I've been avoiding calling the old adviser and officially "firing" him.  He and I have never communicated well, and I just couldn't see how that would improve under the circumstances.

I've also avoided asking the internal person to be on my committee on the assumption that I should do it in person and would have to work for it.

Both of these things turned out to be untrue.

I called the old adviser today, told him my new direction (which he heartily approves of) and then told him that I was making Mentor my official Chair instead because Mentor and I have a strong working/writing relationship.  He thought that was a great plan and that I was making the decision for the right reason, wished me the best and rung off. 

I emailed Internal to tell her I wanted to speak with her, specifically about being on my committee.  She wrote back that she would be happy to be on my committee and we could meet for coffee sometime after the end of the semester.

I can only assume that I avoid these things because I hate asking people for help or disappointing them.  In each case I was convinced it would be a problem and I was avoiding it.  I really need to get over that.  I am still going to have to approach External, who I don't know nearly as well....

        

I'm an atheist.  I believe that most religious/spiritual beliefs are superstitions, totally unfounded and indicative of a less questioning  mind.  I generally believe that, at least in the US, religion is "mostly harmless".  (The exception is things like intelligent design, but that regularly gets trounced in court.)  

I am also a strong believer in individuality.  I do not believe that any person has the right to tell any other person what to do, nor do I believe that the government has that right.  I may think that believing in transubstantiation is silly, but I don't think I have the right to tell others not to believe in it.  

Therefore I find myself in the bizarre position of considering writing a paper arguing in favor of religious charter schools.  Here is my reasoning:

- Religion/spirituality is a form of culture.  When you look outside christianity (for example at native american cultures) you find that the spiritual aspects are deeply embedded in the culture and language.
- Culturally-relevant schooling improves academic achievement in students, which (particularly for marginalized populations) improves their economic future
- The supreme court has ruled (Zelman) that if the parent chooses to spend a school voucher on sending their child to a religious private school, this is NOT the government supporting a particular religion.  The parental choice mitigates the establishment clause.
- No child is ASSIGNED to a charter school.  Parents choose the school.  
- Therefore religious charter schools should be permitted, as long as they are permitted for ALL religions/spiritual traditions who wish to open/run one as a way to improve the long-term outcomes for students.

Objections could include:
- How do you ensure that charter authorizers authorize all schools equally, regardless of religion?  It doesn't take much to imagine Kansas approving charters from judeo-christian and native american traditions but turning down a muslim or hindu school.
- What does this do to multiculturalism as an american value?  Is multiculturalism ACTUALLY an american value or do we just give it lip service but not really believe in it?  We segregate in almost every facet of our life, even after going through the somewhat forced-integration of schooling.  Is multiculturalism really just a value of the academic left?
- What if this leads to schools that teach creationism or alternative histories that conflict with testing standards or even common beliefs?  Will we REALLY help students economic outcomes if they learn that the earth was created 6 days only a few thousand years ago?  Yet isn't this already happening in private schools, homeschools and churches?  Is it somehow made more valid if taught in a school-school? What about teaching health or modern biology in a christian scientist school?  Would it happen and would students truly be better off?

I'd love any comments/criticisms of my thinking here, before I put this into a paper and make a fool of myself...

        

I've been offline more than usual lately due to business travel and what turned out to be a failing coax cable.  (I've had an email account and been on the net since 1986, but I didn't even realize that was possible.)

During this time I have utterly failed to do any of the huge pile of reading I have to do, but I have gotten a bunch of other more mundane stuff done.  Call it an end of semester thing....

Have you ever read a call for proposals and had an IMMEDIATE idea for a presentation, despite having none of the background research done for it?  I had that happen today.  I have this incredibly clear mental picture of the argument I want to make, but no real idea if there is background information to base it on.  I think I'll spend some time this weekend getting that written up.  In writing the proposal I'll either find that the information I need is out there or not, but one way or the other I'll know if this is a fertile path to follow.

        

I'm still catching up on things I had been setting aside to read for the past month, and today came across a posting on the Tomorrows Professor Blog that referenced a posting on Inside Higher Ed called Tenure as a Tarnished Brass Ring.  It got me thinking about a number of things....

I'm really torn on the concept of Tenure.  It's overarching goal of protecting academic freedom is a noble one, but its implementation really doesn't seem to work anymore.  New faculty are run through their paces for between half and a full decade, working massive hours, focused strictly on publishing in higher ranking journals and getting funding, all to get a chance for every dingbat in the college who disagrees with them measure them against a standard that rises each year.  Activities that are valuable, both to the community and to scholarship, that do not result in such a publication are discouraged.  Teaching is a far-distant second place to most other activities.  The process is long, painful and often arbitrary, with ever-changing standards and no clear direction for those trying to meet it.

Moreover, I think the fact that so many newly minted PhD's are forced into either post-docs (in the sciences) or adjunct positions (humanities and social sciences) is, in part, the FAULT of the tenure process.  No college wants to take on a new TT faculty member knowing the amount of added work that is going to come with having that person amongst their ranks.  It is easier and far cheaper to hire an adjunct to do their teaching load and, if they do research in their free time so much the better.  In the above article they reference a blog post by Lumpenprofessoriat that states the following:

There are lots of things that have hurt me in academia, but tenure is NOT one of them.

I have been hurt by the lack of health care from my years as an adjunct. I have been hurt by the uncertainties of working as migrant, contingent labor in academia for more than a decade. I have been hurt by Deans, Provosts, and by some of my colleagues who put time and effort into delaying my start in a tenure track line and in further delaying my final tenure decision for another decade. I have been hurt by decades of debts and low wages that I may never recover from. I have grudges, depression, anger, rage, and issues aplenty from my sojourn through the academic labor market. But the one thing that has NOT hurt me is tenure.

I think this is a misphrase.  What has never hurt hir is HAVING tenure.  However I think the institution of tenure has hurt hir extensively.  All of those painful experiences before and during are related to the institution of tenure and would not exist in their current state if tenure were not still considered such an important part of the academic job market. 

Once you have it, tenure as amazing.  But the process of getting it, heck even the availability of positions leading to it, is rapidly becoming more trouble than it is worth.

This does NOT mean the academics should not have academic freedom or that everyone should be adjuncts.  And I understand that the time table of an academic doesn't allow for the yearly review of a normal professional.  But in my day job I have an ongoing relationship with my company that assumes periodic reviews and sets out reasonable causes for dismissal.  Unionization and long-term review cycles could mimic this in academe while protecting young and old scholars alike.

None of this means I would turn down a TT job if/when one is offered.  Beliefs about what a system SHOULD be should never stop one from dealing with the system as it is.  But I have to agree with Tenured Radical  - I would far rather have a 5 year renewable contract that protected my academic rights regardless of where I am in my career than go through this painful, humiliating process.

        

Summer, 2008 – Historiography/Historical Methods

BOOKS:
• From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods
• A Pocket Guide to Writing in History
• Writing History: A Guide for Students
• Going to the Sources: A Guide to Historical Research and Writing
• Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge
• Beyond the Great Story: History as Text and Discourse
• That Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American Historical Profession (Ideas in Context)
• Telling the Truth About History
• Imagined Histories: American Historians Interpret the Past
• History in Crisis? Recent Directions in Historiography (2nd Edition)

ARTICLES:
• Tilly, Charles (1990). How (and what) are historians doing? American Behavioral Scientist
• Volume 32, Number 2, 2003 – History of Education Quarterly (Journal). All articles. (Special issue on the theory and methodology in History of Education.)

COURSES:
American Public University – Accredited (North Central) Online Classes. May 5-August 24 - Auditing:
RC575 - Historiography Books included for this class:
• Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, 3rd Ed
• Modern Historiography: An Introduction
• The Houses of History: A Critical Reader in Twentieth-Century History and Theory
RC576 – Historical Research Methods Books included for this class:
• Historians Fallacies: Toward Logic of Historical Thought
• Major Problems in American Military History
• Short Guide to Writing About History, 6th Ed

CONFERENCES:
ISCHE 30: International Standing Conference for the History of Education. Education and Inequality: Historical Approaches to Schooling and Social Stratification. Rutgers University, Newark NJ, July 23-26

        

I've been dragging my heals all week about doing the rewrite of the literature review from our conference paper.  (As it came together I realized that we were talking too much about something that didn't make sense and not enough about something else that was important.)  I've been DREADING it, doing anything (exercising even) to get out of it.

Of course, it took me all of 45 minutes.  It proved much easier to do once I sat down and started.

We still have other things to do with this paper (add interactions, perhaps a school-level fixed effect, and then decide on a home and tailor the conclusion to that journal).  I REALLY want it done.  This is our last joint paper for publication, after which I can focus pretty solely on my OWN stuff.

        

Perhaps my favorite in recent memory...




When you're in grad school, every millimeter counts

        

I went with option number 2.  It will take longer, but I am far more interested in the actual work.

Despite being a Chicago-numbers guy, adviser is being extremely supportive.  He gave me 3 reasons for that, which made me feel better about the whole thing.

• This is better starter dough; there are a stack of articles that can come out of this general area
  
• No one else is doing anything like it and he definitely sees the place for it in the school choice conversation
• I am obviously more interested and motivated, even though he considers doing something that will require a new methodology to be more work.
  

Unless I can find a history research methods/historiography class being taught online, I'll be spending this summer teaching myself the necessary research methods.  I've done a bunch of searches and come up with a list of books and articles based on syllabi on the web, so I'll document what I've done, read and study them and go from there.

We don't have a historian of ed in my department, however that may well handle itself.  There is another faculty member in our department who lists as her mentors one of the foremost historians of education.  I'm going to ask the internal faculty member to be on my committee and see if she can facilitate getting the external historian on it as well.  (We need 3 people and 1 can be external.)  Apparently adviser already broached the subject over lunch with the internal person, and she is willing.  That will help a lot.  I'm going to set up a meeting with this new member (we'll call her Internal) after I get the feedback from my submission to the history of education society meeting.  I want to rewrite my 2-page overview based on that and use it as a starting point for our discussion.

On a tangental note, I apparently impressed people at the conference.  Adviser got a call to tell him they were impressed with the presentation (I did it - he watched) and to ask if I could review something for them.  He said no, that I needed to focus on my own writing now.  Which is probably true.  It's nice to be asked though.

I offered to drop  my assistantship so that he can hire someone new.  Working full time means I don't need the money and I don't need or want the guilt that comes from feeling like I'm not working for my money.  He refused;  He said he might drop me to 25% from 50%, because he understands that my schedule makes it difficult, but that due to internal process stupidity he probably wouldn't be able to hire someone else regardless of the money. 

However we have no more joint writing projects on the docket, which is good.  I will submit to conferences on my own, succeeding or failing on my own merits.  We are going to revise this last paper for submission and get it out by the end of May.  That will graduate me with 3 publications, which doesn't suck.

We also talked about how burnt out I am and agreed that I need to slow down and settle in.  This isn't a sprint, it's a marathon, and I need to find a work schedule that leaves me some balance.

So that's the update.  I'm feeling pretty good about the whole thing.  The plan for now:

• Finish fixing up AERA paper for publication and submit
• Review feedback from HES when it arrives and update 2-page summary to use for communication
• Approach Internal about being on committee
• Work with Internal to get in contact and develop relationship with External.  See if External is willing to be on committee.
• Document research methods sources and study them this summer
• Write dissertation proposal once the above is done and try to defend before the end of the year
• Take one day off per week to do other things
  

Busy, but not un-do-able.

Thanks for the comments.  I guess you're all stuck with me for another couple of years.  I'll try not to whine TOO much.....

        

Tomorrow I speak with my adviser.  I'm prepared, except for one decision.  I have two drastically different dissertation projects that I could pursue, and I really need to pick just one and get him on my side for it.  I have had two close confidants advise me, one in each direction.  So, before I go in and talk to him I want to see if anyone else has words of wisdom on the topic.

On the one side, I am being told to just "get it done".   The suggestion has been raised that I take the work we did for the conference and substantially enhance it to become my dissertation.  Since there is already a start, this should easily be done (even working full time) by next May.  I would have to obtain my advisers permission, since he did some of the work on this paper, and that is not a sure thing, but likely enough if it is enhanced a lot.  However I have little interest in the project/work beyond a single paper.

On the other side, I am passionate about the history concept I have.  My adviser has seemed supportive although it is not his methodological area.  (He acknowledges that this is truly what he calls "starter dough"; an idea that can turn into many papers and publications, as opposed to the above idea which is not and will yield little more than this one paper.)  However I have done only the slightest preliminary research and fear it would take 2 years or even more to complete. 

Due to my husband's job situation there is no rush or urgency to move on; there is actually some impetus to linger.  Thus there are no external time pressures.  Technically I am 1 semester into my 4th year, so I am still well within normal parameters.  Finishing by next spring would be on the faster side for someone coming in without a masters in education, the year after would be acceptable and probably not hurt anyone's USNews ranking.

So, any comments out there on which project to choose?

        

One of the issues of late for me has been the complete and utter lack of balance in my life.  I would go to work, stressfully work on research, then fall in to bed.  No exercise, no relaxation, and no time with friends.  This needs to stop.  So on my 3 hour each way drive to the site and back today I thought about it how to do that.

Part of the issue is unrealistic expectations about what I can really get done.  Or rather, unrealistic expectations of how much time I can spend productively on my academic work.  I am revising my graduate student work day to reflect my lack of life or rather the need for me to HAVE a life if I'm going to finish successfully.

Key features:
1 free day per week - completely free.  SUNDAY tentatively, but that can change week by week
1 hour of reading on workday evenings, Monday through Thursday.  No expectation of more
1 hour of EXERCISE 5 days per week.  Fridays and Sundays off. 

That gives me 12 hours of work on my dissertation per week - not much, but maintainable.  If I have no other plans on a Sunday, then that is a bonus.  But I need to stop requiring myself to work 7 days per week and 14 hours per day.  Hopefully this will be more sustainable over the long haul.

I also plan to talk to my adviser and give up my assistantship.  2 reasons - 1) I don't have time to do the work and 2) he can use it for someone else.  I just would prefer not to be committed to work that I won't have time to do and will then feel guilty about.

Here's the revised version:

        

I'm home.

I have a horrible head cold and intend to spend much of the weekend in bed hopped up on nyquil until I feel better.  This is part of what I hate about traveling....

Every time I get stressed about my adviser's pushing to succeed, I need to remind myself that he at least won't let me embarrass myself by presenting something like the 2 papers that preceeded mine in the session.  Yes, he pushes hard.  But my qualitative colleagues who came for moral support could spot some of the methodology problems with these papers.  They were REALLY bad....

Next year I am going to propose a pre-conference session called "Turning your paper into a presentation and delivering it without embarrassing yourself".  Things we observed that make me think this is necessary:
- Someone put up a word table and scrolled through it
- Someone else put up their presentation in the form of paragraphs on powerpoint slides in 12 point type, then read the slides word for word.
- Some were so scared of powerpoint and an LCD projector (first year - last year the free tool was an overhead projector that you had to bring slides for) that they didn't bother to bring anything at all and just stood there rambling incoherently.
- Here's a clue - 15 minutes means that you won't get through more than 15 slides, no matter HOW FAST YOU TALK.  I hit my mark exactly with 10 content slides.  Less is more, people.....

I'm a good presenter.  Not a great presenter, but a good one.  But that makes me a rock star among academics.  I swear, I could make a fortune teaching this stuff.....

OK - Lots to talk about regarding decisions I made, but not tonight.  The nyquil is starting to kick in....

        

I've come across a couple of really interesting new blogs lately that I wanted to point others towards.  They are particularly relevant if you are interested in writing, and even more specifically academic writing.

Write to Done - Written by Leo of Zen Habits fame, this blog focuses on habits and productive writing.  Although mostly focused on fiction writing, his posts on the actual discipline of writing has been helpful to me.

Research as a Second Language - A writing expert from a business school in europe has started a blog on academic writing.  SCORE! 

Writing in the Sciences - Infrequent posts, but excellent resources

        

I was totally losing it last night - bursting into tears from stress, head pounding and feeling sick.  My husband put me to bed early and then I called in sick today.

This morning, over breakfast, he finally got a couple of really good points through my stubborn, thick skull.

First, this seminar is a WORKING SESSION, not a dissertation defense.  They don't expect it to be done.
Second, everyone is human and is good about forgiving others for their humanness, especially when you are upfront about it.

So, revised plan:
- I am still working on a presentation/poster (basically it will all be the same thing).  My plan is to do what I can between now and then, but not kill myself.
- I will start my presentation by explaining that life has intervened in the last few months and set my progress back, but that any help or pointers would still be gratefully accepted.
- Rather than trying to ANSWER the questions I had in my earlier post (and a million others), I will put them into the presentation as areas in which I need guidance.

I have 13 good slides so far, with the intention of adding a few more (no more than 20 total) before I am done.  I have a couple of articles I want to reread (one specifically on my methodology) before I formulate all my questions.  And I want to make my poor, put-upon writing group look at it.  If I have to print the poster/presentation out Friday morning in the hotel business center on the way to the first session, that isn't bad. 

And mostly, I will not stress about this any more.  I will do what I can, I will admit to my failings and I will try to leave everyone with the impression that I am an honest, sincere person with a great deal of potential.  Worst case is that they clarify their language for how far along people should be next year.  I will be prepared to the extent I can prepare well and cognizant of the areas that need work so that I can ask for help.

I really think that perfectionism is a disease, rampant among academics and wannabe's like me.  I see it in adviser's neurotic corrections/changes to the paper (we had so many changes tracked in that paper that we broke Word; seriously.), I see it in my reaction to this whole situation, and I see it in the faculty and students I regularly interact with. 

It's not healthy.  Not for any of us.

        

Apparently my stress this week is showing itself in random bursts into tears.....

Thank goodness it didn't happen until I got home.

        

I mentioned a while back that I was accepted for a modestly prestigious post-conference seminar for graduate students.  It said "Nominees must have substantially completed their courses and must have formulated a dissertation proposal."  I'm working on my proposal (formulated but not submitted, defended or approved), so that seemed close enough.

Then I got an email explaining more about the substance of the seminar:


So yes, I'm supposed to present this work (that I haven't done yet) in both a small group and a full on poster session.  To give you an idea of where I actually am:

• Still trying to get my head around hierarchical linear modeling
• Still massaging data, specifically
• Do I include students who I don't have all 4 years of data for?  What about ones I have 3 years of data for, but not 4?  Do the 3 years have to be consecutive?  (I have 310k students for 3 or 4 consecutive years, but another 23k who skip a year....I don't think I can use them....)
  
• What about students for whom the school identifier is invalid?  (Luckily not a lot, but still...)

How do I do this without embarrassing myself, my school or my adviser?

        

I've come to the conclusion that collaborative writing kind of sucks.  I sent the conference paper off to Chair this evening but realized based on his comments and my attempted revisions that we are prioritizing certain arguments differently.

The result is that he crossed out things I thought were important and put in an entire section on something that I specifically thing is NOT relevant, especially given what he crossed out.  And of course, as the graduate student in this relationship, I lose.

Moreover the draft he handed back to me had an awful lot of rewrites that were less about the point of the sentence and more about our different writing styles.  The point didn't change, and he made the sentences longer as often as he made them shorter.  I don't think there was a difference in clarity between the two.

To some extent this reinforces my desire for more independence.  I want him commenting, not editing.  Telling me where my argument is unclear or I say something that seems out of place, not changing sentence structure.  How can I develop my own voice when what I'm mostly learning is how to write in HIS voice.

        

We got an extension on our conference presentation, so it's due on Monday.  I spent 10 hours at my computer today, working on everything BUT the discussion and conclusion.  Tomorrow I will spend another 8-10 hours writing the discussion and conclusion.

Before 8pm tomorrow night I will send it to chair, who will shred it because there is something about my style that doesn't mesh well with his.  He'll make a stack of edits, which will need to be integrated before I send it to the discussant/chair/etc Monday night. 

That was supposed to be it.  I was going to have the next 2 weeks to prep for the conference, or more accurately to prep for the seminar I'm supposed to be doing at the end which has a LOT of required advanced work.  Instead, chair thinks our paper needs interactions and wants to work on it more before the conference.

I can't WAIT until this damned conference is over so that I can actually relax a little.  I'm tired....

        

Things are getting better.  Slowly.

Chair and I met on Sunday; his wife has had some more medical problems so I essentially have written the whole thing.  He admits that he is in no shape to write, but can edit, so that's what he'll do. 

We talked a little about what happened:  I told him my husband said if he made me cry again husband would break his knees.  He laughed and said it's not really grad school until you cry. 

However then we got to work, he saw everything I had done, and in response to a couple of things in email later that night said that I should book my tickets to the conference because I was definitely earning it now.  (I hate to break it to him, but I make more in my day job than he makes his; I was going regardless.  It was just a matter of whether it was to be a chance to look for a new mentor / program / career or not...)

I just sent the first full version of my conference paper to the printer.  I think it's not so bad.  If it were just me I would sit on it for a day or so, then do one more pass and call it good.  However it isn't; i have to send it to chair tonight.  He will shred it tomorrow and send it back to me.  *sigh*

On to other things....

I'm tired right now.  I was at 4 different sites in 2 different states since Monday AM - 2-3 hour drive between each one.  Of course, the meetings were great; very productive.  Plus I have to admit that anything that gets me out of downtown cube-farm h*ll makes my week better.  Hotels don't, and especially not super8 level hotels in podunk towns where you can't even get a decent pizza.  But it makes work more enjoyable to be out at the sites, and some of the drives were beautiful!!! 

Tomorrow is in the office (a good thing) and then friday I have a meeting about 2 hours away.  Day trip.  I'm a little worried, because every time I turn around someone else gets added to the invite list.  It was supposed to be just me and a software engineer whose brain I could pick about the database.  Now its me, the software engineer and 2 end users, one of which isn't nearly as knowledgeable as I would like.  I'll just apologize when I dive into things way over his head.

My treat for the week is a new ipod nano - my mini is at least 3 if not 4 years old and the battery life is somewhere on the order of 10 minutes unplugged.  Thing is, I listen to books on tape in my car and sometimes want to keep listening, say, over dinner.  Last night it didn't even make it to the salad.  That just won't do.  So I ordered a refurbished nano off the apple site; they will deliver it by the end of the week for less than it would have cost me to go to the apple store, and it has the same warranty as a new one.  That works for me.

I still don't know what I'm going to do, other than the fact that I have to get through this conference.  After that, I can think about my future plans; I have to keep reminding myself that while I am really enjoying myself at my job right now that is partially due to the projects I have, and I wanted to get out of that business for a reason.  Then I have to think about what it is I REALLY want.....

        

...although I've certainly been considering it.

I had a hugely bad meeting with chair last monday.  I was in tears most of it.  Here's the jist of the situation:
- we have an accepted conference paper due 3/1
- he has reconceptualized the project at least 3 times since we submitted the proposal last summer, generally with about a 1 sentence explanation to me each time. 
- I'm really close to burnt out and didn't get anything I should have done completed over christmas
- because of the reconceptualization (or rather the fact that one sentence was insufficient) my first draft of the lit review sucked.  really sucked.
- I'm now working full time which cuts into my work time.  However my first pass at the descriptive statistics also sucked in part because the reconceptualization meant different descriptives were needed.
- my second pass was better (although still not great), however he stopped reading after 4 sentences because I apparently pushed a button I wasn't aware of.
- last weekend his wife was in the hospital with medical issues
- last monday (after bringing her home for bed rest) he informed me that I shouldn't even GO to the conference, that my work was utterly unacceptable and that my name shouldn't be on the paper at all.  For about half an hour.

Now, I'm a grown-up.  I know there have been problems with my work of late as I have adjusted to my new work schedule (not well).  Heck, the friday BEFORE that I had been talking to my husband over dinner about dropping out because of many of the things I said in my last post.  Heck - my day job pays twice what an academic job will and they think I'm brilliant for doing things that frankly I don't consider that hard.  I could have a nice lucrative career and hobbies. 

And I am well aware that this situation with his wife likely had him more on edge than otherwise might have been the case.  He's behind on all his projects due to first the flue and then this, and I'm sure blames me for not picking up the slack (not that he told me about either before or even during, but that's another story). 

But he went from "this isn't good" to "you shouldn't even go and I can't believe I trusted you" with no steps in between.  And then he pounded on the theme for half an hour.  So yes, I cried.  And I asked myself why I was doing this. 

So far the only answer I have is pride; I am not a quitter and I succeed at what I attempt.  Further, I know I can do this and do it well.

However I admit that right now I'm questioning whether I ENJOY it enough to keep going.  Whether the stress is worth it.  Whether the time is worth it.  Or whether I wouldn't be better off just having a job that doesn't excite me but other things that do. 

I don't know.

In the meantime, I have commitments to uphold.  I'm putting in about 2 hours a night on this paper.  (I seem to lose the ability to write anything clear after that.)  Once this paper is in I have to prepare for the seminar I applied and was accepted to; I'll be presenting on the "idea" I submitted for a dissertation.  I suppose if that goes well I can just plow through and do that.

I do know that this is the last paper we write together.  Chair is great, but I need to stand or fail on my own (most likely fail) and I need to learn to do this research independently.  Ask for suggestions?  Fine.  Co-author?  Probably not good for either of us after this experience. 

I also need to keep thinking on what I am really interested in.  I can probably crank a dissertation out of that idea, but I have another mentoring session I'm attending in an area that I'm passionate about but is less "marketable".  I need to figure out if I care. 

Finally I need to decide if, assuming I do finish, I actually want the career of an academic.  I used to think so, but it turns out that the academic lifestyle I want isn't what I would get if I continue down the path I am on.  The type of research I would be doing isn't what I can imagine myself being happy doing for another 25 years.  So if not that, then what?  And is it worth continuing just to say I finished? 

        

Before I decided to get a PhD, I was looking at EdD programs and interviewing for the top IT position at a local community college.  I made it to the final 3 and was invited to speak on campus and meet with all the top administrators.  I was perfectly happy to take an administrative path, get an EdD and settle in for the long haul.

I didn't get it.  I cried.  A lot.  In a way, it broke me from climbing the career ladder.  I rethought my future and decided to get a PhD. 

Fast forward to yesterday, not 3 years after getting rejected for that job.  The guy they hired has ALREADY LEFT for another school and the position is open again.

I am remarkably bitter and  upset about this, and really there's no reason to be.  But I can't help but be reminded of how different my life would be right now if they had chosen me instead of him.

And how much more sure of myself I would be.  I've been in a real crisis lately; I just don't feel like I can ever think the way the academics around me seem to think.

• I can't come up with a dissertation topic. 
  
• Or rather, I come up with lots of them but none are the "starter dough" I'm supposed to be putting together.
• Most of the ideas require learning a completely new literature, which seems like more work than I have in me right now
• The literature I DO know appears to be in a no-longer-hot area; certainly not one that attracts grant money
  
• I can't for the life of me imagine what I'll teach when I get that far.  Granted, I've had horrible role-models: Chair teaches research methods in the EdD program (I could do that, I suppose) and I will graduate from a policy program having never taken a class that directly addressed policy in any way.  Maybe that's part of the problem; I have no idea what is SUPPOSED to be taught in this type of program.
• I am just feeling burnt out on this whole process.  I'm sure that is, in part, due to working full time and not being able to START looking at this stuff until 8 or 9pm most nights, but I'm just tired.

In contrast, had I gotten that job I would probably be working 40-50 hour weeks, but on a campus, doing something I'm good at and enjoy and KNOW, and maybe teaching as an adjunct in that area for fun and profit.  I would probably be done with an EdD by now because the school I would have gone to is easier and the bar for dissertations is lower. 

Instead I sit here questioning every decision I've made since the rejection and feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. 

I miss going to work, working, coming home and having time for a hobby.  I want to cook again, take cooking classes, do something crafty, work on decorating my house, learn to tile so that I can redo our bathroom, see my friends.

Instead I am currently trying to shoehorn going to the gym back into my schedule, which further reduces the time available to do anything.  I spend 12-14 hours a day one weekends at my desk trying to keep my head above water.  And I still don't feel like I belong or have what it takes to make it as an academic. 

Right now I feel like I've made a terrible mistake....

        

More than 2/3rds of the non-writing time will be spent organizing, manipulating and massaging the data.

We can't even START to run our analysis until I spend the day (hopefully, weekend if need be) adding indicators, coding schools in one way and then applying that to our student level data set and otherwise wearing a layer off my fingers at the keyboard.

Worse is the fact that I am still doing all this in SPSS because I never have time to load the data into a proper database and do it there....Which, mind you, is what I do for a LIVING, so that should tell you what kind of deadlines I've been working under....

The remaining 33% is split between 30% figuring out the best way to do the analysis and 3% of actually running it.  They don't tell you that either.

        

Not just the "your paper has been accepted" kind. 

Today's mail included the paper copy of the journal in which my first published paper is actually printed. 

(I'm 3rd author, of three, but still....)  This is kind of exciting!!!!

(If you have any interest in school choice, email me at protoscholar [ at ] gmail [ dot ] com and I'll be happy to forward the citation.)

        

Every month I try to sponsor another dog through the Arizona Animal Welfare League; They work with the SPCA and are a no-kill shelter in the valley.  This is the puppy I sponsored this month...



Her name is Suzy; she was just spayed so it will be a while before anyone can take her home, but I bet she'll have no problem when the time comes....

        

PUPPYBOWL!!!!

        

I'm working on a proposal for a History of Education Conference, and in the process looking at a bunch of newspaper articles from the time period (1840-1842 NYC).  Journalistic styles were far less...uhm...strict.

This particular article is talking about the public school commissioners election and basically talks about how all the big groups are putting together their own ticket.  The article finishes by saying:

Who knew you would end out laughing out loud while doing research like this....

Another article reports on a public meeting held on the School Question and includes, among other things, direct quotes of the snarky comments and interruptions ("cock-a-doodle-do") throughout the proceedings.  Every time some of them came up, I might add.

Today's journalism really does lack the entertainment value of these older papers....

        

I'm in a writing group.  We share our work and help each other out.  Recently one of our absentee members finally sent in something for us to help with; the methods chapter of her dissertation.  In a word, it's awful. 

• It's chapter 3.  It starts on page 11.  How the HELL do you introduce and contextualize a dissertation-level project in 10 pages? 
  
• It's 26 pages long.  I made it through 11 before the red ink was so thick that I felt genuinely bad about it.  Things I noticed:
• Excessively repetitive paragraphs. 
  
• Using the same words over and over to the point of distraction
• Unclear argument
• Confusing organization
• Strange included and/or excluded details (like the height, build and hair/eye color of only some of the people interviewed; it's either relevant for all or not)
• Sloppy grammar, excessive use of passive language and wordiness
  

I felt bad about being so harsh but when I met with the other writing group members (except this one) we all felt the same way.  Since we haven't seen much of the person we didn't want to be overly harsh, so one of our members asked where they were in the process.

The answer was "defending in April". 

Why is it that some of us are pushed so much harder than others? 
Why is it that the expected quality doesn't at least have some kind of minimum? 

I don't want our missing member to fail;  I'd love to see this fixed and worked into an amazing article someday.  It's an interesting question and relevant to many contemporary debates.  But if I sent something written like that to Chair he would send it back to me with "you can do better" if he were in a good mood and "you must be kidding" if he weren't. 

I'm not trying to say I'm a great writer.  I aspire to competence and it's a ways off.  But I find it shocking that there isn't at least SOME basic standard that has to be demonstrated and that the standard can be so variable as to allow that type of work to be moved forward.  In the end this person will have the same degree that I have but not have had to perform at anywhere near the same level to get it.  That offends me.

        

I really seem to post in spurts, don't I.  3-4 times one day, then nothing for a few days. 

I spent most of tuesday and wednesday nights pulling together some data for my adviser and a paper he is working on with another group of people.  I was tasked with pulling the descriptive statistics for both "treatment" and control groups.  (We aren't actually treating anyone; this is looking at a distinct subgroup of students and comparing them to a 'matched' group in historical data.)  Before I could do that I had to distinguish the two groups, which in one case meant some complicated data manipulations. 

It just KILLS me that so many academics try to make one tool do anything.  Case in point.  All of the above data manipulation was done in SPSS.  SPSS is NOT a data management tool.  In fact, it's not very good at it at all.  But all of the data is in flat files and everyone wants stuff too quickly for me to ever properly load it into a relational database from which I can get the information I need easily.  So instead of writing a simple query to get the flags I needed I had to screw around with SPSS merge functions.  It took hours.  It was tedious.  I could have been done in minutes if it had been in a real database, but since I'm apparently the only one in my field that knows how to write a SQL statement  I can never convince anyone to give me the TIME to do it right.

I don't even know if I'll get a thank you on that paper, let alone an author credit.  Seeing as how I've done all the scut work with the data so far a thank you would be nice.  I'm not involved in the conceptualization of the paper, however, so unless they get me involved in the writing process (unlikely because I get the feeling there are too many cooks on this one already) the best I can hope for is a footnote....

Anyway, I got that done, then spent last night pulling together all the paperwork necessary to refinance our house.  Our rate is a bit high and we can drop it by over a point right now, so that is in process.  I faxed it all off this morning from work where there is a nice FAST fax machine.  (We have an all-in-one with fax capabilities at home, but if I had tried to fax 26 pages of supporting documentation from there last night it would still be working on it...)  Now to hope and pray that our kitchen remodel has compensated for any drop in the market since last June (when it was appraised for the cash-out refinance to do the remodel) so that we can keep our 80% loan to value.... 

        

Make Your Own Album Cover
1. Click on this link. The title of the page is the name of your band.
2. Click on this link. The last four words of the final quotation on the page are the title of your album.
3. Click on this link. The third picture is your album cover.
4. Add your band name and title to the picture.

( I really need to make that quote my motto somehow...)