got a little more done on some edits. Last night was the night I teach with DC each week, and we usually get dinner together beforehand. I'm thankful for the planned time with her each week on a few different levels. First, I just enjoy hanging out with her - she has a great sense of humor and we have similar views on the higher education field. Second, I enjoy teaching with her and I'm learning a great deal. Finally, our regular meetings keeps me in constant communication about my dissertation progress, or lack thereof. Last night I told her more about the work Wife and I have put into finding schooling options for Moose; she's aware that the dissertation has taken a temporary place on the back burner, and she assured me my priorities are in line. So, even though the ship is getting stalled in the port, at least the navigator of the ship is aware of what's going on.