Living and Working in the Moment

So for the greater part of today, I have been organizing transcripts and coding data. The best way for me to explain the process of coding data is to direct you to anyone's set of pictures up at www.flickr.com. Take mine for example, at http://www.flickr.com/photos/chesterley/ (these are old photos...I don't really use Flickr anymore now that I use Picasa, but you get the idea). All of the pictures there have "tags" that describe what's in the shot. A user can add as many tags as he wants to each picture. I do the same thing with adding "labels" to my posts here in this blog. Scroll down to the "labels" area in the right-hand column to see the entire list. Then, if you click on a label, you'll see any post that I tagged with that label.

Coding data in qualitative research is very similar to tagging photos in Flickr or posts here in Blogger. It's a way of categorizing the words of my participants. Later on I'll refine the codes into short phrases that I can use across interviews. For now I'm working on "open coding" which is really a free-form analysis of text. I read and re-read the transcripts, and for each sentence, phrase, or sometimes paragraph, I create a code. Just a way to sort of categorize what the participant is saying. Yep, it's pretty tedious, but I'm finally making good progress today.

About an hour ago, I started freaking out a bit. I have FOURTEEN participants for this study. I've open-coded a few of them thus far, but geez. Each interview transcript ranges from 25-40 pages long (one was even 50, but that was my first interview and it was really really long). The task I have ahead of me is very daunting, and I keep thinking about how much more of my life this is going to take, will I really ever be able to wrap my brain around all the data? Will I ever get my life back? Will I ever get this parasite of a study off my back?

Do all doctoral students talk to themselves like this??

Calm the fuck down, Rob [still talking to myself...where's the bus to the looney bin??]. Finish the transcript you're on so you can make some progress. Take advantage of having the house to yourself this weekend to get this crap done.

Deep breath. OK. I'm drinking a beer now. A very nice Trader Joe's Hefe Weisen, I must add (gotta love city life and easy access to decent beer). I'm now living in the moment, dammit. When push comes to shove, I can get through a shorter transcript in just over an hour if I really focus. OK, it's really not that bad. I could finish most of the open coding this week if I really push it.

Living in the present moment is a good thing. So is drinking a beer during the data analysis process, at least once in a while. Especially a good beer.

Dissertation Weekend

I'm back on the porch this afternoon. Yay! So glad that spring is here. I've been almost literally watching the back yard turn green today.

I don't think I've written yet that my transcriptionist finished transcribing what she could with my interviews. Yay again! One problem was that yet another tape broke. That makes three during the dissertation. Through a couple of connections, there's a person I know at LMUU who may be able to fix them at least enough for me to get the things transcribed. Keep your fingers crossed.

Moose and Wife are away this weekend, so I'm here holding down the fort with Chester and planning on cranking out multitudinous and prolific codes. No office cleaning allowed.

Congrats to EA!

A quick shout-out to EA, who successfully defended her dissertation yesterday! Congratulations on finding a yourself a happy ending to a good, long journey.

Wife and EA have been friends since high school, and she was in our wedding 11 years ago. It's great to see her go so far. SO happy for you!

Celebrity Sighting

So last week I'm in the Atlanta airport, eating lunch before my flight home. I had just finished and was packing up my book to head over to my gate. A server in the restaurant came over to me and said, tentatively,
"Excuse me. Are you...an actor?"
"No," I replied, "but do you think I look like Paul Giamatti?"
"YES! That's exactly what I thought!"
"Yeah, I get that a lot," I said. "But I'm not him."
"For real?" she said? She then turned over my credit card slip to check my name!
"Seriously, I'm not. But you have definitely made my morning!"

So then I went to another part of the airport's food court and ran into two colleagues who were finishing their lunch. It was crowded, so we were sharing a table with someone we didn't know. I told my friends the story. The other person at the table said,
"Yes! You really do look like him!"

It made me laugh. I happen to think he's a talented actor and a decent-looking guy, so that's pretty darn cool that strangers are saying this to me. Perhaps I'll become an impersonator as a second job? hahahaha

New Horizons

Been a while since I've posted here. Hi.

Many things have happened during the last few weeks...nothing Earth-shattering, but all good toward making some progress. Mostly intangible progress, but progress nonetheless.

First, we re-arranged furniture at my on-campus office. I switched to a different space WITH A WINDOW!, but it had older furniture not made for someone who does a ton of technical work on the computer. Now, I have my old computer-friendly furniture in my new space. This all may seem minor in the scheme of life, I know, but I finally feel settled in, physically, into my new office at work. It really makes a big difference on a lot of different levels.

Next, I attended my first ACPA conference (American College Personnel Association). I have an elected position with one of the leadership groups within the association, and I have come to learn this was a great way to get involved. I also felt rather "seasoned" (another word for "old," I suppose, but not at all negative!) at this conference. It hit me that I've been in the higher education field for about 14 years (started the master's degree in 1994). I could walk around huge all-conference receptions by myself and invariably run into someone I knew from one or more of the places I've worked. This was a first for me. Also, it was the first conference I've attended in YEARS where I came away feeling energized and had numerous ideas I could bring back to adapt to my work.

Third, Wife and I have finally started making friends here in LSC. We've found a falling-off-the-left-edge-of-liberal church that we like here in town, joined the choir, and even had a nice Easter dinner with Becky and David at Chesterley, along with my mom who came to town for a visit. Wife has a few of her own friends from a support group she's joined. Also, Jason and I got together for lunch last week, and it was good to hang out with someone else who 'gets it' about kids with special needs.

Finally, I completed yet another purge of the home office/prison. I know, I know, my cleaning obsession is getting ridiculous. Readers of this diary know I hate filing, so I avoid it. As a result, things I need to keep pile up, even though I admit I do have plenty of file spaces. In our last house, I had several piles still left un-filed when I was packing to move. On my last night in SCT, good friends Julie and Kim & Michael finally just said, "Rob, we're packing the piles. Find a couple of boxes." So we packed the un-filed piles and moved them to the new place here in LSC. They've been sitting in a closet acting as a burden on my back, just like the dissertation. More piles had formed, and it was about to get to critical mass. I needed to clear off that burden before I could undo the burden of the dissertation. Besides, I sort of need to start "liking" my home office/prison again. And behold: Last weekend I cleaned it all up. It took forever, and I didn't get nearly as much time outside to tend to the yard as I would have liked. It's not perfect, and I still have a way to go. However, it's complete and functional, and it's a good lesson learned.

I need to keep this same attitude and energy toward the dissertation, and, heck, also toward a lot of the research I will conduct in this career. The old mantra carries through to many other things: "A completed dissertation is better than a perfect dissertation." Similarly, a clean, functional office space is better than a perfect Architectural Digest office space. I think I've been avoiding making progress on the office cleaning because I knew it could never be perfect, or even completed, in one weekend. What a crock. And true to form, once I got into it, it wasn't that tough. It was actually sort of enjoyable. And MAN do I know where EVERYTHING is located now.

I may be doing the same avoidance thing with the dissertation, but to a lesser extent because I am definitely making progress. I just need to ramp up the progress and strive more for completion than for perfection. Sort of feels like it's spring for my dissertation season, in addition for the lawn that's greening up as I write this. It's an exciting new horizon on the dissertation front, I think. Yay.

Indoor Swing for Moose

Indoor Swing

Wife and I attended an autism expo here in LSC over the weekend. How nice not to have to drive 90 minutes from SCT! It was only about 10 minutes from Chesterley. We're still getting used to all this. The place was PACKED with agencies from all over the place, and tons of people. Some even brought their children; thankfully we had our trusty sitter at home with Moose.

Anyhow, we've had our eyes on some sort of indoor swing for some time. The act of swinging is theraputic for him, as it calms him down and keeps him level-headed. If he swings or does some other physical activity, then he can be more focused when going to school or learning other speech-related things. This is part of his "sensory diet," that he needs to feed each day. We have a great play set in the back yard, but he's not been able to go out there since last November due to the weather. The company that manufactures the indoor swing system was at the expo, and everything was literally half price. So we picked one up, and I assembled it Saturday afternoon. He LOVES it. These shots were taken minutes after the assembly was finished. There are a couple of other accessories that will be shipped later in the week, so I'll probably post more pics then.

We had planned on setting this up in the basement, where is actual play area is, but the doorway is two inches too wide. So, we choose the kitchen/dining room doorway instead. The bar can be removed pretty easily when friends come over for dinner (the blue supports remain, but I'll try to get over it). Sunday morning when I was cooking breakfast, he was swinging and watching me. That's different: the "watching me" part. It was almost like we were having a conversation while I made him breakfast, and that was way cool. When I was finished, I said, "OK Moose, come sit down and eat your breakfast." And he did with no protesting, no hesitancy...just following directions. And he was smiling, too. Wow. Anyway, click on the photo above to see a small set of shots of the swing.

Oy

Spring break is over. I made a ton of progress this week...on my job. Not on my dissertation. Oh well. At least I made progress somewhere.

Sigh.

Spring Break?

I am stunned, flummoxed, mystified and surprised that it is already spring break, mid-semester vacation, and the three-quarter point through my first year of working full-time since starting, commencing, and embarking upon the doctorate, Ph.D. and terminal degree in higher education and the study of college. Being stunned, flummoxed, mystified and surprised often brings on a response of being redundant, repetitive, and monotonous in my communication and expostulation style. Forgive me, and I apologize.

Did I mention it's already spring break here? Great Moses do I have work to do!

Transcriptionist

I met with a new transcriptionist yesterday, the person referred to me during my "good lunchage" last week. It wasn't easy to physically let go of those tapes, but now it's done and hopefully her work will be as "good" and as "fast" as everyone else says it is. I'm confident it will be. Can't wait to see those completed...by someone else!

I left two interviews for me to work on alone. One is with a tape that unfortunately broke, and if I can fix it myself or get it fixed, then I'll be able to transcribe most if it on my own. Yes, I'm using microcassettes instead of doing these digitally. I still don't know how one would transcribe something digital...I have to keep rewinding the tape recorder with my foot pedal...were it not for the trust pedal, I think it would take me twice as long as if I had to remove my keys from the keyboard and use the mouse to click the rewind button on for a digital recording. I'm probably missing something re: the technology on this.

Anyhow, the other interview I'll transcribe myself is of a participant about whom I'm really rather worried. The subject matter of our interview was pretty sensitive, and I suspect this person's mental state may not be very stable. I will need to consider whether or not this person's contribution to the study will be skewed by this instability, or if it's part of the analysis in general. Not sure. I'm certainly not a pscyhologist, so I'm probably not qualified to assess this person's mental state. However, it's pretty clear there's something different going on. Anyhow, I didn't think it was appropriate to share this person's interview tape with a transcriptionist I've only just met.

In a future post, I will probably outline the process I'm taking for this analysis. I'm dropping in terms here like "open coding" that may not make a lot of sense if you don't work in this field every day. Besides, the act of writing it out here may help me in the long run with writing up the results chapter(s).

My next tasks for the short term will be to a) finish the transcribing of these two tapes I still have, and b) finish up the initial open coding of the six interviews that have already been transcribed (I've already completed two...or three?). Oh yeah, and I need to c) finish purging the home office/prison.

Am finally getting some focus! I suppose I'm still on a bit of a high from the feedback I've been getting about how close I am to finishing up.

I misssed my 3rd Blogiversary

My 3-year blogiversary was February 11. Completely forgot. It's strange to think it was THREE years ago now that I started this blog when I was preparing for qualifying exams.

*shudder*

SO glad those things are over & done! And I'm glad to have this little place on the 'net for my diary. Thanks for reading.

Good lunchage today

I had a good lunch today with a colleague who finished up her Ph.D. at LMU last year and now works at LMUU as well. She and I used to spend plenty of time writing together at the cafe in SCT. I'm glad we still find time to get together once in a while in LSC for an occasional lunch.

Anyhow, as I said it was a good lunch. She's confident I'm getting really close to finishing up. That was encouraging. I don't really know if I agree, but she seems to think the rest of the process will go quickly. I think I'm going to start believing her now. After all, she's already completed her dissertation, and she was at the point where I am about a year ago. OK, I'll listen to her.

I'm also going to get the name of a good, local, and affordable transcriptionist. This should be good.

Sleep

Well, didn't get much more done on the office/prison diss prep last night. However, I did do something I've not done well in a long while.

I slept.

And suddenly, the world has so many more possibilities!

Office/Prison Diss Prep

If one were to ask me how much I accomplished on the dissertation this weekend, I would have to say that it's a thing that makes me go hmm... It's hard to measure. You could scroll back through this blog and see fairly easily that I do not like to clean my home office/prison. And yet, when it's messy, it's tough for me to concentrate.

Well, my office/prison was a mess before we moved from SCT last June. Don't get me wrong: "mess" is a relative term. A reasonable person would enter my office and see several piles of paper neatly organized on the desk, on the floor, on any flat surface really. I typically know where most things are, but living this way tends to drive me NUTS. My office on campus is a total 180-degree shift from that. It's usually pretty darn organized, I must say. But when I'm at home, that's my space, and mine alone, so neat & clean always it is not.

As I was saying, the office/prison was pretty messy before we moved from SCT last June. The night before the move, when I still hadn't organized all those piles, I finally just said, "fuck it." A couple of trusted friends helped me put all of the un-filed piles into a few boxes. I worked pretty hard not to feel guilt for moving piles of stuff to be chucked or filed, but oh well. Later in the fall, I unpacked the un-filed piles into new piles in my new office/prison. Had to get rid of those damn moving boxes! I have a rather large closet in the new space, so the piles have been shoved in there on a bookshelf or near the file cabinet, both of which fit very nicely in the closet.

True to form, I'm creating new piles that are now in nice organized piles all over the floor, AGAIN, and the un-filed ones were still in the closet. Yesterday I decided to take the bull by the horns and start organizing the entire space. Call it a "clean sweep," like the TLC TV show, I dunno. But I'm getting through a TON of old stuff, and it feels pretty good. I'm also finding several neat, printed, stapled, organized piles of articles that My Committee wants me to incorporate into the literature review of the proposal (oh YEAH, my proposal!), so this is a good thing! For the last several months, the prospect of tackling all of these things like literal skeletons in my closet has been pretty daunting. Now that I'm about halfway done with it, it's not so bad. Pretty soon, every piece of paper in my office will either have a place in a file drawer or in the recycle bin.

Yeah, I know...kinda like the data analysis. The thought of it freaks me out more than doing the task itself. I know, I know...

Anyhow, I do chalk this up to having a greater ability to be productive in my office/prison. While it's not work directly related to the dissertation, it's helping the entire process along.

Two weeks ain't no hiatus

Hi Blog,

I've decided to write in you again. I guess I'm in a bit of a better place, just after a two-week break. A couple of things have happened lately to help provide perspective, and this is good.

First, DC invited me to walk in this year's graduation, even though I'm not at all finished. I think this is an expression of her trust in my work. I was really quite surprised by this, and it came at a pretty grumpy moment last week. Wow. However, I declined the offer, since I would feel like an imposter were I to walk before being finished. The fact that she offered in the first place, and then later said, "You are so close...just keep going," helped me get back on track.

Second, I'm helping a colleague here as a peer reviewer on her dissertation study. She has been in the mix much longer than I, and due to working a full-time job, and being quite successful in her field, she's not really needed the dissertation to be completed to get the promotions, brownie points, etc. to keep moving up in her job. However, her seven-year clock expires this spring, so she is really driven to finish up in the next couple of months. I think she'll be fine. Helping her with her data analysis is giving me the energy, and perhaps even the interest, in continuing onward with my own study. So this is all good.

I guess I'd call myself a religious person. However, having a falling-off-the-left-edge of liberal interpretation of faith sometimes has me question whether or not I'm religious. Still, I think I am. I only write this here to explain that I'm using the Lent season as my time to be a bit reclusive and quiet and get the flipping transcriptions and initial data coding accomplished. Lent is sort of a drawn-out version of Yom Kippur (that's my interpretation...I could be wrong, but I suspect it's close), and many people use both of these holidays to reflect on their lives and remember who they are. I guess that's what I'm planning on doing between now and Easter; buckling down on the research, and keeping in mind why the hell I decided to do all this anyhow. And through this I hope to make a lot of the "leave me alone! I'm in a zone!" sort of progress one needs to make during the data analysis process.

Wow, does this mean I may actually finish next fall??

Blog Hiatus

I'm taking an indefinite break from keeping this blog. I'm still around, and I'm certainly still working on the dissertation. However, I'm not in a place where I want to share my progress with the outside world.

Things are moving along slowly and steadily, but I need to focus on thinking about the content some more before I'm willing to share it with anyone. Also, when blogging I find I spend more time writing around the subject to keep the subject matter private when I really should be spending time writing on the topic itself. The last thing I'd want is for this blog to stall my process instead of help it along.

If you're curious about my progress, I'd appreciate the support so please feel free to just ask. Otherwise, I probably won't be writing here that much at least for the next couple of months.

Sludgivity

Yeah, still haven't gotten the sludge off of me from that other post. Don't know what it is. Perhaps it's that Wife, Moose & I have been sharing a virus these past couple of weeks? Whatever it is, I guess I just have the wintery blues and haven't really felt like focusing. Someday I'll get my brain back, but for now I think it's on vacation in a warmer, sunnier climate.

Thing is, a while back I couldn't WAIT to be in this stage of the dissertation: the analysis. I've not had the energy to work on my 'second job' in a few weeks. Oh, it'll happen eventually. I mean, I really am excited to be DONE. You'd think that drive for completion would help me find some motivation, but that's not the case of late.

Is Chester Aging?

I hate to say it, but I suspect Chester is at the beginning of showing his more advanced, wiser years. During the last few weeks, he has retired to our bedroom after I finish the bedtime routine with Moose, around 8:15 or 8:30 PM. Around 9:30 or so, I'll wonder where he is, only to find him sleeping on our bed. He'll look up at me, almost as if he's asking, "Aren't you coming to bed soon?"

Don't let me misrepresent Chester's state. He's his normal exuberant self in the mornings after I finish breakfast ("Let's play fetch!"), after dinner ("Let's play fetch!"), and whenever friends come to visit ("Thanks for visiting! Let's play fetch!"). It's just these little things in the evenings that seem a bit different.

Sigh.

Such a loyal friend. I can't imagine him aging. Then again, he's going to be nine in just a couple of months. Both Wife and I had dogs in our childhood that lived to be nine, so perhaps I'm a bit oversensitive about seeing a behavior change, even as slight as it may be. I'll keep my eye on him a little more this winter to monitor how he's doing. Am sure he's fine.

Shuffling the deck

I drafted part of this post back on January 4, twenty days ago! Never got around to finishing it, and then I forgot about it. I found it today and felt like resurrecting it, so here goes:

I don't talk about my job in this blog very often, but this time there's a direct connection to my dissertation.

In early January I had my bi-weekly meeting (wait, does bi-weekly mean 'once every two weeks'? Or is it twice per week? I intend to say 'once every two weeks' here) (you know, I love writing phrases in parentheses because you can add stuff anywhere and easily communicate what's really going on in your head without messing with the grammatical structure of the sentence) (aren't I clever?) with my boss. It went well. I like her for many reasons related to our jobs. Also, not only is she supportive of me finishing my dissertation in a timely manner (and is gently pushing me to do so, which is good), but she happens to be very interested in the topic. She allows me to sort of ramble about it once in a while, and her objective, logical point of view, combined with just plain having more experience working at a college than I do, provides me with a good amount of feedback. And none of it is personal; just entirely objective. Two advantages to these conversations: first, I gain a great deal of good feedback from a trusted colleague. Second, she knows I am indeed making progress on the dissertation, which is a good thing for my supportive supervisor to know.

Through her feedback and that of a few trusted others here and there, I'm beginning to share bits and pieces of data and am finally starting to develop a theory out of all of this. I need to continue onward and keep plowing through the grainy details, but now I'm getting excited about what I'm finding and how I'm able to formulate it into something coherent, something I'll be willing to share with My Committee someday.

So, even though there is a hell of a lot of sludge in my dissertation life right now, as mentioned in my previous post, the more that I carefully share with colleauges, the more confident I'm becoming with what I'm finding in the data. Guess the sludge will melt away, perhaps with the melting away of the snow and cold weather this spring? Hope so.

Must run finish a project. Am drinking decaf tea in that I'm finding it difficult to stay warm today. Makes sense when it's only 6 degrees F!

Sludge

Dissertation things are moving as slowly as the sludge in my head that I feel sloshing around tonight as a cold-ass arctic front is moving in (please make the front move in faster so my head will stop hurting). Wife was sick most of this week, which means I've had primary care responsibilities for her and Moose, especially the last few days. That's life! She's certainly done that for me when needed, and it's what families do.

Of course the time away has gotten me behind on a couple of things at work, which at this point trumps any dissertation progress. I like my job. But I really don't give a shit about the dissertation today. Maybe I'll find some focus and energy to get something done this weekend. And maybe not.

Maybe I just need to go to bed. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

100 Years

I almost let the entire day slip by before I remembered that today would have been my grandmother's 100th birthday. She died less than two years ago, and I still think about her and her place in the woods quite a bit. Funny: while age 98 certainly seemed "old," especially to HER, it still seemed a long way off from age 100. Not sure why. 100? I mean...wow. Can't imagine that. Age 50 literally meant 'middle age' for her. Guess I'm just a spring chicken at age 36.

I just felt a need to mark the occasion here. In some ways I can hardly believe she's gone; in other ways it feels like it's been forever....