spring break!!
Hello!!
Spring Break was last week (and in my mind I'm still on break until I return to campus tomorrow). :) In reality, it was a break from travelling to campus, but I ended up working on school work a lot of the time. My son had off school last Thursday and Friday, so I enjoyed spending that extra time with him. On a side note, I told my son (age 7) last Thursday that Friday was going to be Good Friday. He very emphatically said, "Oh great, that means I'm not going anywhere tomorrow!!" I asked him why, and he said, "Because the stores are gonna be packed!!" I tried not to laugh too hard, and I explained to him that tomorrow was Good Friday, not Black Friday, and that's there's a big difference in the meanings. :)
Anyway, back to school stuff. At the beginning of break I finished the first draft of the intro and method section of my practicum paper and emailed that to my professor. She will review it like a journal editor would and return it with her comments. In the meantime I'm looking over the data we collected and am preparing to write my results and discussion sections of the paper. She will then review those sections, and then I have to make all the revisions to the whole paper. I'm very excited about my project. We mailed out nearly 500 surveys in January, and so far over 60% of the survey recipients have responded. That's an awesome response rate! Now we're entering the responses into our data analysis system and are starting our individual projects. You probably think I'm crazy, but it's actually quite exciting! Besides practicum, I'm getting started on my paper for my independent study and continuing to work on my paper for my research assistantship.
However, besides those things, I've been spending the major part of my break on my dissertation literature review. This is very tedious (in my opinion), and although it's interesting, I'll be glad when I can move on to the next section. I have a lot of questions about it, and besides talking to my co-chairs about my concerns, I'll have to spend some time in the doctoral lounge reading dissertations by previous students. I'm feeling like my literature review isn't long enough, or deep enough, or that it just isn't good enough, you know what I mean? I think the word 'dissertation' is intimidating me right now, and I just need to look at it as a paper or class project. I also worry about missing something important in the literature, and for future reference, you can really end up driving yourself crazy if you don't know when to stop reviewing literature! :)
Feel free to leave me a comment, and as a reminder, I am on campus on Wednesdays and Fridays, and I would love to meet with you for lunch if you are considering the program and have questions! :)
