Thank Goodness

Thank goodness the fact that I am behind in blogging does not reflect that I am behind in my classwork. (Not yet, at least...never say never.)

One of the things that is making this semester incredibly challenging is the content overlap among my courses. One week, all my courses were discussing multicultural/diversity issuesand I think all three courses at some point discussed feminist epistemology. Oh, and of course the actual overlap of assignment due dates. I thought I had everything planned out - so that no major papers were all due during the same week. Unfortunately, I volunteered (without consulting my calendar) to turn in a lit review and do a presentation on it during the same week I had papers for each of my other classes. Not my best work, but hey...it's done!

My motivation for getting my readings and assignments done without procrastinating and dilly-dallying has been The Rachel Maddow Show. I tempt myself by allowing myself to watch the podcast if I complete a certain amount of work that evening. If I do not, the podcast gets postponed to Friday (where I usually watch about 3 episodes in a row). P.S. I totally live for her "Moment of Geek" segments.

In other news, when I am too exhausted to read for class but not tired enough to fall asleep, I've been reading the 6th edition of the APA manual for "fun" (seriously, it's in my backpack right now). I am also tempted to buy this. Dr. M, I blame you for this. (And by "blame you," I mean "thank you.")

A recent reading for my intro class about action research has made me love research even more. While I know that I love research and reading about research methods, I am really feeling this is the direction I would like to go. Not just doing research that gets published into the dark hole of research journals, but research that is for actual change. I have yet to start on the chapter I selected for this week's reading for my seminar (on assessment) but I am excited to read it.

Okay, jumping around - did y'all read the NAS statement? I read it yesterday on the way home from work and I'm still somewhat in shock. Will post about it once I've recovered.

Two final bits:
1) I met with J.J. the "local expert" on geneartional studies. He is incredibly fabulous and supportive and full of information (and we talked about research a little, which was quite fun!) He also pointed me towards a few resources and gave me contact info for a couple of people that might have information for me. --This is for my seminar project on technology/social networking.
2) For my Intro to Higher Ed class, I am going to be interviewing Dr. N - who is the only prof in the department I've never had a class with...which is incredibly unfortunate as I think her work background and research might actually align best with my interests! In any case, she has agreed to meet with me and we will be discussing institutional research, assessment, and evaluation!