Yesterday's Commencement

Commencement is always a day long event as we conduct 3 ceremonies, with Colleges grouped by size. It's a joyful time as we watch our students graduate, and it's also joyful to see fellow colleagues wear the new academic regalia showing their new elevated status of academic achievement! So it was yesterday when Stephanie wore her new gard showing she was now Dr. Stephanie!

I loved seeing her in her new robes because this is my goal as well!

There's a pomp and circumstance to commencement that I love, and I do love seeing my colleagues in their regalia because they look so handsome!

And, of course, there's always one outlier in any group, and for us this is our beloved John as he wears a purple medieval beefeaters verson of the doctoral tam...

...and, if you look closely, you can see the he also wears a long feather in his hat. No one else wears this, so this is uniquely John! I like it though. It's always good to have someone in the group push the limits a bit!

Self-Absorption...A Requisite for Dissertation Completion

I've come to the conclusion that a prerequisite for successfully completing a dissertation is developing a healthy dose of self-absorption... and that without it, one is doomed to linger on in doctoral dissertation hell. My journey has certainly been a long one, and I've had some friends and family say (or wonder) what's taken me so long! Well, factor in switching careers, illneses, family deaths, other challenges, starting a whole new program (or programs-- plural) at work, taking my program into another state, taking my program online, developing a very active honor society (for which we've been recognized by the international organization, by the way), writing new curricula, building a whole new faculty, and just the nuts and bolts of the "ordinary" tasks required at work and so there you go...years fly by! But now I'm on a successful path as I defended my proposal earlier this week, and I have a great committee who like my work! That, in itself, is tremendously validating! I didn't get to this point overnight because I have written several proposals over the years and peered deep down into several theoretical lenses and research methods...but this is THE one! It's exciting to be moving forward and making progress...now just have to keep focused and not let grass grow under my feet--- which goes back to my earlier point of saying that I need to develop a healthy dose of self-absorption and selfishness so as to protect my time and energy.

The irony of this is that I have dreaded defending my proposal because I am one of those people who think much better after the fact. It's hard for me to be put on the spot and come up with thoughtful, coherent answers. However, I did pretty well! It was also nice because I was able to do this at the downtown campus on G Street instead of driving to Ashburn...

...where the Executive Leadership program is located. We completed all of our coursework in Ashburn, and I enjoyed the process but got tired of the drive. This week I was able to take what I call the "Joe Biden" train, (the 6:25 AM Amtrak train) into DC, so it made for a more relaxing trip.

After the defense concluded, my Chair and I enjoyed a celebratory lunch at Quigley's Pharmacy around the corner.

This was an actual pharmacy over a hundred years ago! Love the history of the GWU DC campus! Since my train was not for another couple of hours, I decided to enjoy a brisk walk in the cold, across campus... where I passed the professor's gate (this is the gate doctoral students are walked through when they complete dissertation defense...

... (can't wait for that!), and then stopped by to see George himself...

...and yes, you can see that it was a cold, blustery day in DC! The day before was the inauguration, so the city was still in various stages of cleaning up...

They were dismantling the viewing stands in front of the White House,

and huge vacuums stood in the streets ready to suck up the paper litter and trash strewn about.

Banks of portapotties stood at the ready waiting to be picked up--- they were everywhere!

It took about an hour from the campus on G Street to walk to Metro Station... and it was great exercise. Yes, I could have taken the metro back from the Foggy Bottom Station to Union Station, but this was much more fun, and the walk provided time to process and think through the morning's events. It was a good day, now on to completing the IRB process, making the edits, doing the pilot study, and waiting for the go-ahead to collect data! I can see the light at the end of the tunnel! In the meanwhile, yes, I will learn to say "NO" to anything asked of me and just focus on my research. Happy days!

Dissertation Work

Nothing is quite so fine as to receive validation that you are doing a good job on the dissertation proposal as positive comments from committee members! I've been working on this a long time... wandered down the path of various theoretical perspectives, fell in love with all the different research methods and wanted to try them all! Alas, I have just this one life to live! Then, two years ago I fell in love with factorial surveys, historical-comparative analysis, conversational analysis, and discourse analysis... and wanted to do them all, but I had to be pragmatic, and given the demands of my job and my family, again, I had to make the decision of what worked best with the subject I intended to study. So I fell in love with case study methods... mutliple, comparative, critical, embedded... but there's only so much time and so, much to my chagrin, I am doing a single case study. It's so hard to choose and narrow down because I want to do it all...does it sound weird to say that I love being a graduate student? Even the dissertation process, and all of the life-event interruptions I've experienced, this process has been so rewarding, challenging, and in a way, mind-altering. My world view has changed, and that is the value of education, to change and "grow" the mind. The dissertation process...Human Development at work!

January Reflections

January is marching along and I realized I haven't posted in a long time. I've just been focused on getting my proposal ready for defense, and may all the stars align to help me be successul next week!

It's been a long time coming, but it's time now to move forward and get this done! I can't wait to get out into the field and collect data... have already outlined my timeline so that I can complete this by September. Ever since I came back from Holland...

I've been in a more reflective state... thinking about everything and dissertating. Holland was a good break from everything. With my sister and cousin we planned a "cousins" trip for NYC in August while ASA was happening-- I could get hotel rooms at a discounted rate, so we thought it would be ideal...but it looks like it may not happen since one of the cousins has a personal conflict and so they can only come at the end of August-- which for me is very dfficult! School starts in September and those last 2 weeks in August are exceptionally busy for me-- so I don't know what will happen with our wonderful plans. It would be so nice to have a cousins vacation- maybe in San Francisco in 2014??? Holland this time was also one of those eventful trips because Ed's mother passed away and so I was on the phone with the US a lot. I couldn't make it back for the funeral, so when I got back home at 10 PM on Monday evening, the first thing I did was to pick up the dog, and then Fawn and I waited for them to come back from Kentucky at 2 AM. It was a strange homecoming. Since then I've been escaping and discovering and enjoying some wonderful expat blogs... one of my favorite is Random Walks in the Low Countries. It's interesting reading how others perceive Holland and Dutch life. There certainly seem to be plenty of Americans living in Holland! One of the ex-pat bloggers posted about

Kasteel Terworm in Limburg, and when I checked it out online, it really looked like a great place! So, I think it will be my next destination!

All of this led me think about goals...and I usually don't set too many, which may be one of my problems. Looking back at 2011, I can say that it was pretty uneventful and didn't do much, so I'd like to change that in 2013 and do LOTS! Travel and fixing up the house would be top on the list-- so I'll have to plan and see what I can do about making that happen. So here's to 2013!