By Any Other Nerd

Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes Not as wise as Gandalf, but dang, the beard feels like this at times! Photo by Elisabeth Pieringer on Unsplash So I've been shaving my head since around 2002.  But on January 1, 2024, I shaved my head and beard and pledged that I would not shave again until I had a dissertation defense date.  I knew it was something that would be help motivate me to get it done.  This week, I shaved.  I do have a finished draft of my dissertation and while I do not have a date just yet, it's much more likely than not that I will be defending in September (couldn't happen earlier because faculty are off during the summer).   Let's talk about how I got here and why. Over the years,  I've read about motivation and building habits. there are some great books out there that have been so helpful for me. Some of them include: Atomic   Habits : Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results by James Clear Tiny  Habits : The Small Changes That Change Everything by BJ F

Estimated Reading Time: 8.5 minutes Hey folks--we...ok, I have a draft of my dissertation.   No cheering yet!  It's a draft, it needs work--hell, it needs cleaned-up citations and some places to update, tighten, rearrange, and all the things. But, I have a draft, finally that includes all 5 chapters and that's a big milestone.   When last I shared, I was working away at Chapter 4 . It was going smoothly--as I said, it was one of the easiest chapters to write (not "easy" but easiest compared to the others).  Chapter 5, doubly so. In fact, it took me about a month to write a 8000+ word draft.   So let's dig into these drafts a little bit.   I used this whiteboard to capture daily tallies of writing On Writing Chapter 4 In writing, Chapter 4 took about four months; in reality, the chapter took 10 months. Summer and fall of 2023, I worked on the analysis. I did a lot of deep diving into the data to create the categories of description and dimensions of variation (thes

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes It's been a while--both since I posted (just under 2 months--yikes!) and since my last update on my dissertation progress  (for newer readers, you can check out the full series on my PhD here ). In the six months since I last wrote about this, things continued to progress--though, of course, never at the speed I want them to.  But such is the case both because life happens and other decisions I make.  Still, I'm excited about where I am. Image Source:  Karsten Würth Let's recap 2023! The first half of 2023 was digging into the data, exploring it and getting the contours of the data after collecting the interviews and transcribing them in late 2022.  In my methodology, phenomenography, there is a bit of reading through the transcripts holistically to get a full sense of what's in the data and then moving into finding differences in the experiences of participants (relating to the research questions).  What I'm doing is building out w

Estimated Reading Time: 11 minutes This post is less about the highlights of 2023 and more about the things that I experienced and learned about myself through this year.  2023 was a powerful, intense, rewarding, and challenging year for me. It had more in store for me than I could realize and I came out the other end feeling more comfortable and capable in many ways--deeper in my self-understanding and grounded in my choices.  So what did the year entail?   The Start of the Year January began with the passing of my spouse's grandmother, Shirley, which included a week of lots of hospital visits, a few overnight vigils, and finally, her passing in her home. Though sad, she also died peacefully in her home surrounded by family, which at past 90 years, is something we could all wish for.  The experience had echoes of my own father passing in its progression and the kind of decisions and care needed. I think that helped me be a level of support and insight that helped my spouse and he

Estimated Reading Time: 21 minutes Imagine trying to write a very simple email to a colleague to explain that you do not have time to do something.  How much time would you spend on it?  2 minutes?  5 minutes? 15 minutes? 45 minutes?  When it took me to write this email to a colleague in early November, I had a stark realization that something bigger was going on...and that thing's name was traumatic reaction.   Photo by SIMON LEE on Unsplash Preamble (or where I explain why I'm writing what I'm writing) For pieces like this, I hem and haw a lot before deciding to write it and share it more largely and permanently with the world. In a world of an attention-driven economy of media that values novelty and sensationalism, I worry that some may think these posts are an attempt to get attention or even more troubling, indirect asks for help. Those are easy places to land, especially if you do not know me (and maybe even if you do know me?). Ultimately, I can assure myself, even