I made a rookie mistake, and am frustrated with myself.  I just wrote a pretty long post for here, had it all in the Weebly page (instead of cutting and pasting from a Word document) and when I went to publish it, something happened and it disappeared.  Aaahhhh.  I know better!

So, I’ll shortly recap (while writing this is MS Word to cut and paste into my blog) some of my updates.

I was able to get to the 2/3 mark with my coding today—all As are coded together and all Bs are coded together.  The final 1/3 will be coding both essays together for each student.  It was awesome to be able to sit and focus, to get a chunk of this work done.  After a beginning to the summer that was not-going-as-planned (as life often does), and a real struggle to dive in completely, I’ve hit a stride.  Today marks ½ a week into a 3-week dog sitting gig where I get to isolate myself at a table by a window that looks out on the Organ Mountains.  In fact, two summers ago, I completed my comprehensive exams in exactly the same way—holed up in a dog sitting place in the mountains. It is the perfect place to get into a work groove.

My supportive and loving partner, has been an inspiration through this process.  Her work ethic is admirable and heartening—she is thorough, detailed, and precise. This makes me want to work hard, too.  We’ve still managed to cook delicious meals together, watch a few episodes of Orange is the New Black, play softball, etc.  I’m happy to have preserved joy outside of school in order to get through what at times seems like an arduous school process.

It’s nice to be at a place where my dissertation work does also bring some joy.  After reading and coding the second set of essays today, I have REALLY interesting things dumped into my side-file (“things_I_think_about_while_coding.docx”) that remains an open, running self-commentary of associative thoughts, interesting connections and themes, and the occasional poem title for later use.  Just a very short selection of some of the things I’ve been noticing students discussing in their post-course reflection:

--new understanding of intellectualism
--expanded understanding of communication and writing, audience
--expanded understanding of definition of writing as beyond essays
--assignments built on each other in a way that fostered memorable learning
--memorable assignments help them invest more of themselves
--developed creative-critical thinking
--students engaging with one another was important to figuring things out
--hands-on style creates engagement which makes work meaningful to them

There’s about 4 pages of notes in the file.

Today I’m also thankful to scholars Jody Shipka and Cheryl Ball for posting their own productivity and work on Facebook—it keeps me going.  Jody posted something last week to the effect of, “summer means I can’t wait to go to bed at night so I can get up and start working again in the morning.”  Hell yes! I love that attitude, and the travels and current scholarship that these scholars both address on FB keeps the type of work we do visible, and keeps me motivated.

Also, a shout out to Spotify Free which has been helping me move through my academic work for the past several years.  Thank the universe for limitless music with a few keyboard clicks.

Looking forward to getting through the last 1/3 of my coding very soon so I can dive back into my chapter drafts and get them polished and start writing my results.

After an initial slump after last weekend--not due to anything in particular other than anxiety related to dissertation work, I have been able to dig in and code the set of A Data and move into the set of B Data.  The B Data is students' essays they completed at the end of the semester--the prompt asked them to think about how they think of definitions of composing/writing after having taken the course. Since it is the "post-" set of essays/data it's cool to see what terms and ideas are running through the entire B Data set.

My next step after coding all the B Data together will be to go across A and B for each student.  So, "Sara's" essay A and essay B coded together.  Then "Ryan's" essay A and essay B coded together.

I also caught up with Matt this week and read/skimmed the three chapters he sent me of his draft (introduction, lit review, methods) and it was great to see someone else's drafts.  Our work is in the same ballpark as far as pedagogy and assessment, though his is writing center studies and not teacher-reasearch. It was extremely reassuring to see that I already have chapters like his drafted.  In fact, from the very beginning it almost seems as if I did some steps backward during the diss process.  For one, during the time of transition between advisors, I'd written what amounted to about 30 pages of what I thought was the proposal.  As it turns out, I wasn't clear on what the proposal (or actually pre-proposal) was supposed to be, and I was off-base from what was required.  After an informative committee meeting and many hours with Patti, I've found that I have a wealth of drafts, pages and pages of writing, and have had to go back and create outlines and subheads from writing I've already amassed.

The entire process has been a battle with myself over feeling alternately euphoric over discoveries and productivity and depressed over what I feel is a lack of movement. I like to call these episodes of academic depression, "moments of crippling self-doubt." They sometimes involve thinking too far ahead (OMG how will I ever pay my loans!) or manifesting in a lack of self-confidence about life in general.  I'll be thrilled to move into other realms where these things still arise (probably any career I enter), but where an entire degree is not riding on my ability to talk about my study. Although money, grants, promotions, and other successes may still ride on my ability to talk about my own work.

At least today, on a day of productivity from the security of my own little casita, I can enjoy the evening--cooking dinner, visiting with my partner and MIL, and thinking about tomorrow's work without the pressure of feeling like I didn't accomplish enough.

The Macbook arrived and it's slim and awesome.  I went straight to Ross/Marshall's to find a sleeve for it and actually decided not to use it until the protective body wrap I ordered arrives via USPS in the next day or two.  Side note: I obsessively looked for well-reviewed "wraps" that cover the computer, offer scratch protection, but don't add weight.  I found one for $37.95 (yikes!), but I figured it's a wise investment for a $1,600 machine.

5 years into my PhD, and already ABD and drafting my dissertation, you'd think I would have already started a digital record of exactly what I'm doing.  It' s taken over 5 years to reach the point where it's finally time to digitize.

Today starts a record of where I am in the writing, thinking, and coding process.  Up until today, I've worked in all manner of digital mediums, but not in a blog format for purposes of the diss.  In fact, almost all of my dissertation and meeting notes are handwritten in a journal I collaged from a 1970's book on color theory (below).

I'm starting the digital record primarily to be able to point my advisor toward a convenient place to see what I've been working on and questions I've been thinking about.  Also, my colleague Matt and I have decided to check in with each other once per week as we are both aiming to finish our dissertations by the end of the summer.  This accountability method will also be more effective if I can write my reflections on the diss process in one spot.  (Then even mine it later for use in the dissertation text).  In addition, this is also just for myself to keep a visible record of my progress from here to the finish line.

Digitizing my reflections and process will be useful as a way to subvert the archaic and "printed black and white" constraints of the dissertation genre. Because the graduate school "discourages the use of color in graphs and charts," I plan to offer my professional page and blog as "additional and supporting material" when I hand the draft off to my committee.  While I've managed to conform my writing and research to the very traditional nature of the dissertation format, it is equally as important to me to show media-laden, artful, informative images that further engage an audience.

I'm currently coding my first set of student data--there are 2 sets.  The set of "A" essays students composed at the very beginning of the English 211 course I ran as part of my dissertation study.  The set of "B" essays the students wrote after being a part of the course (English 211: Circulation, Innovation, and Audience Interaction, which was a themed course with the alternative title, "Writing in the Social Sciences and Humanities"). The essays both as students to talk about themselves on the spectrum of the terms "problem-solver, composer, writer, designer, artist." What I'm looking at is how students' perceptions of composing, and of themselves as composers, changes after taking a course which encourages the use of all available means of communication.

Coding has been a big hurdle--I had to really research various approaches (Creswell and Saldaña, etc...) to understand coding processes and figure out which would best fit my research.  My advisor and I settled on using Grounded Theory, which means I read the texts and identify recurring themes and words/phrases that arise from the text. Then I compare those themes/words/phrases across the set(s) of data.

First, I'm moving through the "A" set for each student, then looking at them as a group, then I will code all of the "B" essays as one group. Then I'll code the A and B together for each individual student.  

Today is a big day for another reason though--my new 15" Macbook Pro is out for delivery! No more waiting for Photoshop to render! No more laptop hot enough to burn my quads! No more gray screen and spinny rainbow wheel!  I have high expectations and I spent awhile saving up for what I really needed for my graphic design work. I'm thrilled to have a new machine after my old one gave it a good 5+ year run.

Back to coding...aiming to have it finished by next Tuesday.