news from france

upenn doesn't want to help me with the pilot but agrees for the fall study. since their semester is too short to participate, i decided that i would give teachers and administrators the permission to participate without their students. i don't know if that's good... but at least it will give me a lot more info from teachers and administrators and the ratio teacher:student will not be as big (like 1:15) if i do this with several other schools. it's amazing to see the things i agree to change from my original plans just to get info from people!

byu said it was ok too but won't give the questionnaires to students in class. what can i say? what can i do? i'll just have to accept that some schools will do it this way and explain this in my "limitations" section of my dissertation.

the logistics of this all scares me to death!

research on children

in the 80's and 90's, foster children have been involved in clinical research for AIDS drug trials. now people ask if those children had any protection, advocacy, and their rights respected while being used as research subjects. some people say that thanks to those trials, tons of AIDS patients were saved including many of these children. advocates for the children's rights where not mendated at the time, and IRB protocols and definitions of "minimal risks" were much less clear than today. those children didn't have parents who could protect their children's interests, so it was pretty easy to use them for research. some similar research is also done on prisonners and is also problematic, but not as much as with children, since children might not understand what they are asked to do or what their rights are. then they may give their consent without knowing what will happen to them. there is no age regulations given by the Institutional Review Boards, but the younger the children are, the less they are told about the details of the research project. you only explain procedures to a young child (like @i'm going to poke you with a needle), but if the child is older and with adults, risks and purposes can be explained. if the child says no, i don't want to participate, the researcher can still override the child's will if there is a "prospect benefit" involved in the study (that is, the child's life could be saved, for example). IRB regulations were not changed until 2001 and then only slightly. best interest vs. children's interest vs. money... this story is just coming out right now. i think that i am starting my research at a bad time!!

nothing

what? was i supposed to do something today???

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ok i did a LITTLE something: i filled out and sent the IRB protocol for depaul university, created a graph to see which schools start when and end when in the fall, finished the last tesol proposal, ... took tons of pictures of my cats, syncronized my two computers so i can take the small one with me to europe (but i usually work on the big one so i transferred all my emails, papers, grant proposals, stuff for research, info about schools, websites, etc.), ... got my suitcase out of the closet and now it's open on the floor, empty except for two cats sleeping in it, ... made a few changes to my website and online journal templates, watched half of a movie... and really, i think that's it. it's pathetic. but i don't care. i won't finish the grant proposal before i go to france so i can relax and play with the cats a little. i'm going to miss them way too much!

and the nightmare continues...

i know it would not be easy... this IRB story is going to be my biggest pain, although i'm sure i'll become quite an expert at that after i have to deal with 20 schools which each have a different system! I can't believe they tell me "this is federal regulation, i can't do anything, you have to go through that, blah blah" and at the same time nothing that i do for one univeresity is accepted and recognize by the next one. how "federal" is that???

last night, i spent about 3 hours filling out an online application for one school in georgia. it wasn't hard, it was just very annoying and repetitive and unclear. fortunately, it was all online, which is RARE (even Purdue doesn't do it online yet)! then this morning i got an email saying that it had been rejected because i should not have sent it myself but my "sponsor" had to send it. then it turns out that everyone involved in the project needs to be certified by something called the CITI program, and the director of that school, who should be my sponsor, is not certified! it took me a good 10 hours to complete the training by cheating and i feel bad asking the director of the school to do this... so if she refuses to do it, i'd have to find someone else in that school who is certified and agrees to be my sponsor. not that i know anyone in georgia... if she accepts, she'll have to do the training, submit the IRB protocol to her chair, then the chair has to approve it, send it to the IRB, and then the IRB approves it and sends it to its chair for approval. and THEN they tell me if i can do it or not!! DAMMIT! i swear, i thought i wouldn't have any administrative experience when i graduate but THIS is complex, because every school is different and if i manage to survive and get approval from say 10 schools, i'll be the QUEEN OF THE IRB! ... well, i just don't know how far i'll go with all this! i mean, i'm bound to get really frustrated really quickly! hopefully a couple of schools will be less of a pain, like that school in utah, that has an internal IRB so i don't have to go through the university's IRB plus the people know me. i just want to say to the people out there who make those kinds of regulations that IT IS INSANE! i understand that you need to protect people and children and interests and all, but you are building walls around your school and preventing research to take place! and research is IMPORTANT! especially from outside people!

other than that, i finished and sent TWO book reviews today! yeah!! one was easy, for a textbook, and i'll be payed $200 for it! the other one was harder, and i went to the writing lab for help, and i won't get paid nada but if it's published, it'll be GOOD! it was a really cruel review... and i know the author VERY WELL... she might never talk to me again! but i ended it by saying that DESPITE all those negative things, everyone should read this book! because that's all i can say: it's a REALLY GOOD book but it also has a lot of annoying stuff in it. we'll see... haven't heard back from the 2 articles i sent a few months ago... or weeks, i'm not sure, time goes by too quickly! i think i should hear from the ET people soon, since they said it takes about 6 weeks for them to give feedback, but the TQ article will take much longer.

i'll submit the colloquium tonight... back to work!

eating blackberries

today i faxed the budget, eliminated one person from my colloquium and wrote the proposal and started entering the info into the online submission thingy, bought some large envelops to send all the stuff to different schools, called two people, one who said yes (for the fall study and not the pilot) and the other one who said yes (and she'll take care of the IRB stuff herself), ate at the olive garden but it wasn't too good, listened to the big storm this morning, bought two new movies because i'm bored with my old ones and a small box of blackberries that i'm eating right now, called my car insurence about some weird fee that i refuse to pay, called purdue to get a copy of some teaching evaluations from last year that i lost, got artheritis pain killer for my mom, had a long phone conversation with a good friend who has heath problems these days, exchanged 200 emails with half of the world about proposals and awards and other stuff, took a long shower this morning, signed a lease for the apartment for next year, downloaded some IRB forms from different schools, checked the length of the 19 schools that have accepted to participate, filled out georgia state's IRB application (2 hours), sent georgetown's IRB stuff (that one was easy), photocopied all the IRB forms I need to send to people (purdue's approval, a description of my study, and the results of the IRB traning i did in october), scanned the teacher evaluations i got last semester to include it in my teaching portfolio due tomorrow, ... and it's only 7pm! ok, i work for one more hour and then i watch a movie! bend it like beckham, anyone knows it?

oh, and if anyone needs a language program director/associate director or teacher educator/ESL/TESOL program administrator or something like that, please LET ME KNOW!

and so goes the story...

that i now have 18 schools that said OK (no IRB yet...) and six schools that didn't say no for the big study in the fall. the rest either said no or didn't say anything yet. I can't believe that I've been calling people non-stop for the last four days now and there are still people that i haven't been able to reach! conferences, meetings, classes, out of the office, busy.... and I call, and I call, and I call!

i got one school that i thought wouldn't work, but the students will have to fill out the questionnaires outside of class time. i don't know if i'll use those surveys... that's difficult to decide. the lady who was asking me tons of questions yesterday and who was kind of skeptical kept asking me questions today. i think she just doesn't understand the point of my study, because she said i should write a specific definition of the "native speaker" on my questionnaires so that the students would know what i'm talking about... but the point is that i want to know what the STUDENTS think is a native speaker!

wrote another proposal to tesol and am working on the colloquium, but i invited six people to participate and tesol says six is the maximum INCLUDING the organizer... oops... not sure what i'll do there...

nothing on the grant proposal... but i finished the budget and will fax it tomorrow. i'm trying to eat everything that's in my fridge before i go but i haven't eaten out for like three weeks (that's wonderful news for the bank account!) and i need something else than salads, cereals, pasta, and omelets. might go out for dinner tomorrow. but who cares?

if anyone needs a language program director/associate director or teacher educator/ESL/TESOL program administrator or something like that, please LET ME KNOW! i'm scared to death about this job market thing!

good stuff

because i am the iawe conference web-manager, i don't have to pay for the conference registration and i was able to choose when i'll do my presentation :) huhuh... nice!

talked to a few more people today... it's getting there. one director was super nice and said she'd would help if no one else would because she knew it was hard to find participants but her faculty was already overwhelmed with other project... and it also happens that this school's IRB is very simple. darn! i was honest with her, i told her that several people had said yes but that i was having serious trouble with their IRBs so i might still ask her to participate. she said she'd be happy to, if i really needed her help. very nice people sometimes!

this lady said ok if i give incentives to her teachers. i guess i could buy starbucks cards or something... and this other one is the ONLY ONE who actually questionned my research openly, said she didn't think it would be good for her students to participate because it would make them think about the issue, thought it was weird margie allowed me to do that, asked me 200 questions and wouldn't listen to my answers... finally she said she'd decide after she saw the questionnaires. no one else has asked me that, even though i thought more people would. so i sent her the questionnaire. either way i don't care that much any more because i have 15 schools who said basically yes. doesn't mean i can manage to survive through their IRB, but still, it's a good start!

sent two proposals to tesol. still need to work on the hardest proposal, the caucus colloquium. also haven't been working on the grant proposal AT ALL and that'll hurt. i don't think i'll manage to finish everything before i leave, so i'll have to take my computer and work hard while in paris. not fun.

am finishing my teaching portfolio to submit it on time for the contest. it's nice. i've entirely redone the CV and courses pages, the teaching philosophy pages, and the intro, goals, and ELC pages. i'm happy about it all except the ELC, but i don't think i'll change it, it's too much work. i'll just change the philosophy pages to put them in a more logical order.

back to the phone...

michigan

not much done this weekend since i went to michigan for my sister's birthday. wrote a proposal for a tesol presentation (on my own, not one of the big colloquiums), worked on the all-caucus colloquium, and updated the IAWE website with tons of info margie gave me on friday.

i came back this afternoon and called two IEPs and got their approvals... yeah... that's about 11 schools now, but again, it's not because the schools say yes that i'll manage to do all the IRB paperwork or that their IRB will approve my stuff! but it's a good start! and tonight, thanks to time zones, i was able to call one more school in california and the guy said yes, no problem... except that the program might not run if they don't have enough students! but he was super nice! there's hope. i haven't really started working on the IRB stuff yet. called purdue's IRB office to ask them if they could help with other schools' IRB paperwork but they said no :(

this week, besides the eternal and continuous phone calls, i need to work on the grant proposal and try to finish the book review. what am i forgetting?? oh yeah, the budget that was due saturday... and all the colloquium proposals... and something new, but i'm not sure i'll start before i come back from europe:

I NEED TO START LOOKING FOR A JOB FOR NEXT YEAR (academic year 2006)!!! if ANYONE needs an intensive program coordinator or co-director or something like that or knows someone who needs one, please LET ME KNOW!!! oh my goodness, this is SCARY!!

funny

so this morning i'm calling people... i called about 20 schools, got secretaries, wrong numbers, people not there, people in meetings... but i managed to talk to a few directors. one was really nice and said that yes, she'd help me after she checks with her IRB, one didn't say no, one said no, a few said maybe... i even made an appointment to go to one school in chicago at the end of june to do it myself there, so that's good.

the funny thing was that i called this one school in florida and the director was there IN A MEETING with another associate director of the program TALKING ABOUT MY RESEARCH! hah. the associate director was about to leave and the director called her back and said wait wait, it's lucie.... huhuh... that was funny. so he put me on the speakerphone and they both asked me questions about everything and talked about the research, the issues, the hiring situation in the US and the world... and then he asked me what i wanted to do when i graduate and i said i want your job! so he told me to send him my CV! that was SO nice! and they said they'd do it with me and would check with their IRB for me. even if my research ends up being one big disaster, a few phone calls like that will make it worth it all! suddenly i realized that i would have a doctorate in ESL and many of these directors don't have doctorates, that i am becoming an "expert" in my area and know a lot of stuff about the field that other people don't know, and that working with tons of people like this, even if they end up refusing to help me, will be good for when i am looking for a job! hah. that was cool :)

so, here's the first guess: i have about 8 schools who haven't said no for sure. of course, the big issue is the IRB. but even if only 5 schools let me go without too much difficulties through their IRB and have only 2 teachers participate, that'll already be 150 students. far far far from my initial goal, but excellent as of today!

let's continue the phone calls...

crazy? did you say crazy??

maybe what i want to do is too ambitious? maybe i'm dreaming of a perfect world? anyway, things are ... not exactly happening the way they should. i gave up on one school because of their IRB requirements, the other school thinks 15 minutes of class time is too much, but at least the lady did not give up on me and is trying to find a way to do it since she says they have a lot of nonnative english-speaking teachers. one school is asking for incentives... and it's not exactly the kind of money i have... i mean, what do people think? one school asked me to do it myself and at a "special session" outside of class time so that the students wouldn't be mad because of class time spent on other stuff, and yet another school asked me to give the questionnaires to the students and ask them to fill them out at home. someone also asked me to put the translated student questionnaires online too, which i'm reluctant to do since it'll have some odd characters which may not look good on all computers plus you never know who's answering the questions when it's online. and the problem is not only with class time, it's also that teachers are too busy to spend 30 minutes to fill out an online questionnaire and so on... the list of complaints and requests is endless.

i understand all that, i guess. one remarque that someone made was interesting. he said that his university is not a research university and that students pay thousands to get an english education and don't want to waste it for something that is not valued by the university and an integral part of the program. he said that IEPs are more like businesses than universities. maybe so. but so what am i going to do?

i am already considering asking students to fill out the questionnaires at home, doing the pilot this summer AND this fall, and doing the real study next year, which means staying here for an extra year... or i could go with one school for the pilot and maybe 3-4 for the real thing in the fall. the sad thing is that i can't tell how everything is going to go, and that i'd like it to be a nice, replicable, and reliable study with meaningful and generalizable results... but i see it's going to be more like a case study. i do hope i have more than 100 participating students though, to make it a little better than my MA research, otherwise i'll be too ashamed and discouraged.

OK, today i'm going to call more schools. let's say i call 10 schools...
yesterday i worked about 8 hours on my new teaching portfolio pages and i like it, it's not amazing or anything but it's MUCH better than before!

the truth about cats and dogs

do they ever tell you that things will be that hard??? is everyone's doctoral project that crazy or is it just me??? could anyone have warned me earlier??? does it ever get better???

well actually today's not been bad since i haven't done much! just this one lady who wrote me very kindly and said she'd help me with my pilot if i made it shorter. not so good, since the pilot is actually longer than the final study, since i'll have to calculate the reliabiltibilitybily of all the questions and THEN throw the bad ones out! so i said i'd cut the questionnaire in half, and she could give one half to one group of students and the other half to another group. haven't heard back from her yet. this other lady said she'd love to work with me too but her irb was too crazy and it took her 3 months of work last time someone wanted to do a study at her school... gggrrrr.... i'll end up working with 2 schools for the pilot and 2 schools for the big thing, if i'm lucky. the good thing about that it that it'll give me more time to look for jobs... ah yeah, i have to decide, sometime in june, if i'm going to graduate next summer or the following one. depends on how many people agree to participate in my study and how insane their irb requirements are.

got a new book today, which will help me with my grant proposal. actually, i've been reading it all day and it DOES seem very interesting and very relevant to my research but i don't know how to WRITE the darn grant proposal any better! gosh darnit, this is one heck of a project, as they say in utah ;)

IRB mon cauchemard

ok, so it took me about 2 months to get an approval from purdue's IRB for my study... drove me nuts... and today, this lady writes me and says she'd be happy to work with me for my research but of course i had to go through their IRB too... which i knew... but then i went to their IRB webpage and couldn't believe what i saw, so i called them, and couldn't believe what i heard! the thing is a NIGHTMARE! waaaayyyyy worse than purdue's stuff, and i started taking some quizzes and training stuff and filling out tons of paperwork about pregnency and animal diseases and radio-active protective coats.... ... ... yeah... i might have to give up on that one, which is sad, since it's in phily and i really want to go there (the other school in phily also said yes but i'll use it for the fall study, not the pilot, so i won't be able to go there. not such a drama since i already have depaul for the pilot, but still). so i'm thinking IF ALL THE SCHOOLS ARE LIKE THAT, I MIGHT AS WELL GIVE UP ON THE PILOT and start working on the other school's IRBs for fall! oh yeah, and the woman there also told me that i had to send all the paperwork to the school director who had to sign them too, as my sponsor, since i'm not a student there, and then the director had to send all the stuff to the IRB office BY JUNE 20th!!! or else it'd take them until september to approve it.... yeah...

i spent the day working on that and worrying about the IRB at the other schools and looking at other websites... but i'm not sure i'll do it with that school, which seems to be a bad one... scary! i also worked on the grant proposal, and ordered a book i hope will help me finish it... and started the book review, that's not as bad as i thought, but then again, i have no idea if what i'm doing is good since i've never done it before. i also tried to get my colloquium organized but things are hectic, and the other colloquium is, hum, hopefully getting organized by itself... and i am also worried about the all-caucus colloquium since no one seems to care about it. and the budget. due the 15th. and the caucus member of the month thingy. and stuff...

sometimes

sometimes it's good to cry... when my sosso has heart problems, water in her lungs, and keeps bleeding when she goes to her litter box... when i've been working so hard for a while and suddenly i just need to cry... and feel sorry for myself... and wonder why i bother with the grant and the tesol presentations and the caucus and my research and all that junk...

worst decision in my life: to stop playing the piano when i was 18.
second worst decision in my life: to go to france for 2 weeks this summer. it couldn't happen at a wost time. i'm seriously considering not going, except that it'd cost me $200 to change the plane ticket and i'd lose $200 in train tickets too... big waste!

so i'll just keep crying and go to be at 8pm tonight.

conneries

scared to open my mailbox this morning!

sent emails to all 36 schools except for 3 last night!

ok i have to admit, i called at least 5 directors by their first+ last name, i wrote to about 5 secretaries (school email) addressing the directors, and I called at least 5 directors Ms or Mr such and such when it was what they had written on the webpage. i'm thinking about 50% of all these people must be mad so i've lost already 8 schools. my fault.

aaahhhh i am afraid of opening my mailbox...

....14 messages!!! ....



... ohhhh my gosh, 2 directors accepted for the pilot, and 1 for the big thing. good start :)

ok i see one major problem: i didn't specify that IEPs didn't need to have any nonnative speakers working at their school to be able to participate. ... 2 directors wrote me saying they couldn't participate because they didn't emply nonnative speakers. one kindly gave me names of other programs and directors to contact. that was a dumb mistake!

the very difficult thing now is to reply to everyone, because everyone's responses are different, and i don't have a nice template anymore, that i can use for everyone with a few changes... i agonize over words for hours to make sure i say what i want to say, don't insult anyone, don't loose any opportunity by making mistakes... i wish i spoke english better!

what's up doc? .... hummm future doc....

- wrote 5 pages for the grant, and i like them (although i'll read them tomorrow and will probably hate them)
- sent a letter to the participants of my colloquium
- sent the monthly caucus letter
- updated the caucus blog
- called my aunt, my grand parents, my parents, and my godson
- bought a train ticket for the south of france
- finished the administrator and teacher questionnaires
- asked for a quote for the translations: $0.22/word on non-script languages and $0.20/word in script-languages! not too bad!
- used the fan for the first time this year because it's been 28 degrees celsius today and that's HOT!
- read some old articles i didn't remember to include them in my grant proposal
- played with the cats
- something else but i don't remember what, and it's only 8:30pm so there's still a lot of time to do more! yeah!!!!

such is life amigos!

21

21 letters sent to IEPs for the fall study. for the rest: 2 schools are not giving names or addresses of directors so i wrote them to ask who i should contact; the others, their directors don't have PhDs so i don't know how to address them. and goodness, all those school webpages are so different... note to self: if i ever have my own iep, i'll make sure to have at least a nice faculty/staff page with email addresses and phone # and actual NAMES of people! i'm getting increasingly annoyed at poor web design!

it's a PAIN to verify all the names, addresses, degrees these people have, and to try to make every letter a little different from the previous one, and then to verify the font, the phone numbers, the attachement, my address, etc.! and that's only the schools for the fall study. now i need to start sending the letters for the pilot! someone shoot me! once, i couldn't be sure if the director had a phd or not so i wrote dear dr. such and such and thought "i don't care, whatever!" but then thought that i shouldn't make ennemies in this field (and since i want to be an IEP director myself...), nor lose potential participants by being stupid because i need those people!!!! so i took a break and tried breathing again... i've been doing this since 9:30 this morning and it's 3:30 right now... enough for today with that! let's work on other stuff...

work on the grant proposal: 3 hours for one page. totally unable to get to the second page! but worked on the budget stuff.

sent emails to 8 IEPs for the pilot (4 in the phily area). say a little prayer for me! if you read this and you work at an IEP, please let me know :)

(huhuh, just for fun and because i'm brain dead tonight, i counted how many emails i've sent today, between the ieps and the caucus stuff: exactly FIFTY! i've sent FIFTY emails today! god bless the queen!)

8

scary and not fun! went to talk to margie about the iawe website and about my questions. that's it, i'm done working on them, the pilot questionnaire is ready! it's about time! 55 questions! hah! what's scary and not fun but a tiny bit exciting is that i sent letters to 8 IEPs tonight! not fun because i have a list of all the names of the programs, the directors, email addresses, stuff that i found online, but i'm such an airhead that i have to verify everything to make sure i spell names correctly and also that the info has not changed... it takes FOREVER! 8, out of 36!

another unfun thing is that my arm/wrist/fingers/shoulder are just killing me, seriously, i am at the point where it's getting hard to walk. i'm just spending 12 hours a day on my computer lately... way too much! and it's not going to get any better!

the last unfun event of the day is that i got my grant proposal back from the girl who wanted to edit it... ohhhh my goodness, this thing is due in 2 weeks and i can honestly say that if i worked 4 hours a day on it for 2 weeks, it wouldn't even be CLOSE to being good! not even sure i'll bother sending it. goodness! i think the book review is going to be... mmmm.... postponed... too bad, i just finished reading the book and have tons of ideas in my little head... yes yes, i know, it's worth it, i'll work on the @#*&^@ proposal!

tagada tsoin tsoin

decided that i'd worked enough on my constructs/questions. i have now 43 questions, plus about 10 questions about the students (age, language, etc.) so my questionnaire is now 54 questions long. that's too long, but that's only for the pilot. the final thing should be about 30 questions long. and none of the questions are open-ended, so it won't take too long, hopefully. i'm meeting with margie this afternoon (and with someone else too, to discuss the grant proposal that i want to send before i leave for france!).

i now have 36 prospective schools (need to add emich and monterey to my list)... hopefully, about 5 or 6 schools will agree to help. the fun thing that happened yesterday was that i was looking for places to do the pilot that would be at places where i know people, so i can go there and stay with the people while doing the pilot. i know this one person in monterey, california, and i was looking at the university of monterery and couldn't find any intensive english program. so i wrote them an email and asked. and i got a response saying that yes, they were opening a brand new program this summer and i could still register for it. i replied and said thanks, but i actually want to do research there, not study there, do you know who i should contact for that? and 15 minutes later, i got an email from the program director saying he'd love to help because he remembered being a phd student and needing places to do his research and could i send him a proposal and stuff! wouah! now this doesn't mean he'll accept, but that was just nice. plus they will be a 15-week long program, which is what i'm looking for, which means that i won't do my pilot there, but it's one more school for fall and that's good!

i know i make a lot of lists all the time, but i went back to old lists the other day and saw that i did do most of the things i said i had to do, so that's nice. it's a good feeling to see things move ahead... even if not as fast as i wished! for example i thought i would have piloted and translated the questionnaires by now. well... not really! but there's still hope for this fall. going to france was really a bad idea because i need these two weeks for work, desperatly, but oh well, what's done is done. and maybe a little vacation will help my wrist feel better... so here's not a lit but a schedule:

week 1 (next week): send the letters to all the schools for fall; work on the grant proposal; start the book review; send the caucus budget to TESOL; organize 2 presentations at least for next year's conference;

week 2: respond to the first responses; go talk to the psyc guys about my pilot questionnaire; finish the student/teacher/administrator questionnaires; send the letters to all the schools for the pilot; finish the grant proposal; work on the review; send the conference proposals to TESOL;

week 3-4: in france; try to have access to email at least every other day!

week 5: come back and recover; try to catch up with responses from ieps; finish the book review and send it; work on the iawe conference with margie; start thinking about the iawe and aila conference presentations;

week 6 or 7: do the pilot!

this is if for now. i know i'll keep adding stuff to this list... let's start right now on the book review.

bound to happen

it had to happen one day, this was just sick and wrong! my super energy-work addiction has gone... and i just spent two days doing basically nothing. yep, sad.

one step at a time

so the guy from the irb wrote a message this morning and apologized for yesterday's mistake after i sent him an email saying "YOU are waiting?? I have been waiting for YOU!" ... and said i could go ahead and send the letters to the schools but NOT collect anything yet until they had all the letters of the schools' irbs. yeah, that'll be fun! anyway, i went to their office and got their approval letter because i didn't want them to send it through campus mail and all...

margie also wrote back and said i should do the pilot in other schools than the one i want to do the real study with. i found a $200 delta voucher that i need to use before july 15 or something, and it's too late to use it for my trip to paris, that was dumb, i have NO idea how/when/why i got that voucher, probably when i went to utah last spring or something like that, gosh i can't remember where i went, and got stuck in cincinnati for 8 hours... oh, i know, syracuse! iawe conference! what a nightmare! that's probably when i got it, and completely forgot about it until i found it a few days ago. i could've used it for my christmas trip, for the conference trips, or for this summer's paris trip... oh well, i guess i'll have to find a fun place to do my pilot and take that as an excuse to go somewhere this summer!

so about the pilot, the psyc guys told me 40-50 people minimum, to be able to calculate at least a good crombach alpha for the questions, not even enough to do a factor analysis but i guess i'll do that with the final data... but margie doesn't think i need that many people. i don't think i can find 40-50 students in one iep. not sure what i'll do, i guess i'll have to go against margie's opinion if i want my questionnaire to be somehow reliable... if i go to the school where i do the pilot, it'll be nice to see how things go, what people say, what problems arise, and to get direct feedback from the participants. i could even interview some students... that's an idea...

eliminated some questions and got from 70 to 49. not bad! i don't know if i can/want to get fewer than that... i know what margie will say, all of the questions within their constructs are asking the same thing, but it's THE POINT! anyway... haven't heard back from the psyc guys on that one yet. and i have only 1 chapter left to read in the book i want to review. haha, the real work will begin soon!! oh yeah, and i did send the ET article last night! say a little prayer...

tomorrow and thursday all day: final law paper!!!

ready to kill someone

i swear, this irb thing is driving me crazy! i've been waiting for the approval for a month and first they kept writing, asking for more and more stuff, and now, i've been waiting for the final thing since they said "last thing" in their last email... and i didn't hear anything... and today, they wrote and said they were still waiting for all the letters of permission from all the participating schools to give their final approval! what??? i thought i needed their approval BEFORE i could contact the schools, since they wanted to see the letter i would send to those schools! darnit, this is such a waste of time!

on a lighter note: thanks kiara, i got the book and it looks wonderfully useful!!! you're a darling!!! as soon as i get my next paycheck (that'll be in the middle of september...) i'll send you a little something :)

note to self: don't EVER work again with the "track changes" function and EndNote at the same time! i've never seen such a mess!!! i've wasted hours last night trying to revise my ET article with gigi's comments which were on track changes... and it kept freezing, shutting down, messing up the word count, going crazy with dates, and automatically rewriting the reference list 2-3 times in a row, once in red, once in black, and once in blue and yellow, god knows why! i'll send the article tonight!! knock on wood!!!

i've been driving illegaly for the past week... and will continue to do so for at least a week, i'm sure. have you noticed that that's when you've forgotten your wallet or had your licenced removed/cancelled that you almost have accidents like 30 times a day? and of course the BMV is closed on mondays, so i drove all over town (illegaly) for nothing and have to do it again tomorrow.

on a lighter note, i went to a nice little banquet today, for the library/technology/literacy awards. yeah, that was nice, and that award did pay for CATESOL and half of TESOL! maybe i could try it again next year :)

weekend

very exciting: graded all of my students' papers, read at least 5 chapters of the book i want to review, dind't work at all on my questionnaire, talked to tons of people in my family, including my mother and my grandma, went shopping, read several book reviews from TQ, and finished my ET article. and watched raising arizona. and played with the cats! and had fun on friday night at elena's b-day diner. and slept until noon on saturday! and wondered WHOOOOOOO has sent me the dissertation book :D goodness, i'm so impatient!!!!!!!