Life In The Great North West

Today I was reviewing notes from past meetings with my supervisor. From one meeting I found the name of an organization that she had wanted me to look at (and I never did). So I went up the website and was reading about the organization's philosophy, which is based on a book. I went to the university's library catalogue and discovered that yes, the book is there, but that it had already been checked out by a grad student. Frustration and disappointment ensues. About ten minutes later, light bulb! I logged onto my library account and looked at the list of books that I have checked out, discovering that I was the grad student who had checked out the book. Digging through my large pile of books I eventually found it. You know you have too much research to sort through when....

Hello July 1st!

I've been avoiding putting my thesis together and working on my chapters in individual files. Tonight I finally compiled it all and the good news is I will have no problem at all making my thesis over 100 pages, the bad news is I'm currently only at 70. My supervisor is looking for something between 100-150 as a rough guideline, with the focus of course being on quality over quantity. Some theses are hundreds and hundreds of pages, but at some point less is more, no?

I'm happy with my recent thesis progress (for once!) and have worked through a large chunk of my results chapter in a very short period of time. I still have lots to write though which is both exciting and overwhelming at the same time. I've returned to my late night writing schedule and it's oddly comforting. There is something soothing about the quietness of the house late at night where all I can hear is my upbeat music and my frantic typing. With the rest of the house asleep I can finally find a sense of calm and can focus on my work.

I need to switch gears tomorrow to finish up a project for my research assistant job, which I hope doesn't throw off my thesis groove - eek!

So, cheers to thesis progress and Happy Birthday Canada!

The students I worked with have had lots of life experience - some things they have done and others that have kind of happened around them or to them, such as different scenarios with family and living arrangements. Some of the students have gained insight from their experiences and value what they've learned and others are burdened with regret. I certainly wonder about the "what ifs" and I have small regrets all of the time, but there isn't any big thing in my life that I wish I could go back and change. Afterall, each action we take leads somehow to the next and I've had some fantastic experiences that I wouldn't want to give up. It makes me sad to listen to a person in their teens say that they regret so much of their life.

I am finally done coding! (only 2 or 3 weeks later than I had hoped :S.....). Now on to the "best" part - putting all the info together in my head and writing out my findings. Quicker! Go!

I'm not feeling so great this week. Armed with after-bite, a heating pad, eye drops, pain killers (and chocolate :P) and water, I sit at my computer all day and try to make a thesis magically appear. I'm racing against an impending deadline that I'm not sure I can actually meet and not making much progress. I fall in this trap often while writing large papers, I get so overwhelmed that I do nothing and then the day before it's due I somehow get it on paper one slow keystroke at a time. I need to get SO much more done each day than I have so far this week. I'm not looking for advice or sympathy I just need to vent my frustration. so... GRRRRRR!

On a much happier note, I have been 25 for almost exactly a week now! I t was great just to hear from everyone either by phone, card, or internet; Birthdays are a great facilitator for reconnecting people. I have a lovely birthday bouquet sitting on my desk and had some much needed time away from the computer with a dinner out and then a weekend trip to Jasper! The Canadian Rockies are absolutely amazing! Trip highlights include:

• Standing at the peak of one of the rocky mountains at cloud level, looking out over the city of Jasper and other mountains
• Extremely blue water from the glaciers
• Seeing Mt. Robson, the tallest of the Canadian Rockies
• My first bear sighting! We saw 3 actually on our drive home, we turned the car around and stopped to take pictures so I got to see one up close - it was much smaller than I had pictured and actually quite cuite. I also saw moose, elk, deer, and some baby wolves. :)

• Last weekend's conference was great. I've spent a lot of time this week following up on the conference activities by networking, reflecting, and researching relevant careers and training programs. I am hopeful that this group of women will be successful in staying in touch and supporting each other.
• We have been having a bit of a heat wave in BC this week and although the sun is nice I can't go outside and enjoy it because of my allergies. There is so much of the white dandelion fluff that it looks like it's snowing! *achoo!*
• Yesterday I went to a committee meeting where we managed to productively discuss zombies and goblets - fantastic.
• I really think anything with more than two legs and/or wings should stay out of my apartment! Spiders, mosquitos, flys, ants *shudders*
• In less than a week I will be 25! Although I was recently mistaken for a 17 year old... so apparently I am aging quite gracefully....
• Thesis wise - I am still analyzing my data. There are important deadlines looming in the not-so-distant future. So - full speed ahead!
• For those of you who actually visit my LJ as opposed to reading it on your friend's feed you'll notice that I changed the layout. The bright white and purple is so much happier than the dark blues.

I received some more information about the conference yesterday and I've been reading through everything. There are 20 woman from each group not 30 (community leaders, emerging leaders, grade 11s). There are a few women who have completed Masters degrees in leadership but they were under the category of business. I came across this problem when I was looking for graduate programs to apply to. I find it odd that the idea of leadership has found its home in business, I guess it all depends on how you define leadership... From the women in my emerging leader category there are only one or two other graduate students the rest are 'young professionals' who I think they define as being in the workforce for 5 years or less. Most of them have already reached management positions or do a lot of volunteer work. There are lots of people in the finance sector, some lawyers and also some professional athletes in the mix! I hope my experiences measure up. A lot of the high school students say they want to study International Development so I might get a chance to talk to a few students about that. I'm a little concerned that Saturday's sessions are scheduled for a 15 hour day! Do I get to sleep? It looks like I might be there early enough on Friday to explore UBC before sessions start though, which is exciting. There are several famous gardens, parks, and a beach on campus so there is lots to see!

This morning the radio DJ comes on after a song and says "How are you doing Nicole on this feel good Friday!?"
Followed by a minute of dead air time.
Then finally... he starts talking to a caller who won a prize.
There were a few seconds there that I thought the radio might be talking to me. I need to spend less time sitting at the computer...

At this time next week, I'll be heading from the Vancouver airport to UBC - it's nearing conference time!

For anyone who has worried about my lack of contact with the outside world, I realized this morning that I've actually managed to do something social every single weekend this month. First a concert followed by drinks, last weekend Noah's Ark Adventureland and then dinner and a bonfire at a friend's house, a lovely Sunday brunch at another friend's house this morning, next weekend I'm going to watch roller derby and then at the end of the month I'm off to UBC for a leadership conference! Throw in there some phone and email updates from friends and family back in Ontario, random FB and text messages and a couple of meetings, and I've probably being more social in May than I am normally. The benefit of good scheduling?

The thing is I work for 6.5 days of the week (for the majority of the day, on a lovely schedule I devised) and play for the remaining 0.5 of a day, where I tend to still discuss and think about my thesis because that's how I spent all of my time up to the point of social contact. A thesis is an all consuming creature; physically, emotionally and of course mentally. I'm still working on my thesis even when I'm not working on my thesis, I even dream about it! I wish I was kidding about that last part...

P.S. I got to play with a hoola-hoop today at brunch and now I want one of my own! I think there's just enough room to use in my livingroom and it's a much more fun ab exercise than stomach crunches. I must investigate.

P.P.S. I forgot to put on sunscreen this morning and now my face feels burnt. ouch.

P.P.P. S. I am super excited about the leadership conference. They are taking care of everything, all I have to do is get myself onto a plane and then prepare to learn, network, and expand my horizons. It is hosted by the Minnerva Foundation and is a combination of grade 11 students, young professionals (such as myself) and established community leaders. So I'm in the middle of a mentoring sandwhich. I found out today that a woman at the brunch participated in it as a high school student - small world? She said that she wished she had taken better advantage of the networking opportunities but had a good time and found a lot of the speakers to be inspirational. I'm looking forward to it :D.

Is anyone else getting friend requests from journals that are all about 'how I got rich with google'? Once someone adds me as a friend is there anyway to get my name off of their list? Boo spam.

My new writing schedule was very successful last week, I felt like I was making decent progress and the ideas were plentiful. I've already lost my way a little by getting off track the past few days. My Saturday morning writing was interrupted by the infamous 'blue screen of death' that took over my laptop. I subsequently spent hours searching for a reputable spyware scanner that might catch something my AVG has been missing. It did indeed find a nasty trojan, which I hope is gone for good. My computer seems to be a little quicker, but that could be wishful thinking.

Following the battle with my computer, I went with some friends to an adventure park / petting zoo attraction in PG. There was an abundance of llama's, horses, and scary looking goats that all enjoyed being petted. I also liked the yaks and the ostriches, but I'm not putting my hands near them!

Then today the theme was communication. I spent many hours on the phone with friends and family back in Ontario, received a few lengthy update emails from other friends, and even got the long awaited approval of the interview transcripts from a couple more of my research participants (YAY!). I also completed a leadership profile, organized my banking, got my voter information sorted out, and met a few other deadlines. So, as horrible as it feels to have not met today's writing goal I'm glad to have accomplished everything that I did.

Tomorrow I'm planning to take my early morning walk to the voting station and then settle in for another day of writing, back on schedule.

As I make the switch from field work to analysis and the actual writing of my thesis, I've been reading books and articles about "how to write a thesis." There are some good pieces of advice in them and I'm going to to try and implement a new strategy this week and I'll post if it somehow actually works....

Here are my 'words of the day' from my latest 'how to write book':

• Specious: "Having deceptive attraction or allure"
  • Used to describe all of the excuses that I (and apparently many other academics) use to avoid writing.
• Prolific: "Marked by abundant inventiveness or productivity"
  • The type of writer I am trying to become: a "prolific writer" - one that generates an abundance of creative ideas and written pages... sounds like a thesis to me!

I'm hesitant to use the word done because I still have to drop off the last of the transcripts at the high school tomorrow, and then I have to impatiently wait for all of my participants to approve them and if they want any changes made I have to add those in.... but for the most part, the absolutely horrendous stage that was transcribing is OVER! As predicted I came out with 293 pages of transcripts and about 50 pages of field/journal notes, so yes indeed I have 350 pages of data to analyze. *jaw drop* Think carefully before you choose to do qualitative research people. My next step is to figure out how exactly I 'm going to do my analysis... and then do it!

In order to deliver the transcripts tomorrow it involves leaving my apartment, which is something I haven't done for the past two weeks other than to buy milk at the convenience store and bring a set of transcripts to the post office. I have truly become a hermit, I'm actually a little anxious about venturing out into the 'real world' again since it feels like it's been so long. However, I'm sure I'll enjoy it once I actually get myself out that door. Perhaps I can even reconnect with real live people this week? Any takers?

Today I.... woke up early, wrote letters and compiled transcript packages, got on the bus and headed to the high school to deliver said packages where I had to navigate through a crowd of 7 bus loads of small children in order to get to the front office, walked to the mall, put my name on the waiting list at H&R, walked around the mall and tried on half off pieces of clothing, tried to help a woman having back pains, finally filed my taxes, grabbed the next bus out of there, went grocery shopping, walked home carrying said groceries, made a super awesome salad with a billion ingredients, had lunch, found out my Dad & Lorie are moving May 1st and checked out pictures of the house, and after that it becomes a blur of yawning, some more food, and lots of transcribing, which I'm still doing... I feel accomplished today.

My hermitting, all work, rarely ever leave the apartment strategy is working surprisingly well overall. Well, maybe not. It kind of makes me anxious and restless. I think today was good because I managed to get some sunshine and some exercise. In any case, let's hope I can sustain a high level of productivity for another week and actually finish off these transcripts! At which point there will be lots of jumping up and down and arm flailing and happy dancing,

Wishing me success with my transcription actually made it into the Easter prayer last night before dinner - so how could this week not be a fantastic work week!?

Last night was a great Easter. There were close to 20 people there and they ranged from first year student all the way up to professor. I think that's one of the great things of a being at a small university, it seems normal here but I have a hard time picturing it at UofT. There was lots of wine and food, including of the vegetarian variety. There was an Easter egg hunt, a musical performance on guitar and banjo, and some Irish dancing lessons. Random indeed, but why not? :)

Yesterday was my first day wearing running shoes and the day before my first day not wearing a winter coat. Despite the snow on the ground and not extremely warm temperatures, I’m declaring it Spring!

Last week I worked too many hours and didn’t sleep enough. Thankfully I managed to stay sinus infection free and meet the deadlines I was working towards. On the Friday morning (a week ago today) I gave my first presentation at an academic conference. My presentation wasn’t outstanding but everything went well and I’m happy to have done it.

A woman I went to school with in Toronto was on a placement for her Master’s program in Vanderhoof (an hour west of PG). I somehow managed to meet up with her 3 times while she was here, so it was fun to do some touristy stuff and check out Vanderhoof – the geographic centre of BC! Anyone else want to come visit me!? :D

I had hoped to be done by now, but I’m still transcribing and only about half way done. I ended up not getting any transcribing done last week with the conference and such and so now I’m trying to make up for lost time. Transcription has turned out to be a big road block for me and I’ll be glad to move on when it’s done.

I’m reading a book about how to write your thesis, which sounds ridiculous but will hopefully help motivate me or at least provide some practical advice. The author has her doctorate and is a writing coach of sorts.

It’s Easter weekend! I’ve been graciously invited to a dinner tonight and then will be back at home and transcribing the rest of the weekend. I will at least get to snack on Easter eggs and take breaks to go for walks (hopefully in the sunshine). Which, all in all sounds like a pretty good weekend after all.

Happy Easter!

Here’s the depressing bit of math I realized tonight… Each of my student transcripts are approximately or close to 30 pages long. There are 10 student interviews. This equals 300 PAGES OF TRANSCRIPTS. Not to mention, another 40 pages or so for the two teacher interviews combined.

So far I have completed about 30% of my transcription, which equals 90 pages, which is pretty close to be long enough to be a thesis itself. In addition to transcripts I will probably have another 50-100 pages of field and reflexive notes.

So… what I’m trying to say… is that tonight I realized that:
A) I (will) have approximately 400 pages of thesis data (300 minimum I’m guessing)
B) I have typed out about 130 pages of said data to date (which explains why my arms and eyes are so sore)
C) It is going to take forever to analyze my data (and I may never graduate)
D) The finished paper is likely going to be over (possibly far over) the original 100 pages I set out to write
E) I should be sleeping at 1:15am instead of making lists about scarily large numbers...

I'm 3/4 done my research interviews! I'm completely wrapped up in my interviews these days. I feel like every moment of the day that is not actually spent interviewing is spent preparing for interviews or at least, thinking about interviews.

I am wrapped up not only intellectually and time wise, but also emotionally in these students' stories. Listening to recordings today I've been close to tears a few times. I don't know how psychiatrists, for example, manage. How can you explore the depths of people's stories and then keep the content and resulting emotions/thoughts to yourself?

I'm not at a point in my research where I can disclose any of the interview content, but I can't wait to share these students' stories and explore them further. They have everything - they make me laugh, make me cry, and provide me with wisdom and insight.

"To be a person is to have a story to tell. —Isak Dinesen

I was quite proud of myself for waking up at 9:30 without an alarm this Sunday morning and being ready to get down to work. When my computer was finally up and running I realized that time had sprung ahead an hour, and I had no idea. I'm happy about the additional sunshine it will result in, but I'm wondering how I missed that important piece of information, and for today, I'm feeling quite cheated out of that hour... and consequently very behind on my work before I even get started.

P.S. Happy International Woman's Day!

 

( Finish the Sentence! )