While I've made strides in several research projects with my colleagues, and plodded along on the ol' dissertation, I have managed to squeeze in a little bit of fun between deadlines, meetings, and endless schoolwork. I apologize to those of you I've not sent thank you notes to yet and emails I've not responded to yet....please bear with me as I try to "catch up" on the social front over the next few months. Of course, today marks the start of my 4 month race to write Chapters 4 and 5 while also teaching and continuing to work on other projects...and search for a job....yikes!! Ok, let's go back to one day at a time here so I can keep from hyperventilating.
Check out this beautiful blue pile of papers. And no, I did not plan to wear the bright blue striped shirt I'm wearing to work today to match this beautiful blue pile--ha!
What is this you ask?
Why it is my dissertation data. I chose to print out the data on this bright blue paper since I will be spending a L-O-T of time working with this information. I figured I might as well enjoy the color that the information is on since I will be sleeping, eating, breathing, living this data from now until mid to late January 2014.
I also have to express my sincere thanks to my family yet again. For my birthday this past year, they all chipped in and purchased me a year's student membership to a qualitative software program. Over the last several weeks, I have been trying to teach myself how to use the program and watched too many to count online tutorial videos to try to learn how to navigate my way around the software. After many futile attempts, I threw in the towel last night and resorted to working on transferring the codes to a Word Document by hand. After a grueling 45 minutes of doing this last night, I had 20 pages to show for it and was not even 1/8 of the way through the task at hand. So, I turned back to the software program and by luck, with the click of one or two buttons, I somehow created the report I so desperately needed and within seconds had generated the 174 page report you see in the picture above...don't ask me how I did it though!
Now, I can move forward with analyzing the data and seeing just what it is that I found in my ten interviews I conducted this past summer!! Yippee!! Well, that is once I hear back from my committee...! Today is the day I had asked them to provide feedback on my revisions that I submitted on June 30th but I've not heard a word yet...then again, it's only 11:11am (ooo, make a wish!).
Who would have thought a 174 page pile of papers could make a gal so happy?!
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