I can safely say that I've crossed the abysmal precipice of procrastination. The dissertation is off and running. The catalyst for me was, not surprisingly, a class that is requiring me to log at least nine solid hours of writing every single week. I say not surprisingly because I really shouldn't have been surprised that a class has spurred me on to productivity. I'm good at being a student. I'm good at taking classes. The first time I ran a marathon, I was in a marathon-running class. There were weekly assignments. Homework. Expectations. I did well.
So I'm thankful that a friend nudged me into signing up for this class at the last minute (seriously... I showed up for the first class meeting about halfway through it and I signed up for the course later that night). I'm still working on the literature review. I have murky ideas about what the methods and stats will entail. But I have a 10 page bibliography and a 25 page document and that's got to count for something.
And just in case you're really interested in the thrilling topic of my dissertation? It's going to have something to do with an analysis of communication patterns within problem-solving teams in schools. It's a bit obscure and it involves transcribing multidisciplinary team meetings in schools and coding every single utterance on different dimensions... but it's actually kinda fun.
I should be proposing my dissertation sometime this spring. In the meantime, I have to pass the Praxis and then get through prelims (also known as comps or quals - preliminary, comprehensive, or qualifying exams... basically 2 solid weeks of writing followed by a verbal grilling by faculty to make sure I know my stuff. Or to make sure that at least I know what I don't know).
There's your school update. I promise to get back to the regularly-scheduled Evelyn programming now :)
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