oops...

car crash tonight. i was going to get my exhaust pipe fixed tomorrow morning... i guess i'll bring more than the exhaust pipe to fix. my neck hurts. not my fault, thank goodness, but i totaled the other girl's car! had to be towed away. my car's still runing. i'm grateful that i didn't hurt the girl and that my car's still working.

feeling kinda shaken though...

... don't feel like worrying about school and work anymore right now...

tried to call anais but she wasn't there. old friend from utah called, though, and that was a nice surprise. i guess i'll be ok, if i can move my head tomorrow and also if my insurance is ok with the whole thing.

job...

the wife of the mother of the husband of my sister, that is, my sister's third mother in law, works for USF in english education and is very "famous" there and in the country at what she does. now, most people don't have the highest admiration for people in education... but anyway, she said that the ESL program there is tightly linked with the education program and that they have a PhD program in ESL that's growing, and also that the university is gaining momentum and is becoming better as a nationally recognized research university. ... she also said that they're hiring a lot now and that i'm the type of person they'd love to hire, for fall 2006. i don't know how much all this means at all, but it's still nice to start having connections and thinking about stuff like that. don't know either if tempa, florida, of all places, would be my favorite place in the world to be... and i kept telling her Oh, SFU (simon fraser university in vancouver, canada), yeah, i'd love that... huhu...

anyway, great turkey!

stats:

i don't know why, but i really enjoy learning about the stats program and doing it and also learning about survey writing. it's tough, it's a lot of stats, also, because they test different wordings and populations and question orders and formats, etc. and then they tell you what happened... but never tell you how to do it, hah! anyway, i don't know why i say that i hate all this stuff... i really enjoy it when i'm starting to understand it. today, while i was meeting for the 3rd time with the statistical consultant girl, i was able to explain to her stuff that i was really impressed i knew and had understood, and whatever we were doing she never had to explain it to me twice. that was fun! and i'm getting some good stuff for the tesol quarterly article! i'm also reading two books margie gave me about attitude surveys, and i always go to a nice place to eat while reading those books to motivate myself, so i don't know if it's the effect of the great food or of the fact that i learn tons of cool stuff, but i have a good time when i do that!!


haha!!


happy thanksgiving everyone :)

IRB mon amour

either i'm a REAL idiot or else the IRB website is not well done, because i've spent the whole morning trying to understand what i need to submit for their review and approval (we hope) and couldn't figure it out! so in the end i filled out two forms: the first one is an exempt form, because i'm just doing questionnaires with adults and that's not going to harm anyone, and the second one is a consent waiver form, because i don't want my respondants to have to sign the consent form if i tell them that it's an ANONYMOUS study. duh!

problems:

1. it requires a copy of all my questionnaires (not yet written) PLUS a copy in ALL THE DIFFERENT LANGUAGES OF THE STUDENTS of the consent form in question. mmm.... i thought i'd get their approval BEFORE translating the damn things because the translations are mucho dinero!

2. wanted to apply for the year-long PRF grant for next fall-spring, but to apply i must already have received IRB consent... and since i defend my prospectus on the 8th, i don't even have my committee's consent yet... and the grant proposal is due december 1st. screwed. WHERE am i going to find the money???? translations/photocopies/travel...

wonder if i could have my questionnaires online. that'd simplify the whole thing a lot! need to find people who'd do this kind of stuff for cheap!

that's IT!

i've made the last few corrections on my prospectus and am ready to send it to the whole committee!!! i am NOT touching this thing again!!!

margie has this nice thesis group meeting every other week with the students whose chair she is, and last time, she said we should all go to each other's defenses... well i'm the first, so that won't help, and then there's someone else who's defending while i'll already be back to good ol' europe... and then we'll see who's next and when. but her other idea was that everyone should read everyone's prospectus and come to the meeting with questions and comments to "prepare" us for the defense. i like that idea! so i'm going to send my prospectus to the five other gals who are in our thesis group and the monday after thanksgiving they'll all have stuff to ask/tell me, which is great because i'll be defending a few days later.

i also expressed my frustration regarding this person (didn't tell who it was) who's graduating in 3 years and writing a dissertation in 5 months... and one other person in our group had actually had the same conversation with that exact same person and felt the same way... but everyone tried to convince me that the PROCESS was more important than the speed and that it was more important for me to LOVE my research topic and spend some time on it than to not care about my research and only do it because it's done quickly. yeah... not sure i'm convinced yet but i see their point.

ah yeah, and yesterday i went to have my first real statistical tutoring. more than an hour of learning how to use the program...fun!! haha!! but at least i got almost all the information i need to start rewriting my tesol quarterly article. yay!!!

today, very suddenly, things at home seem to be going well, finally, after two weeks of pure 24/7 hell...

statistical consulting

went to the first meeting about stats today. really nice people. my study seems really complicated but doable... not sure yet how, we'll play around with my MA data and see what works best.

during the meeting and as the big boss and i were talking about all that stuff, i felt so good, so comfortable, almost happy to be thinking like that and asking questions and responding and finding ways and brainstorming... this is a bad sign, i like intellectual stimulation, dammit, i can't just be lazy... this is something i really MUST remember! i can't just be doing the same thing all the time, i need to learn new things, i need to think, i need to be challenged! that sucks. i guess that's what got me so far...

going back tomorrow to start playing with numbers...

yeah, i remember, i liked feeling this sense of accomplishment, while i was writing my MA thesis, even though i was complaining all the time like everyone else...

discouraged

i wonder what i want to do. later, i mean. what am i expecting myself to do? what's my dream? where do i want to go? how far do i think i could go? am i going as far as i could go? what CAN i do? what do i WANT to do?

mcgill in montreal
a small iep program
academia
switzerland
flee from academia
expectations or lack thereof
waldorf school
pressure
spain
underachievement
publishing
avoiding pressure
my aunt
canada
conferences
laziness
recognition
my ex-classmates
simple life
sweden
business english
my parents
mental faculties
tenure
health
purdue's expectations
overachieving
WHAT????????????? DAMMIT!!!!!

about people who write theses, from jojo

- at 32 you're an OLD thesis writer
- you really know you subject only 3 months before you defend
- first you repeat and then you find out what has not already been said
- hard to be really efficient
- you always have remose and culpability with you... can become an obsession
- you never save your stuff enough
- you love your thesis more than your significant other for a while
- you need your space and your rythm
- you can have a normal "love life" only after you're done
- the thesis takes most of the "space" in your life/brain
- you are "in the shaddows," you dig your hole
- there's a fear that you'll never be done
- requires much concentration/energy
- people who write theses are either really admired or really hated because seen as parasites
- when writing the thesis, you can still have this teenager lack of responsibility. not a real adult yet.

from ARTE radio.

mood

these days i am mad, upset, angry, jealous, bored, overwhelmed, tired, crazy, stressed, pissed off, worried, jealous... wait, did i say that one already? I'M JEALOUS... of someone... unfair!

wrote to the dean of the school of liberal arts and complained about the fact that they didn't give us any info about the year-long prf grant... which is a big deal and i want to do it... got an email pretty quickly telling me that they'd send out the info to the departments by the end of this week. darnit!

haven't done anything lately. need to submit my prospectus to all my committee members by the 23rd of nov. at the latest. can't seem to sit and figure out what i still need to do on it... especially after having talked with that one person who i am so jealous of... damn... why am i such a freaking overachiever (or loser, same thing)?????

i need a cigarette

as i was saying...

so this guy sent me an email to ask me to put his new references on our caucus' website, of which i am the web-manager... THREE brand new references about exactly what i'm researching... so i tell him yeah, i'll put your references on our website if you send me an electronic copy of all those articles :) on of them is not even published yet, it's forthcoming... i'm happy! at least THAT part of my dissertation will not be too hard. i'm going to send a reminder email to all the caucus' members to tell them that they need to send me their new references of articles that relate to nonnative speakers, and just ask them, in the end of the message, to please send me anything that they can send me by the way that'd be nice i'd really appreciate it our library is just not so good... huhu...

PRF grant!

great, now in addition to managing a B in phonocrapology, teaching students whose name i have a hard time remembering, writing a prospectus that i don't know how to write, reading tons of books and articles about statistics and other similarly non-understandable things, worrying about a @#*&!@ teaching plan for next semester while spending my saturdays listening to useless junk about how to use the library, and playing @#*&^ hum hum @*&^@ at home, now i have to write a PFR grant proposal by december 1. someone please tell me that i'll manage and won't jump off the window....

the headache is getting worse...

headache

i have a headache... had it for 3 days at least...

intesol conference this morning went well, i'm missing 2/3 of it so i can go to 1/2 of the library technology fellowship thingy training.... had to wake up at 5am and my day is far from being over!

i'm done with the references, now, most of them, at least. am reading books on surveys and questionnaires and statistics and crap... very interesting.

cat issues...

i know them!

i've just realized one cool thing: i know a LOT of the people i've cited in my lit review:

amin
medgyes
braine
cheung
kamhi-stein
lee
liu
mahboob
matsuda
rampton
pessoa
tang
kachru
moussu (haha)
maum
etc.

and all these people know other people that i have cited... and through the nnest email list, i can have access to more than 500 people who have written stuff about my research... so basically, i need ANYTHING and i can get it somehow from someone very quickly. for example, i wanted maum's dissertation and the library was going to take a while, so i emailed her (we presented at tesol together or something like that)and she sent me a copy of her dissertation a few days later. very cool! i'm lucky! and then i can write "personal communication" all the time too, about braine or medgyes, for example, who are super big important famous and everything else... it feels good to know the right people!

nothing

nothing

sample questions

got feedback on my sample questions for my questionnaires... ouch... and two books and one article about questionnaires and other attitude surveys, survey research, data analysing, attitude vs. opinions, etc....

for these questions for my MA thesis, i used someone else's questions and simplified them for people who didn't speak english well... and now i added someone else's questions... but obviously it's not going to be that easy! now that i complained to margie about that MA thesis that was crap and my advisors never told me anything, she's on my case and ready to make me suffer as much as it takes to make me write a good prospectus/dissertation. haha, that was smart...

started the day in a really bad mood... but things are looking a little better now, for no reason... except that it's raining cats and dogs and i love that :) ah yeah, and i got some library fellowship award today too... nice... $200 and a lot of technology training and how to use it in the classroom... won't even be able to go to half of their training on saturday since i'll be in indy presenting a bad paper at IN-TESOL in the morning, huhu...

reference list

i have a 17-page review of lit... now i need to go over the whole thing and add the references at the end of the document... i'll start this morning and will also copy endnote to my new computer so i can start using it.

gloomy...