Parts-n-Pieces

The news is official ...

I am a Ph.D.

RBOC (end of November edition)

Good Things, Random Bullets, The Dissertation, . . . and a some other bulleted stuff.

Good Things:

• The Bundle came home for Thanksgiving (her quarter break).
• The Bundle has now gone home . . . heh, "home" . . . her place.
• The house is fairly clean and laundry is done.  Good enough for now.
• The blogs that students created this semester are terrific.  Most students wrote most of the time, and they wrote thoughtful and careful posts.  I'm so proud. :-)   NaBloPoMo helped keep everyone accountable.
• The fireplace works just fine . . . as long as I leave one window open.  (It's not quite cold enough here for a fire.)
• The grading is done (almost) . . . just a few late arriving pieces.
• The social-networking tools I use frequently . . . what a great way to stay connected to people I enjoy and care about.
• The end of the semester in about two weeks.  This one has been surreal.
• The RSA Summer Institute.  I registered, and it should be just awesome.  One seminar and one workshop are directly related to the work I am doing and the work I'm planning for the spring/summer.
• The iPod and "shuffle" music
• The dinner at my sister's . . . playing poker with the fam is always fun.
• The classes I'm slated to teach next spring excite me greatly:  Intermediate Composition (rhetoric and documentary film), Sophomore Seminar (Writing through Photography), and Advanced Composition (multi-genre writing) -- those RSA seminar/workshop will be useful for future studies.

Random Bullets of Crap:

• Using the Geo-phyzz bath bomb from Lush Products is mighty fine. Relaxing.  It makes for an expensive bath, but worth it.
• Stressing just slightly that I have only heard from a handful of places from this current job search.  The wait is expected, but still difficult.
• Checking the rhet/comp wiki too often.
• Feeling sad for the young widow who lived behind me (she moved out today). Her husband passed away a few days ago (he was 36).  She now has no job (he was the family provider) and three young children.  So sad. She's gone home to live with her parents.
• Feeling a bit disappointed in some folks I know quite well who said nothing (not a word) about my own illness this semester or my sister's death.  But then, they did the same thing when my mother died a few years ago.  Par?  Maybe.  Disappointing, nonetheless.
• Learning that Patti Smith was awarded an honorary doctorate from Rowan University this past May.  Good for her and good for Rowan!  A bit of a site note:  Rowan sent me a very, very nicely worded rejection letter.

The Dissertation

• Wondering why it's not done yet . . .  it's not like I have anything else to do (besides, you know, teach 9 million students and read 19 gazillion essays).  Truly.  The date they gave me to make the corrections the rogue committee member demanded is 12/3 (Wednesday).
• Wondering if I am close to being done?  Not on your life.  The more I change, the more that needs changing. 
• Wondering when "enough" is "enough"?
• Wondering "what if" they (or this one person) still has issues with something that's taken me two years to write?

Other stuff:

• Headache.  'nuff said ... I've had this headache for weeks (months), and it won't go away.  Sometimes it's mild; sometimes it's not (like now).  Nothing seems to help.
• As much as I like working with student-athletes, realizing that having 80-90 percent in one class (or in two classes, actually) makes it almost impossible to keep on a schedule . . . some group of them is always gone. The lack of a consistent schedule has been hard on everyone . . . but guess who's course evaluations will suffer?
• Patti Smith appears frequently on my iPod shuffle. I'm not complaining, mind you, just noticing.  (I really love the B&W image on her site.)

I suppose I should end on a positive note: 

The semester is almost over, the diss will be finished before too long, MLA (and San Francisco) is coming up, I have some really great students this term, I'll be teaching classes that I'm excited about next term, my daughter is healthy, and there is money in the bank.  Life is good.

Dissertation Defense Metaphor

No, I don't advocate violence or threats of any kind.  However, this image, taken at yesterday's football game, seems appropriate to my current situation.  I surely wouldn't want to be a committee facing that O-line.  Just sayin'....

Actually, this image can explain my dissertation in many ways (which, of course, I am not going to elaborate upon here):  three-man line vs. an eight-man line (surely the 8-man line is stronger, faster, better able to move the ball, as there are more of them); white vs. black; right vs. left; home-field advantage; underdog vs. top dog; academy vs. sport.  It's all something to explore another day. A random photograph has so much to say.

In the meantime, I'm the quarterback in this little dissertation defense drama; I call the plays, I move the ball, I direct the team to its next play or score.  That would be me.  Me, the quarterback. 

 

Good Things (Heading into the Abyss Edition)

An abyss:  a bottomless gulf, pit or chaos of the old cosmogonies; an immeasurably deep gulf or great space.  Wait, doesn't that describe graduate school?!?!?!?    I was told to "expect anything" today.  That sounds like I'm venturing into another abyss (the final abyss maybe?).

Some good things to (re)direct my focus:

• Growing a Volkswagen-sized zit on the bridge of my nose . . . it's a good thing in the sense that these folks today might not ask me anything because they'll be so horrified and terrified by the zit that they'll run from the room screaming.  I can only hope.

• Knowing the Bundle is asleep in the next room.  She is (we are) such an exception to any statistic about what happens to children of single-parents.  She has God's blessing on her life, and I know it.  Lord, how I know it.

• Having lunch with a friend yesterday who places my career trajectory in such clear context and focus . . . My career path is not typical, she says, but then "neither are you."  She reminds me that "idealism" is not a bad word.

• Being told to "expect anything" today . . . and that "anything" could be failure, conditional pass, pass, or a strategy meeting.  Why is the uncertainty a "good thing" you might ask?  It keeps me on my toes and keeps me prepared!  (envision the thumbs up sign here) [/sarcasm]

• Telling the "Cliff Notes" version of my educational history to a few women after class the other day (they asked, I didn't offer) . . . rising from divorce, attending a community college (and feeling oh-so-accomplished), then a university ('cause I worked there), receiving a scholarship to a Master's program . . . then the Ph.D.  I'm not supposed to have this path . . . the path of the educated is much smoother, more paved.  I was raised in a rented mobile home, and nothing was paved.  We had gravel roads.  Still.

• Coming to the end of a very long 9-year graduate school journey.   Nine years.  Yes, most people get out in 4 or 5.  Me?  Nine years.  But then, at the same time, I have held two full-time jobs in the profession I was studying to enter, I directed a successful nonprofit organization, I have been an active member of my community, I reared an amazing daughter by myself.  (Oh, yea, and every member of the dept. I studied under left that institution.)  In all that light, nine years doesn't sound so long.

• Listening to Patti Smith talk about William Blake (the muse for "My Blakean Year").  ... Blake never had any real success, he lived in a continued state of poverty, he was never understood by his contemporaries, but he never let go of his vision or his visionary powers.

• Charging the batteries of my camera . . . no matter what happens today, I will pick up my camera tomorrow.

• Receiving an email a bit after midnight last night from a former student-- Case Study #3 of my dissertation -- an unprompted and unsolicited email from a student who is no longer at the institution . . . a simple email that said he was thinking of me . . . his favorite professor at TCU.  How sweet.  How timely.

• Reminding myself that through students like CS#3, through my daughter, through my friends, through the women we aided and changed in the shelters and in the elementary-school programs we implemented, I have changed lives.  With or without the credential, I have changed lives.  Isn't that really the point?

• Listening to Southside Johnny's "Under the Sun" over and over.  I'm loving this song.  (Heh, I just thought of this:  he's another example of one so very talented, but who has never received the accolades and recognition of his same-state peer.  He's affected people.)

No matter what happens today, with or without the degree, I will have crossed over that bottomless abyss.   I don't know what awaits, and it doesn't matter.  I will move forward.  And on.  Always on.

The Only Good Dissertation is a Done Dissertation

If you follow me on Twitter and Facebook updates, you know that I submitted my completed dissertation to my committee this afternoon.

After months and months and years of working at this degree, and feeling as if I would never come to the end of the work given all the other responsibilities in my life, I have.  I'm almost at the end.  My director's comments were that the committee will read over the work for the next few weeks, makes notes about what I need to modify, then we'll schedule a defense for early November.  Between now and the first of December, I'll make whatever changes are necessary to the work.  But it's possible that by early November, I'll be a Ph.D.

I write that-- "early November" --and it doesn't seem quite real.  Holy crap.  Digression:  when I lived in Tokyo I used to just walk down the street-- minding my own business.  I would have these sudden attacks of surreal moments:  "I'm walking down the street in Tokyo, Japan," I would tell myself.  It didn't seem right.  Me.  In Japan.  Completing the dissertation and being a Ph.D.?  It's like that, surreal.

Suddenly, I'm very, very tired.

Things I will do now that I'm not writing about alternative programs and pedagogies for underprepared student-athletes (but I'll do them starting tomorrow):

• Take photographs.  I have missed my camera and using photography as a way of seeing the world.  Maybe I won't go back to Project 365-- as I did that for 18 months-- I think I'll start something else.
• Visit with my family.  I'll see the Bundle in a few weeks when I go to LA.  Can't wait!!
• Apply for a job ... a lot of them, actually. 
• Wash my car.  Really.  It's bad.
• Read blogs.  I have 837 blog posts in my feed reader that have been ignored for the past few weeks.
• Write blog posts.  I've missed writing here.
• Grade student essays.  I'm sure students will be happy to get them back. 
• Celebrate the submission, the revision, the defense, and the graduation.  Lots of celebration going on in these parts.
• Visit San Francisco (see applying for a job above).
• Clean my house. 
• See San Francisco (since I once lived there, I want to visit the places I used to visit).
• Get a haircut.
• Referee soccer.
• Buy another graduation present for myself, something not quite as expensive as the first present I bought myself.  (hee hee; click the link and go to the last item) 
• Exercise-- yes, it's been a while --and I want to get back to it.
   

But for now, it's time for bed. I'm bone tired.  Tomorrow starts a whole new chapter . . . ok, the new chapter will be planned tomorrow. That new chapter will actually begin . . . early November.

Cross posted at Dissertation Boot Camp.

My Curriculum Vita as a Wordle "Word Cloud"

.
.
.
As I work on the last chapter of the dissertation, and as I work on job search materials, I play with Wordle.  (I noted a few of these on Facebook this morning.)  Wordle makes the most interesting visual representations of writing.  This is my curriculum vitae as a word cloud.   I'm glad that "writing" and "teaching composition" are some of the m most commonly used terms.  Maybe I need to limit the use of institutional affiliations?

A New Deadline (9/19/08)

Today is the day I wanted to have my dissertation completed.  I didn't make it.  But I knew I wouldn't.  It was a really ambitious deadline.  But I got so much accomplished . . . more than I would have if I just kept up with dabbling at the work when I had time.  Out of six chapters, I have one to go.  This is an important chapter that will be extensive, I think, but the notes are there.  I just have to fashion those notes into something coherent.

Classes start for me on Monday, so with the teaching load amping up, I'm giving my self until September 19th to have this late bit done.  That's 4 weeks.  This deadline, I think, is manageable.  The countdown calendar starts anew:  Day #28.

Good Things (after some dissertation whining)

Yes.  Yes, this graphic depicts my state of being at the moment.  (However, if this graphic were true to life, it would have a dress.  You know, to show that I'm female.)  But I've digressed. 

Headless.  I am headless.  My brain is mush.  My eyes are shot.  My back hurts from sitting at a computer for weeks on end.  I'm not thinking clearly in any sort of way.  I am spinning my wheels with the dissertation, reading and moving the same few paragraphs over and over and over.  None of it makes sense right now.

I have one chapter to finish (analysis) and two more to finalize (intro and conclusion).  Then I'm done.  I have 10 days, and while I don't want to psyche myself out, I'm not sure I'm going to make it.  As I noted before, this is a soft deadline, one I set for myself, so if I don't make that 8/22 deadline, the world won't come crashing down around me, but still.  I'll keep on with it.  One step in front of the next.   Eventually I'll get there.

But in the midst of this fatigue, a list of 10 good things:

• I truly can see the end of this project.  Last night, I started making mental plans for my home office when I throw away all the copied journal articles I have.  The space it'll open up!
• I know more about intercollegiate athletics (in Division I-A) than I ever hoped to know.
• I have saved money by not eating out.
• I feel smart.
• I see how my work can be generalized beyond the subgroup of student-athletes I am writing about.  This work can be useful with almost any marginalized student group.
• I have a healthy research agenda based on this dissertation (and all those things I could not include).
• I like my subject, and I like (very much) the students I had in this study.
• I appreciate the nexus of critical pedagogy with feminist pedagogy . . . relational pedagogy.
• I like that I have worked very hard on this project.  (No one else will probably ever read the whole thing, but I know what went into producing it.)
• I know the project is on "the tip of my tongue," and I like how that feels.
• I can't wait to get back to Project 365.  I miss the creative outlet photography gives me.

15 more days of dissertation hell to go

When I took my comprehensive exams, I wrote almost 70 pages (double-spaced) in three days over my subject areas: critical pedagogy, literacy, and service-learning.  (In my program, we took three five-hour exams, MWF, no notes, no prior knowledge of questions, no knowledge of the types of questions, and our reading lists contained about 100 items per subject.)  At the end of each exam, I wasn't tired.  I was excited, actually.  I felt that I was able to produce very nice essays in a short amount of time.  I felt smart. However, as the afternoon turned to evening, I felt so very tired.  Drained, actually.  Mentally exhausted.

I'm feeling that way again with the dissertation.  In between tutorials and fire drills (no kidding), I'm writing.  I've stopped reading, and I'm only writing.  I don't think the writing is all that great, though.  It's choppy and fragmented.  But this is a draft, and I know I'll still have revisions to do when I'm finished with this draft.  When.  Yes, when I'm finished.  I can see the light, as they say.  I know that I'm coming in on being done with this dissertation, but this last push, this last hard push before school starts?  It's wearing me down.

You know how you can have a word on the "tip of your tongue"?  My dissertation rests there, on the tip of my tongue.  I know what I want to write-- I know it in my body, I know it-- it's right on the tip of my . . . of my what? consciousness, abilities, finger tips, something?  I see the end of this process because I see the entire scope of this work.  I feel smart.  Tired, but smart.

Cross-posted at Dissertation Bootcamp.

My New Mantra: Pass Without Embarrassment

I realized today that my graduate education is probably unlike the graduate educations of most people.  Most people (at least those I know), have mentors and support and peer colleagues, and institutional recognition . . . me?  I have none of that.  Seriously.   But I'm left to navigate this dissertation by myself with very little assistance from anyone.  On one hand, this really sucks.  I want the kind of mentoring and hand-holding I see others get.  I want to be valued in that way, I suppose.  On the other hand, though, I'm learning to do this work by myself.   I'm confident (at least most of the time) that I'm contributing something worthwhile with the dissertation, and that I'm preparing myself for a future in this field.

However, after this morning's discouraging (impromptu) conversation with the DGS, I'm convinced that I just need to get the dissertation done and move on.  The support I so desire is not there and will never be there (at least for me).  About a year ago, on a Parts-n-Pieces blog that is no longer active, I wrote about my disappointment in reading a dissertation that was just horribly done, and I was stunned that a committee of smart people had let this person through, that this person could call him/herself a Ph.D.   What was encouraging about this post was that others read and responded to it, posting comments on their own blogs.

Collin placed this subject in a terrific context; the diss is not the most important or the best work you'll ever produce.  Krista picked up the subject on her blog and wrote some encouraging info about her own work.  In fact, Krista pointed to Johndan who provided a motto that I will now also adopt about dissertation writing:  Pass Without Embarrassment.

I don't know that anyone will read my dissertation.  My chair maybe, but that's about it.  The work doesn't have to be groundbreaking material, even though that's what I wanted.  I had not received the kind of mentoring and support that other students have received in my program.  I wanted my work to prove that I didn't need all that support, that I was better, somehow.  That's not the case (or so the DGS mentioned this morning), but I don't much care now.  I just want it done.

Pass Without Embarrassment ... my new mantra.

Dissertation Update (the lit review is hellish, I tell you)

It's no big secret:  Writing a dissertation is hard work.  I've been convinced for quite some time.

Many of the sources I read about dissertation writing stated to write the literature review first, but did I listen?  Did I heed their advice?  Absolutely not.  I was convinced that I knew my sources, their basic arguments, and I where my work fit within those arguments.  Instead of the lit review, I felt the need to write the case studies, the methodology, a chapter on pedagogy, and I've roughed out the intro and conclusion.  (I'm nearing the end of this project, the lit review and findings/analysis chapters are all that remain).  But now that I'm constructing the literature review, I can see places I need to cut back.  I have way too much information, and I'm drowning in it.  Constructing the literature review is showing me just how much information I'm working with, and as I mentioned on Twitter more that once today, it's kicking my ass.  As a graduate student, I never constructed a literature review.  (Shocking, I know!)  I've constructed plenty of very extensive Annotated Bibliographies, but never the lit review.  So now I struggle.

I spent the day constructing the mind-map below (constructed with Mindjet MindManager Pro 7, damn I love this program) that contains four of the six areas I need to review, and it's within these areas I'll cut back as I don't need another 100-page chapter).   The graphic image below is too small to read, but each "arm" is a subject area of the dissertation (literacy, basic writing, critical pedagogy, athletics/athletes, etc.), the major theorists of that subject, what they believe or don't believe about the specific subject under question. The interesting part will be to see how these areas overlap.

With all this trimming, I now have a research agenda for the next several ... months (years, decades). This is also a very good thing.

Cross posted at Dissertation Bootcamp.

A Study in Venn Diagrams (or, why I'm not blogging)

The lack of blog activity is pretty simple, really.  I got nothin'.  Just nothin'.  The dissertation is taking all my energy and focus.  I'm on "vacation" from my job for a few weeks (this is a good thing) and I felt my energy and creativity returning being away from that daily grind, but the diss sucks those positive energies right up (I feel that I have to finish the dissertation in these three weeks, and you know, it's not gonna happen that fast).  OK, the diss is taking a lot of my energy and focus, but there are a few other things keeping me from writing in this space.  I'm missing my daughter like crazy.  I'm thinking about the upcoming job search, my current job, what I want for (and from) my life, and I'm stressing.  All that stress takes energy, too. 

This photo depicts my life at the moment.  All the yellow/orange circles (Christmas lights, by the way) represent areas of the dissertation I'm thinking about, writing on, researching, my daughter, my job.  The black area is just about everything else in my life.   It all overlaps.  But I'm blaming my lack of writing on the dissertation.

 

Photo is much cooler in a larger size.

 

I plan to do a few things to take care of myself while I'm on "vacation":

• A massage next week (before I go back to work).
• A few more minor-league baseball games.
• A photo excursion on Saturday (a day trip somewhere).
• A few afternoons at the pool.
• A visit from the Bundle the last weekend of July.  :-)

Writing a Dissertation (old skool)

How I spent part of my afternoon, writing the literature review for the dissertation ... oldskool style.

Chapter Word Clouds (Wordle Image)

Krista and Collin wrote about Wordle last week, but I'm just now getting back to the dissertation.  So, my case study chapter in a word cloud:

Click image to embiggen.

I do like this type of "seeing" of the dissertation work.  My point in this dissertation is students and their writing; the fact that the students are student-athletes is important, but it's not the primary focus of the work.

Ok, a few more below the jump.

 

Perceptions of Student Athletes (I can't be the only one seeing the positive)

Edited to add:  After seeing some very good presentations from my intermediate writing students this morning, I walked back to my office.  Along the way back, I stumbled upon a conversation where one faculty member explained student-athlete behavior to another faculty member.  "Those students," this person said, "behave as they do because they are all raised in really bad homes.  They don't know any better.  They only know how to make bad decisions."

I simultaneously wanted to cry, to slap this person silly, to say something-- anything-- to set this person straight.  But I couldn't.  With this person, the ideas are engrained.  Nothing I would say would make a difference.  Sadly, I could only walk away.

---

It's no secret that I appreciate student-athletes -- as young people (not only as basketball players or football players or whatever sport they happen to play), but as men and women who are becoming something at the university.  They are athletes-- very, very good athletes-- but they are also young and silly and sometimes really immature.  That's what I like about them.  I get to see them develop into mature people.  And they do.  They mature, they change, they grow up.  It's wonderful to watch, and I appreciate that process so much.

.

I am equally as unappreciative of the comments I hear daily-- yes, daily-- from other faculty members, from staff members, even from random citizens about how "those" men are hoodlums and how they were reared in bad homes and how they make bad decisions and how they cheat and how they lie and ....  the list goes on and on.  I have to walk away from these conversations believing these people-- the vast majority of people who happen to be around me-- are idiots ... or they are racists ... or both.

.

A week or so ago, Chris had a post on his blog about the perceptions people have of student-athletes, about wishing he'd written down all that he'd heard people say about these students.  I sometimes wish the same, that I had recorded all that I've heard about student-athletes, but almost all I ever hear are the negative comments.  I can't stand to hear any more -- much less read about them again.  Chris's experiences are very different from mine, so I appreciate how he hears the positive.  I wish I lived in a place that had good things to say about student-athletes.  I can't be the lone voice.  Or maybe I am.  At least in this part of the country.

.

Today my intermediate writing class presented their final projects; each student produced a mini-documentary film based on an essay he or she had written earlier in the semester.  With this project, the students constructed a rhetorical revision.  They constructed the five-minute film, but they also wrote an essay that accompanies the film.  I am so pleased with what they produced.  They took care constructing their films, and they were able to achieve their purpose . . . using film as a method of argument.  If you are interested in the majority of projects, check the link (or see the Pages tab in the right gutter and click on the "Student Projects" link).  I have used their work here with permission, but it won't be up for long as the work belongs to them.  I'm just bragging on 'em.

.

But the title of this post:  perceptions of student athletes.  The class that produced these mini-documentaries had a significant number of student-athletes enrolled.  I enjoy these students and what they bring, and subsequently, I tend to have a lot of student-athletes in my classes.  The clip below is produced by a student-athlete in a revenue-producing sport.*  For me to see where he started-- as a first-year student in the ICW course-- and to see where he is now, how he does the work that's required of him and how really takes the work seriously, I couldn't be more pleased.  I'm pleased that he does this work, but I'm pleased how he's grown into a mature and centered young man.  I truly desire that others could see these students as I do.  But they don't, or many of them do not.  Since they don't typically see the positive experiences that student-athletes bring to a teaching/learning encounter, they don't typically see the student's work as worthwhile.

.

But the student who produced this film:  Someday when he's famous, I'll be able to say, "I knew him when."  But most nprobably, when he's not famous and he's working a job somewhere and he's supporting his family and paying his taxes and doing all those things the rest of us do, I'll be able to say, "I knew him when."

.

.* He has given permission that I post his video here.