By Any Other Nerd

Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes Week 17 of  the updates  and still going strong! Dissertation Bird on the Fence Well, I got some work done this week on my dissertation--clearing up some of the transcriptions but it was really a fraction of what I hoped to do.  My ambition did not meet my actual execution.  So, you'll see that I've also introduced a new date, June 1 as a countdown because I'm less believing that I will make the deadlines for the Spring graduation.  Still, this gives me a better sense of how fast I'll move through the transcripts, and will need a better system for moving through them.   93 days until March 1 107 days until March 15 139 days until April 15 185 days until June 1 Work Not much here as I took most of the week off.  Still, I had an opportunity to sit with and chat with 5-6 colleagues that proved to be very warm and enriching; bringing us all together in a way that felt just right on the eve of Thanksgiving. What I'm Reading Books definit

Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes Week 16 of the updates and I'm still surprised I'm going at it! Dissertation A good conversation with a committee member who is the phenomenographic specialist. That has helped me prepare for the next few weeks as I dive back into the data and begin to make sense of it. I don't feel as productive as I would have liked to this week but next week, I will be putting in a lot of time to dissertating, so I hope by next post, I have better updates! 101 days until March 1 115 days until March 15 146 days until April 15 Work Hulk: Mint Green Variety It was a good week this week. I felt like I was moving forward on a lot of small things, connecting with and supporting colleagues and faculty, and I even put together a couch. But what I appreciated most about this week and my work at CU is how it is connecting me with my community. I was invited by a colleague to attend a gathering on Monday at the Nonviolence Institute in Providence; it’s rig

Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes I thought to write this post about 11 months ago--after using Focusmate after a month.  Then that became 3 months out; then 6 months out, but here we are at 1 year and I'm finally getting to it.  How did I get to it?  Well, I used Focusmate, funny enough. Backing up--what is FocusMate you ask?  Apparently, you haven't been talking to me about my dissertation lately (no shade; I don't blame you!).  Focusmate is a service website that allows you to be coworking with other people at times that are useful to you. Focusmate is a website where you can sign up for 25 or 50-minute sessions to FOCUS on something you need to work on and have a workMATE to do that work with.  How does that happen?  Well, after you create an account, you identify 25 or 50-minute sessions in the next week or month that you want to be paired up.  Once you confirm that you want these sessions, you'll get an email reminder with calendar invites.  At the appointed time

Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes Week 15 of  the updates  and some weeks, it's definitely a challenge to get it in by Monday!   Dissertation I checked in with my advisor this week about what's next.  We discussed the possibility of graduating in May.  It sounds tight and challenging and yet, I'm gonna make a run for it.  In order for me to graduate and walk in May, I would need my dissertation submitted to UMB by April 20, which means I will need to have defended my dissertation by mid-March, which means I need to have a solid draft of my dissertation by March 1 to give to my committee.   Vote Here Simply put: 107 days until March 1 121 days until March 15 152 days until April 15 That's ambitious--really ambitious; but my chair believes I can do it and I, at least at this time, am going to make that the goal.  My back-up goal is that I will have everything done by June 1--that is, I want everything to be done by June 1 and I can be largely done with this as a process. 

Estimated Reading Time:  12 minutes Week 14 of  the updates  and I'm still surprised I'm going at it!   Pumpkin Demands Attention Dissertation Not much progress here.  Mostly doing some organizing and prepping for the next stage of the process. This upcoming week includes meeting with my advisors to move into that next stage and I'm also hoping to get more work on transcribing.     Work A routine work-week to some degree.  Nothing out of the norm and slowly making my way through the big and the small.  A shorter week because I got my booster (see below) but I feel like I still moved the needle on some things.  Two interesting experiences of the week: I had the opportunity to go for a walk with a colleague to talk about their experience at CU. Unexpectedly, it became a partial job-coach session where I helped them think about where their job could go.  That's the interesting thing about College Unbound; we're growing and morphing and so there's a chance to think