Here we go

Scenario: you have a month of the semester remaining, and you have a two-and-a-half papers left to write. You pretty much know what you're going to write about for all three of these, but you don't feel like you have had a decent start. You have no idea how it's all going to get done, but somehow you know it will. It must. Or else. What do you do?

Write my flippin' assets off.

That's where I am right about now. The only really scary part is that "spring break" is happening next week (i.e., our vacation), and I cannot bring the laptop with me.

Today I'm in the library with two friends from SCT. We're all cranking out pages. Should be good writing energy together before a fun dinner with our families later on. Not such a bad Saturday, that is, if one must be locked in a library on a weekend.

Bye.

Assurance of Trustworthiness

Today is my dissertation day. I think it's the first Wednesday I've had without any other work-related commitments since May. Today has been very productive.

One method of assuring trustworthiness in my data analysis is to check in with the participants and seek their feedback on a part of the data analysis. In the case of my study, I wanted to make sure my main description of their work and their future aspirations was accurate. This is called a "member check."

I've been dreading this process due to the time it has taken me to analyze the interviews and write up the summaries. It's been just over two years since I conducted the first interview, and I honestly don't know if my contact information for the participants is still accurate or not. Fortunately Facebook has been a big help with this process, so yay for modern communication. I know I've written about this up here in the past.

Well, now that I finished Chapter 4, or the write-up of participants (did I MENTION I finished Chapter 4?), it was high time to get back in touch with the participants. I finally went ahead and contacted them, and I shared with each his or her interview summary. I did not share any of my reactions. Just my overall summary of the interview.

Glad that's over!

One has already responded, so I hope a few others follow suit soon. I don't expect to hear from all of them, but somewhere around half be nice.

Onto write a few more pages of Chapter 5 now. Deep breath. Trying to stay awake in the mid-afternoon is always a challenge for me.

Summer Crunch - Day 6 Report

It's good to be home.

Honestly, I didn't get much done today on the dissertation. I moved home from the hotel, unpacked a few things, and then worked in the garden a bit. I needed that.

The net effect of this time away from work and family is very exciting, in my opinion. I made a TON of progress. I'm now right in the middle of one of the more complex chapters, and I'm comfortable living with the complexity for a while. I'm also very, very motivated to finish up everything. Heck, I may even write up another code or two here before going to bed.

At this point, if I can keep plugging away on things in the evenings, weekends, and my regular day off of work during the week, then it's quite likely these chapters will be written by the end of August. They'll SUCK, but they'll be written!

Summer Crunch - Day 5 Report

I am pleased to report that a good day does indeed follow a bad one. I continued with the "not caring so damn much" philosophy I adopted late last night and just kept going today. Things are finally flowing quite well with this chapter. By the end of the day tomorrow, I hope to come out of this focused time with a solid skeleton for Chapter 5 such that I can spend the next few weeks simply filling in the blanks with quotes and a bit more prose to tie together the various pieces. Then I need to figure out the order of said pieces, but this will come with time and thought. One hopes.

I had to get the heck out of this hotel room today for a bit, so I went over to the nearby large chain coffee establishment and had a decent few hours there. I froze my ass off though. Man it was cold in there. Guess they wanted us to buy more coffee or something. Dang.

Tonight's my last night in the hotel room. In celebration I treated myself to some ice cream. Now I'll settle in for another couple of hours of writing before bedtime.

Bye.

Summer Crunch - Day 4 Report

Today was tough and frustrating. Tougher than I thought. And did I mention it was a bit frustrating? It was unfortunate that I had to attend to something for work in the morning. This didn't please me very much, but it had to be done. Fortunately it didn't take much of my time, and it didn't require that I go into the office.

While writing, I got stuck several times, and after having such a productive few days last week, this was disappointing. I found it tough to know where to start and what to say. I attempted to start this one section over and over, but to no avail. And then my mind would wander too much and I would wonder what Wife and Moose were doing at home...

After refocusing, I ate way too much junk for dinner (my typical stress reaction). Still frustrated, I turned my back on the computer for a while. I opened a beer that I had been saving for when I felt comfortable taking a break. I stood up from the desk, and I spread out my papers across the bed in the hotel room. I looked over the notes and realized that if needed, I could stand in front of a room of people and discuss the various components of the theory. I could even bring in a few of the more memorable quotes off the top of my head. In fact, there were a few times since the spring that I attempted to construct the theory based upon what I was learning along the way, and those musings were among my notes that were spread out on the bed. So, I transported myself into the future, where I visualized myself presenting the results of my study at a professional conference. I spoke out loud, and I started to explain the theory to, well, to the bed. Slowly but surely, I was able to construct complete sentences. Suddenly my speech patterns became more confident, and I knew I was going somewhere.

So I started writing down some of what I had said. I still questioned the order in which things would go, but then I stopped thinking so damn much and started writing. I wrote a two-page brain dump at this point. It's not great, but it gives me a decent outline where to start plugging in quotes and such. It's a start.

Even though today was frustrating, I got more done on the dissertation today than I would have had I not taken the day off from work.

I plan to take the "stop thinking, start writing" approach tomorrow and just keep going. We shall see.

Prelude to Week Two

Well, after a busy two days and one night at home, and I'm now preparing for the second week. Unfortunately it's not an entire week, but it is three full nights (including tonight) and three full days (starting tomorrow). We have holiday plans this coming weekend, starting Thursday, so the work week is cut short. Not that I'm complaining or anything!

After last week's success, working remotely from a hotel (did I mention I finished Chapter 4?), I am determined to keep up with the speed I've gained and continue forward the next few days. I wasn't planning on coming back to a hotel this week, but after Wife suggested it practically unprompted by me, who am I are argue? Perhaps she just wanted me out of the house? Haha. Just kidding. On the contrary, she's definitely by best cheerleader by far.

This is a different hotel than last week, but still nearby. After only a $15/night increase, and suddenly I'm living in the 21st century again. It's certainly not home, and I would still rather be there, but it is nice to be in a spot that doesn't make me feel like I'm on the set of the movie, Office Space. That other hotel was giving me a headache and allergy attack. I started asking around for my stapler (if you've not seen the movie, you won't get the joke). Anyway, big improvement here, including a real desk chair and desk, so these things will certainly help me continue to stay focused.

The plan for this week is to write out as many bits and chunks of chapter 5, the Findings chapter, that I possibly can. I am not going to concern myself with organizing the chapter very much for now. Just need to get the writing of the pieces accomplished.

So, here's to a good second week!

[raises a glass of water, neat, as a toast-like gesture toward no one else in particular].

Oh, did I mention I finished Chapter 4 last week?

Summer Crunch - Day 3 Report

Yesterday was not quite as productive in terms of tangible deliverable items as Days 1 and 2 were. However, progress was made nevertheless on chunking, writing, editing, etc. It wasn't a bad day, but it wasn't as good as Day 2. These things ebb and flow, so it certainly was well-spent time and worth the trip.

I'm off to home now. Busy weekend planned, which will be nice. Then it's back to the dissertation grind Monday.

Bye.

Summer Crunch - Day 2 Report

Oops - forgot the Day 2 Report. Probably because Day 2 ended at 2:00 AM today. With the lack of time commitments yesterday (except for a 2:30 PM meeting at Moose's school yesterday), my schedule has turned sort of upside down. I had a few work-related e-mails I needed to handle (it takes a few days for it to sink in with my colleagues that I really am taking two weeks away to write, and I wasn't kidding) in the morning, and then we had the meeting in the afternoon. Then I got into the writing process, and I moved slowly but surely up till 2 AM (not consistently...I took breaks). By 2 AM, I finished a draft of the "participants" chapter, or Chapter 4. It's not the entire "results" chapter like one might find in a typical five-chapter dissertation. Mine will likely have six chapters total. My actual results chapter is coming up next. I feel good about the progress yesterday, and that I wrote what might be a stand-alone chapter in just a couple of days.

I have never had a TV in any office where I've worked before in my entire life. Obviously there is a TV here in my hotel room, so I've had it on quietly much of the time. It's provided good background noise. Yesterday was the big National Basketball Association selection day, so the Entertainment Sports Programming Network was on much of the time. For any of you who know me, this is shockingly odd behavior for me. I hardly know what ESPN stands for, let alone the NBA, and I usually wouldn't give a rat's ass about the selection. But on further reflection, it became appropriate as to why I'd care about that event. My dissertation addresses issues of transition out of college upon graduation, and most of the guys selected for teams had just graduated, themselves. I thought it was an appropriate connection to be writing about college graduates while watching a whole bunch getting jobs at the same time.

During the breaks, I watched the coverage on Cable News Network regarding the deaths of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. It's amazing these notable deaths happened on the same day.

Fawcett was popular in the 70s when I was a little kid and girls were "icky." But she was a hottie in Charlie's Angels, no matter how icky girls were at the time. It's sad that he slow death was a) so slow and painful, and b) now is probably over-shadowed by Michael Jackson. Fawcett was a good performer in her own right, and I hope those who knew hew work (and hottiness) better than I do can say more.

I bought the Thriller album (LP of course!) in the spring of 1984 when I was in seventh grade. I still have it, as does Wife: it's among the few albums we both brought into our combined household when we married. I learned about his earlier music, and about The Jackson 5ive, after Thriller was such a big hit. But I had numerous moments as a teenager like, "Oh, THAT tune is Michael Jackson? Cool." I thought he was a complete weirdo, but I always liked his music. It's tough to disagree he was an amazing performer, and it's certainly a loss to the musical community.

OK, back to reality. Today it's time to dive into the tough chapter - the theory chapter. I've already broken it into smaller chunks, and I've started writing about it already. I just need to keep getting the chunks done, and then later on I'll weave things together into something understandable. We shall see.

June Plantings

Alright, well now that I've had a good productive day, I feel no guilt about posting a quick house update. Last weekend we finally finished planting the garden in front of the front porch, which is practically the first thing one sees when walking up to our front door. This pretty much matches a plan we had done by a landscape architect about a year ago. The company we used specifically does plans for the do-it-yourself gardener, which was great. They planned it (horticulturists we are not), and we installed it. Love that. It just took us forever. Wonder what else we've been doing?

Next, we'll focus on the garden to the left of this porch that used to have old shrubs obscuring the view out of the living room window. That's at least six feet up off the ground (the ground slopes down over there)! After that, we'll finally plant grass and a few shrubs along the side of the garage. Used to be overgrown trees and shrubs. We ripped those out almost two years ago, but still haven't done a thing with the space, except probably piss off the next-door neighbors.

Do you see why I can't wait for this to be a house blog??

Oh yeah, the two shots of hostas (hostae?) at the end of the slide show are actually in our back yard. Those plants came from my in-laws, who live out of state. We do enjoy adding plants to our garden from family and friends. One of the only things I miss about living in SCT is the garden we planted at the original Chesterley house, as it was a combination of plants from various important people in our lives. It's probably being ignored now. Sigh. That was not easy to leave behind.

Update to Day 1

I ate dinner and kept on moving through for another couple of hours. Then I gave myself the rest of the evening off. Why I'm still awake, I don't know, but it's not like I'm setting an alarm tomorrow morning, or anything. I do plan on finishing up the character descriptions before lunch, though. Based on how quickly things seemed to roll this evening, especially after dinner, that goal is quite possible. Hmm...perhaps I will set an alarm.

Now that I have the time to focus, this writing process is far easier than I thought. Let's hope I'm still singing that tune tomorrow night.

Summer Crunch - Day 1 Report

Thanks to everyone for your good words both here in the blog and to me directly via electronic mail. All words of support are very helpful during this time.

Life here at the hotel is good - it's been a good productive day. I finally cleaned up the early version of the Participants section. There was too much in there related to the deeper analysis and not enough of the surface descriptions of participants. Now I'm on a roll with finishing up the descriptions of each one, briefly but respectfully, knowing I'm going to develop the characters further in the analysis section.

I still need to contact the participants to see if they agree with my characterizations. That's intimidating to me, as it's been about two years since I started the interviews. Two years? Geez. Oh well, I'm just going to have to get over that and move onward. I think I've mentioned I found most of them on Facebook. I won't friend them, but if I can send them a message that way, then I will. Thank God for Facebook.

It sort of feels like I'm writing a play with 14 characters. Few if any of them have ever met, but so much of what they are saying relates to that of their peers in the study. Sort of interesting.

I'm glad I did this hotel thing. Usually I'm closing up my writing shop around 5 or 6 PM on a dissertation day away from work. Today was totally different: I worked at a slow but steady pace, really relaxed. I have ESPN on in the background for noise (I don't even know what sport is on the TV, since it's behind me). I even grabbed a quick nap mid-afternoon. I'm about to take a brief dinner break (frozen pizza, here I come), and then I'll just get back to it. If I get to a certain point this evening where I feel things have gone along really well, then I'll reward myself with a good beer (or two) that I have here in the fridge. Then I repeat tomorrow. I'm glad I'm finally getting through this stuff.

More good news: I was supposed to go into work Friday for a meeting that was scheduled for 3 PM. Who the heck schedules a meeting for 3 PM on a Friday in the summer?? I received a note today indicating it was canceled, so now I don't need to interrupt my work Friday. Yippee!

I do have a parent/teacher meeting at Moose's school tomorrow afternoon, but that'll be fine. For one thing, it's not work: it's parenting, so it's far more important and well worth the time away from the diss. Second, it will be a shorter break than the above meeting since it's located relatively near the hotel. Finally, I'm REALLY missing Wife and Moose right about now! It will be a nice break tomorrow to see them both.

Summer Crunch

I embark upon another Two Weeks. I am feeling the pressure this time, not that I didn't last time, but there's something different, and a bit more desperate, about this one.

Desperate times have called for desperate measures. I write this note from the comfort of a hotel room. No joke. It's one of those places where all the rooms have little kitchens and no maid service. Fine by me, and certainly less expensive than the other places nearby. I checked myself in for the rest of the week and plan to spend the as much time as my brain will allow with cranking out the crap.

A couple of people who have recently asked me about my progress have laughed, no joke - laughed!, when I responded by saying I plan on finishing up this fall. Now, neither of these people actually have a doctorate, so I realize they don't know what the hell they are talking about. But this is the first time I have said out loud what my plans for completion are. So, why do they laugh? Who knows. I try not to let this sort of stuff bother me too much. If I finish even as late as next spring, I'll still be a full two years ahead of my 2012 deadline.

Anyhow, back to this post. At this point I'm writing out a very structured to-do list so I'm not sitting around wondering what the hell I should do next. I will write regular updates this week to note my progress.

I can't wait to turn this into a house renovation blog.

Anxiety Dreams

If I felt good enough about this process the other day to write the No Fear post, then why the hell am I having anxiety dreams lately?

I'll spare the details, but one of them in particular involved being in the same room as my wife and two former girlfriends. Ungood!

A timeline

Well, I've done it. I now have an official kick-in-the-pants, don't mess this up Rob, holy shit I've gotta produce something decent, time line. A syllabus, if you will.

I just ran my final time line by my entire committee, and they all responded within about four hours with a resounding "yes we're available in November for your dissertation defense," and "yes, keep going with the structure of the remainder of your study as you indicated." Can't believe the fast response from all of them, even during the summer. Wow.

Time lines are good for me. They inspire the all-nighters I'll need to get the results of this puppy complete.

No Fear

In the Nineties I often saw stickers on the back windshields of cars reading, "No Fear." Somehow I think it has something to do with "NIN" stickers (Nine-Inch Nails?), since I usually saw those coupled together. I have absolutely no idea what the hell those stickers meant, other than that Nine-Inch Nails was a rock group. I write this paragraph only to clarify that the title of this post has nothing to do with those stickers.

Man can I spin the bullshit or what? I must be writing a dissertation!

Anyway, this post serves as a reminder to myself that I am officially over any fear whatsoever of finishing this dissertation. I'm not trying to get over confident here. Rather, I'm just being realistic. Completion is now just a matter of finding the time to finish writing, obey the commands of my committee (note my dry humor) to finish it off adequately, and turn the damn thing in.

I am extremely fortunate that I have a chair who a) wants me to finish and b) provides me with constructive, challenging feedback that helps me improve. Her feedback is likely going to kick my ass, and the rest of the process toward finishing up may very well suck. However, the dissertation is going to be completed. There are no more questions. There are no more grades. Just an ending.

Now, the challenge is finding the time...

Lupron as Treatment for Autism?

Seriously?? This is the castration drug given to sex offenders.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/chi-autism-lupron-may21,0,242705.story

We know other parents in town who have tried to work with these "doctors." Their kids go through extensive blood tests (checking for what, I'll never know), and the people running the office indicate the tests will be covered by insurance. When the bill for $10,000 arrives, the doctors LAUGH at the parents when they ask about insurance. I'm not making this up.

I hope this article contributes to the demise of the Drs. Geier's careers, but I doubt it will.

Screen Porch!

I'm back on the screen porch again here at Chesterley. LOVE IT. It's been a productive day, in spite of the noises coming from the installation of the new roof and siding on the house next door.

I've finished what turned out to be a longer-than-expected transition of documents from the old Word 2003 version to the newer 2007. I had some chapters in the old form, and these newer ones in the new, so now everything matches. Check.

The next step is a crash-through of the participant descriptions, which will be chapter 4. I hope to have a horribly-awful draft of that done by the end of the week. I've pretty much written it: I just need to get it into a better, more readable format.

After that, it's onto finishing up the theory chapter, or Chapter 5. That'll be the doozie. I have about two pages of that one started.

I'm resisting the temptation to go back through the older chapters in the proposal and a) move the verb tense to the past (currently it's in the future tense, as proposals should be), and b) change the voice to the first person. I wrote the initial proposal in the third person, but as I get into the analysis, the first-person voice is going to be far easier and more appropriate to a qualitative study. An example that combines these two things involves changing this sentence from,

"The researcher will interview sixteen undergraduate seniors..."

to,

"I interviewed sixteen undergraduate seniors..."

It's not difficult, just tedious. And yet, right now it could be an awfully good way to procrastinate from the main writing task I have before me, the synthesis of the results, which WILL be difficult! So, I'm avoiding doing this easier task, even though I actually would really enjoy that sort of mindless-yet-productive work right about now, and will attempt to move onward with producing new text.

When I get to the point where I'd feel comfortable with editing, changing, and reformatting, then I know I'll be close to finishing up this puppy.

Alright, back to it. Glad to be on the porch again!

I have a dilemma. Our cell phone contract is up and it's time for renewal. This is good, as I like having a choice. But knowing the choice has implications for the next two years inspires me to do a little research. I am a researcher, after all.

Ergo: please consider responding to the survey on the right column of this blog. It is completely anonymous and has not been certified through IRB. Deal with it.

Do we stay with Verizon? I have had good luck with this company for about seven years. Also, our entire extended family is on Verizon, so we all can call each other for free. However, they do not have the iPhone, and I'm a Mac, not a PC. Can I really bring myself to get a Blackberry? Also, would I really want to switch away from Verizon? Friends have told us they think the Verizon network is more reliable than the others. What's the use of having a cool phone if the supporting network isn't as strong? But man that phone is cool, and enough people seem to have success with their network...

I presently have a Palm Treo which I love, but it's beginning to die a slow death, and I don't want to get caught in the dark as I did the night before leaving for a meeting in March.

Any thoughts? I'm taking open-ended comments in this post and quantitative-ish data in the poll to the right.

Front Porch Plants

At long last, we finally started planting live shrubs in front of Chesterley instead of only ripping out all the old overgrown stuff. Moose posed in a few of the photos I took last weekend. Thus far we've installed two azaleas, two boxwoods, and, as of yesterday, the yellow daylilies (how do you SPELL that?) that were sitting in the ugly black pot in these shots. We still have a way to go: adding purple coneflowers in the gap between the lilies and the boxwood on the left, and we're considering a border of lariope around the edge. Not sure about that, though. Mulch will be added when it's done. So, it's a work in progress, but we're glad it's in progress.

There were several tortured pine shrubs (tortured by being shaped into odd little shapes) which were sitting in a bunch of old mulch. When we cleared out this bed, we removed the mulch to find trash. I'm not kidding. Garbage. Literally. The original owners must have smoked cigarettes with the plastic cigarette holders and simply dumped them into the shrubs. We also found a gazillion old plastic toy soldiers and cars. A real treasure trove, lemme tellya. In addition, they apparently had low-voltage lighting because we found wire and even a couple of light bulbs. Our next-door neighbors have lived here over 20 years. I asked, "Do you recall there being lights in that flower bed?" and a look of recollection came over their faces: "Yes! Must have been at least 10 years ago!" I showed them the worn out old lights and the frayed wire that was still in the bed, and we all had a good laugh.

Meeting Minutes

Yesterday's meeting with DC went very well. I like her. We went out for lunch and got caught up on our lives. One of the few advantages of taking so darn long to complete the dissertation is that I have built a bit of a friendship with my chair. It's not like we hang out together socially, but she knows my wife and son (she knows all about the problems we had living with autism disorder in SCT), and she's even met my mom. So we spent the lunch just catching up on families, general life transitions and the like. Then, we discussed the dissertation back at her office for over an hour. I'm grateful for the lengthy amount of time we were able to spend on the subject, let alone the helpful, yet challenging, advice she provided. I don't miss living in SCT at all, but I do miss the closer proximity to people like DC.

As an undergraduate, and even as a master's student, I always wondered what in the world the doctoral students would DO when they would have these lengthy discussions with faculty. And now I know. I shared with her the 8 details I mentioned in the previous post. She was pleased that I was very well steeped in the data and could pull out stories or quotes as needed to back up connections I was making. There were a few parts of my reasoning that she wasn't following, and I attributed that to a need for ME to go back and figure out where I was going with certain things. I had a couple of wake-up calls, but they were healthy.

Bottom line, she agrees with me that the analysis is officially complete, and now I just ("just!") need to write it up and finish. I came away with a good way to structure out what I have left to write. I am pleased with the fact that the few pages I wrote very quickly the preceding morning were decent enough for her to understand where I was going with them. All in all, it was a good meeting.

Now I just need to carve out the time to write. I like writing, and I write pretty quickly. Most of what I've written for this degree has been pulled out of my brain, via my ass, during late night, last-minute, coffee-laden, mad-hatter writing sessions. This crazy timing of my writing has served me well. So, I may not sleep very much this summer, but there is a chance I may have the bulk of this puppy written up before Labor Day.