April 13: Nothingness

It's nice to have days where you have absolutely nothing on the calendar.  Although I've been working on edits myself, and sending them to an editor, today was a major catch up day on editing.  My dissertation is due to the graduate school by April 28th, so I need to get a move on and turn around the edits from my advisor, committee, and editor quickly.

April 9: Post Defense Celebration

Today the staff celebrated my accomplishment (successful defense) during staff meeting.  Leslie got me those gorgeous flowers and pulled together the cupcake and other congrats stuff for my door! I am so grateful for this group of people I get to work alongside.  They are good people and I will miss them when I leave UGA and ISL.

April 7: Dissertation Defense

Today I successfully defended my dissertation and became Dr. Dean.  It's strange, but glorious.  It's been a long four years filled with a lot of fun and learning, but also a lot of tears and grief.  Today was a good day.  My defense went well, obviously, and my committee offered great feedback into ways I can strengthen some sections of my dissertation (read: more edits) and publications that can come out of my dissertation.  Dr. Cooper was really proud of the work I did, and I could not have made it through this process without her!

She also really, really loved the gift of a Texas State University mug and the tea from South Africa.  After the defense, I celebrated with some friends at the capital room with drinks and appetizers.

April 6: Recuperating

I haven't been doing much today but recuperating from Street Fest and planning and preparing for tomorrow.  I took a break to play rummikub on my phone.  I never win against the computer! :)

March 25: Dr. Jones

Tonight we celebrated the newly minted Dr. Jones who successfully defended her dissertation today! Congratulations Dr. Jones!

March 24: Dissertation Submission!

Writing and rewriting, and analyzing, and more. Thankfully, there's coffee for this process! ;) And today, I submitted my finally copy of my dissertation to my committee.  My defense is scheduled for 2 weeks from now...eek!  Then there will be more edits and writing (I'm sure)...but I'm so close to the end!

March 20: Writing (x3)

I spent the day writing, three computers is better than one, right?!

March 9: Chapter 4

Is officially submitted to Dr. Cooper.  Although there will be edits to make (just noticed an error already), it is at least out of my hands for the time being.

March 8: Common Sense

This factor analysis book has practically been my Bible during this analysis and write up phase.  I am really, really grateful I purchased it back when I was taking psychometrics.  Anyway, today I came across this sentence...with all factor analytic approaches, common sense is needed to make the best decisions.  I laughed.  Yes, because the subjectivity of this 'quantitative and therefore sometimes seemingly objective' work is totally subjective.  Yes, I have made LOADS of decisions (sometimes using theory and sometimes common sense) along the way.  I'm happy to talk more about this, but to most, they would politely nod and smile...frankly there are days I just want to do the same (and have someone tell me the answers).

March 7: Target

I spent almost all day today writing, and ready, and writing more.  Around 6pm, my brain was done, so I took a little trip to Target to get some toilet paper (exciting) and I also got some snacks for this writing process.

March 3: Writing Week

Today was the first day of my writing retreat week.  Only, I'm not retreating.  I'm just taking (most) the week off of work to get this dissertation closer to complete.  I spent all day data analyzing.  This part is getting closer to done, which means I can actually put chapter four into sentences, paragraphs, and pages.

February 25: Power Outage

I took today off to write, so of course it was fitting that the power went out.  I did, however, feel justified to get an email that 20 other buildings all over campus were also out of power.  Anyway, I headed to Starbucks and worked there from 9:15ish until 7:30pm.

February 18: Budgeting

Every year students (and offices) go before the student fee allocation committee to request money. Each group had 15 minutes to present.  Therefore, we have to cover 28 student orgs, 6 large programs all in 15 minutes.  Yikes.  Moreover, we've made a plan to move some money around and make some major changes.  Anyway, this is what I've been looking at for the last few days. My head has truly been reeling and I'm tired of budgets.  Between this and data analysis, staring at computers and numbers, well...I'm about over it.  I'm glad by Wednesday afternoon this will all be over.

February 9: Stalking Qualtrics

Today along with working on my course prep for Wednesday's teaching class, I have been stalking Qualtrics.  I currently have 431 responses.  I also set up the reminders to go out tomorrow at 8am.  Hopefully by the end of tomorrow, or the end of the week, I will have my needed 570 responses.

February 8: Saturday @Starbucks

Another Saturday at Starbucks working on this dissertation.  Today I spend a good amount of time writing and reading about constructs, latent variables, and updating parts of chapter 2 and chapter 3.  A reminder email goes out Monday and data collection closes on Friday.  Here is to hoping for another 139 responses.

 

February 3: Renewal Limit

UGA library has a wonderful library feature that allows you renew your checked out books online.  Today I received a courtesy notice that my books were due.  Thus, I went online and tried to renew my books.  However, apparently I've reach the limit for amount of times you can renew.  Wamp, wamp.  I guess I'll have to trek up to the library to return these five books.

January 9: Advisor Mtg

The first (of many) advising meeting of the semester happened today.  We talked about the class I'm teaching, the job search, and of course...the dissertation.  Thus far, it still looks like I'm in a good place to graduate in May. :)

January 6: Applied for Graduation

This is the first of many, many, forms and such I have to fill out in order to graduate in Spring.  Ohh, and I have to finish and defend my dissertation.  No big deal.

November 12: IRB Approval

I got an email today that surprised me…it was my IRB approval for my dissertation research.  About a month ago, I submitted this application (to which your advisor has to go in and actually hit 'submit').  A week later, they sent me some minor revisions.  There were things like, uncheck this box, check this one instead.  The final change I needed to make was to attach a letter of support from Georgia Tech.  Anyway, the woman reviewing it said, "I saw you addressed the changes needed, you just need to make sure your advisor hits submit again."  Apparently in the new system your advisor has to hit submit after everything!  Dr. Cooper and I chatted and she said she wasn't going to hit submit until I got the letter from Georgia Tech (I was totally on board).  Then last week, they emailed me and said…hey your advisor still hasn't submitted.  AND I guess they emailed her too…and so she just went in and submitted it (contrary to what I thought was going to happen).  Fast forward to today…I got an email with the approval for my research.  YAY! But it also came as a bit of a surprise.  The email said, we're approving your study…when you get the letter from Georgia Tech, just email it and we will attach it for you.  

All that to say, I'm excited to be able to begin data collection soon!  WOOHOO!  Also…this is the form they sent showing my approval.  All that wait for this one page, non-descriptive approval form (there's not even a signature, ha!).

October 21: IRB Submitted

In order to conduct research on human subjects, you must submit documentation to the institutional research board (IRB) for approval before you conduct research.  The tricky part for me, is that I'm looking at multiple institutions...so I have to do this multiple times.  As you can see in the picture, I started this process at the end of may and FINALLY submitted it today.  I currently have four institutions that are willing to participate in data collection.  In other words, they'll send out emails on my behalf.  Anyway...I'm excited that this dissertation is another step closer to getting d-o-n-e.