Prog Blog

Revisions

2008-06-19T05:36:00.000-07:00

My advisor told me that my revisions would likely take about 6 hours, but I've already spent two precious work days just trying to figure out what the heck my committee wants me to do.

After an hour-long phone conference with my advisor, I think I have a pretty clear direction now. I just hope that the changed analyses don't change my results. (I really hope that!)

I have to have this thing revised, approved, and signed off on by my entire committee as well as the graduate dean (or something like that) before I start my new job, so that my hours count towards my licensure. Otherwise they're not much different than internship hours.

I have had ZERO time to work on any other of my research. I was hoping to do some of it now that client hours are slowing down somewhat, but we've been given a bunch of other work to do. This is surely why the median number of pubs after graduation is ZERO!

Defended!

2008-01-21T14:56:00.000-08:00

As of January 11th, 2008.

It was emotionally hard and I honestly expected to hear them say I'd have to redefend when I came back into the room. I was surprised, and a little nonplussed, to hear the congratulations. In fact, I didn't understand it at first. I really don't believe it's over (probably because I still have to do the edits.)

I've now heard from colleagues that it's quite common to get a) depressed and b) sick after defending one's dissertation. I'm not sick (so far), but I may have a touch of depression, based on what seem to be some negative self-assessments, tiredness, and somewhat of a sugar-craving.

Anyway, it's not too bad, and I'm too busy to really get depressed.

Almost There

2007-12-28T06:58:00.001-08:00

My defense is set for January 11th, 2008!

I have the room reserved and my committee have had their copies of the manuscript for several weeks.

It has been really hard completing this work with baby in the picture. I don't know how I could have done it without my husband quitting his job to take care of him.

I have been away at my internship weekdays about 10-11 hours a day (counting from when I leave to when I return), and then on weekends we've done nothing but get my diss worked on. Meaning, I worked on it while husband took care of baby.

So we've both been doing about 70-hour weeks towards my degree. That's counting my internship and dissertation hours, and my husband's baby care hours (but not my baby care hours which start where his leave off.)

It has been a huge relief for both--no, all of us--to finally get it done. Now my husband has weekends off of baby care and can do work towards his career.

Now I just have to write and give the defense presentation. I think I'm making it harder than it has to be, of course. But it's only two weeks away now!

June 24, 2007

2007-06-24T05:43:00.001-07:00

I have actually been making progress, though I haven't really had the chance to update here. What little work time I have is usually better spent actually doing the work. I can pretty much only work on weekends while my partner is taking care of the baby. And even that time has constant interruptions, so each hour is precious. It is really hard to try to do this with a baby, even with another caretaker present. There is no longer any such thing as an uninterrupted block of time--ever.

However, I find I am now at a spot where I need to stand back and get an overview of where I am so that I can know how to continue. I'm getting close to done, according to Dr. N. She thinks I can finish it by the end of this month, which would be ... today, I guess! I think the straggling ends of any project are often the hardest part to complete.

An undergrad assistant finished entering the texts of the short answers from the survey (the qualitative bit), so that's a good job done. I've encoded the texts and done some analyses on the coded responses.

I have one more variable that I think I will code as a categorical one. Other than that, I will treat the material as "therapy session" material as one committee member suggested: read it for patterns and common threads to pull out and discuss. I think there is some good material for my discussion section.

Many sections are basically done. The introduction section was mostly done already because it was pretty much my proposal. The method section is done, the results section, too. The additional findings section needs to be filled out, probably mostly with the qualitative material that I recently acquired. (Although I probably should add the qualitative methods into the method section itself, but the results into the additional findings section.)

I also need to just catch up with my dissertation committee, to let them know that I'm still here plugging away. One member doesn't seem to be very into email, so I should--what? Send a letter when I send emails to the other members? That would seem odd. But it's not someone I know well enough to casually call on the phone for a brief update, and I don't want a giant phone conversation. Well, I'll send the email and see what happens.

It might be easier to just copy part of my to-do list here; it's a bit scattered, but then so is this process these days.

_√?Rewrite paragraphs subsequent to hypotheses paragraphs in discussion section (easy!) (begin p.50 or so)

_√?Make figure-dense paragraphs into tables

_?_Integrate highlighted intro info into discussion section (ongoing)

_?_Systematically go through red notes and complete (ongoing)

_1_Enter some results of various operations into “additional findings” section

_1_Age findings

_1_Race findings

___Describe how qualitative data was treated and analyzed

___Add variable descriptives for qualitatives (important ones anyway)

___Write down impressions of qual data answers first of all w/out censoring

___Figure out where to put those impressions

___Code for influences (make a new variable with however-many conditions)

_2_Per Nina’s notes: for each lit review highlight, describe whether in accord with my findings

_2_ Per email to Nina: for each finding, discuss whether it is in accord with lit review findings (basically the same thing as above)

_3_Look over previous research notes to get ideas for discussion section

_4_Redo results figures with two groups for sex (only use for comparison of sexes sections)

_2_Additional sex findings

_4_ Find study re: depression/pathology and influence on perception (psychopath findings sect.)

___Use Multi draft as base from which to “pull out” and write other sections

_4_see if qual results such as “I’m not prejudiced” are related to engaging in “superficial social situation” (see p. 12, regarding T-S and F study)

_5_check verb tense agreement throughout

_5_look up all N = and change to n = throughout
___Add some material from the Racial Microaggressions article (discuss future directions, use for my findings?)

August 10

2006-08-10T04:05:00.000-07:00

(Entry cross-pollinated from my day-to-day journal blog).

Last night I finally completed the scoring and coding of the final survey, #333.

I still need to go back and complete some sections, which includes:

-score the BSIs of the first 80 or so I did when I still didn't have the BSI manual
-check certain commonly missed items on each GRISMS (#s 23, 24, 27, 31, and 38) to make sure they are correctly scored, and add any changes into each GRISMS score as necessary
-check the endorsed sexuality on the GRISMS for each participant and add this to the demographics (I think people are way underreporting being gay or bi, unless it's just that it's such a young group that a lot people haven't come out yet)
-check how I scored the final item on the indices for people who wrote in "O". I'm going to allow zeros to be included in the total score.
-acquire and check the surveys completed by my assistants, as well as score the BSIs on those
-enter the data of recently completed surveys into the database
-scan the handwritten portions of the most recent surveys into PDF format

...and finally, begin typing the handwritten portions into text format in the spreadsheet(s).

Then I need to send those to Dr. R. to get her input about the qualitative portion of the analyses, and set up some coding of qualitative data into quantitative data, as appropriate.

I also should email my committee about my progress so they know I am still actually alive and working!

After all that, I can start doing the analyses, which really shouldn't take more than a couple of days.

I'm not sure how any other research will fit into my summer at this point. The baby could realistically arrive anywhere from four to 8 weeks from now, and that's if it's full-term.

I also really must begin work on my new internship applications for this fall, as I will be awfully busy at the time. I wish I had had the time (and a working car, come to think of it) to drive into town when the most recent internship meeting was held, as I am wondering about proposed changes to the APPIC this year. I guess I will just need to look at it online and figure it out.

June 1

2006-06-01T07:50:00.000-07:00

Now I am trying to really get going on crunching my data. I had some false starts in the past couple of weeks (more "try" than "do") but seeing a colleague defend his dissertation has helped me to get some "doing" done.

I have over 300 surveys completed, although I only needed 210. This is great for the data (and for the eventual publishability, according to one committee member), but means a cartload of work. Especially the qualitative analyses. That may be the point where I contact former students and ask if they want some research experience. I know there is one student who is interested in helping over the summer, but I don't know what to do with her help yet. Sometimes setting up things for someone else to help takes longer than doing it yourself.

As it turns out, I don't have the scoring sheet for one of my instruments after all, but for a shorter version of it. Therefore I have applied to the publisher to be allowed to order it. That was a week ago; don't know how long it might take. A colleague also has it and is willing to lend me his, but he has recently moved and still has to unpack all his stuff. I also need to figure out where on the publisher's site I need to apply to use the instrument for research. Nevertheless, I can still score the other segments of the survey (for now, that one is almost an aside, anyway.)

I spent a couple of days getting re-started, and figuring out how I want to do the scoring. I began scoring the survey instruments, at which I feel a bit rusty. I had some conflicting information regarding my main instrument. The researcher who developed this instrument sent me a version that has items that were removed (or not counted) in the article he published validating the instrument. Therefore I have determined to omit these items, as upon reviewing my proposal, I used the figures from that article. (Also I want valid, defendable data!)

I discovered that there may be some surveys that are missing parts--that is, the very first one I did was missing the section of the indices that addressed structural aspects of experience, though it did include the section that addressed voluntary aspects of experience. I hope there are not many like that. This is something that may make having all those "extra" surveys advantageous. I'll still use that person's data, as the other parts are still there. There will just be some missing data for that section. Also found one person who did the entire survey, but didn't sign the consent form. Can't use that one, obviously.

Anyway...off to install newer stats program and begin the spreadsheet.

Oh yeah--I noticed that while I do now have version 11.5 of the program (and felt happy to be updating from version 9!), a colleague who recently defended his diss was using version 13.0. I think that is another thing that definitely enhances publishability. However, I guess simply getting done is also an important goal here.

Setbacks and Moving Forward

2006-04-03T13:01:00.000-07:00

I now will have to go through internship applications yet again. I actually got a really good site this year, but have had to make an agreement with the site to withdraw, as I am now pregnant and will be giving birth the first month of internship. They really wanted to just give me a one-year deferral, but APPIC guidelines only allow for a "secret" (and frankly, unethical) way to do it. Therefore we decided to just withdraw me and I'll go through internship apps again next year.

The AWP conference (with all the organizing I was doing) is over, and the classes I'm teaching are nearly over for the year. After that all I'll have to do is to work on my dissertation (and possibly some of the other research projects). I am actually excited and looking forward to having time to work on that.

However, I am not looking forward to doing the 4-month process of internship apps yet again, third year in a row, and this time with a nursing babe-in-arms. Dang APPIC.

March Already??

2006-03-01T14:00:00.000-08:00

So I worked 15-hour days from October through January. Aside from teaching two new class preps and working half-time at the clinic, I spent those months applying for internship, preparing for internship interviews, and then going out of town on the actual interviews.

The great thing is that I actually was one of the lucky 75% who actually got a placement from all that work, so I am one more big step along the way towards being "Dr."

The other activity I managed to somehow squeeze in there is to get pregnant. I'm almost done with the first trimester, which means that the terrible illness that has plagued me for many weeks now may be just about over. Thank heavens, because I have only been able to work for about 10 hours a week!

I am considering withdrawing from clinical work for the rest of the semester in order to spend what little work time I am able to on my dissertation, and possibly the three other research projects that are up in the air.

Mid-October

2005-10-13T07:43:00.000-07:00

Now that I have about 180 surveys done, I may have to temporarily abandon the dissertation stuff in order to try to cram in the internship apps. Once again I feel unprepared and pressured about this. I'm really not feeling ready to do this process this year. I don't even know where the heck to apply. We are still not accredited yet. Regardless of the "applicant status," I know there are many sites whose screening system will not even let our apps in the door for anyone to look at. Also, I just feel I don't yet have the experience and research pubs to offer that sites appear to want.

In order to do the apps, I have to update everything everything EVERYTHING, as well as go around begging for letters of rec yet again; trying to write some research stuff so I have even just one pathetic "submitted" pub to put on my CV; trying to get some case reports written up and anonymized, and so forth...and it's already mid-October.

Meanwhile this weekend, I have to write two midterms and grade weekly papers, and next week I have to grade those midterms. I am not able to get much done during the week except clinic and class stuff, which takes a lot more time than I'd like. Therefore my weekends are pretty much it for doing everything else. So that means I have two weekends left to do all this, and those will be full of a cartload of class stuff. I'm just feeling really discouraged and tired. Insert appropriate swear words into that sentence.

October

2005-10-05T05:30:00.000-07:00

Most of the data collection for my dissertation is now accomplished, that is, I have 185 completed surveys out of my required 210. So I need at least 25 more participants...not a huge number, although the last few are always the hardest to squeeze out.

Meanwhile, my hardworking undergrad assistant has completed the scoring of the GRISMS surveys that Dr. N. and I pre- and post-administered to our classes last spring. During the summer she also entered some of them into an SPSS database we created, but I believe she may be too busy to continue at this time. Nevertheless, it's a start.

This weekend I intend to create a similar, (though extended) database for the current 185 surveys. I am also retracing my email paths to make sure that I have followed up with professors who offered their students as participants. I will also create lists of students who participated to send to their respective professors.

I have received a curious invitation to this conference and am trying to figure out whether it's legitimate. Even if it's legitimate, it costs $3000 to attend (not including air fare). I wonder if I could find some way to pay for it... If I did attend, it would certainly be a powerful motivator to complete my work!

The other things that are still somewhere on my burners at this point are: the MDM study, writing the results section for the nutrition study so I can submit it, and sending results of the GRT/Nutrition study to those who participated. (I had my UG assistant working on this over the summer, but she developed a curious mental block about the write-up.)

The big things on my front burners right now are mostly day-to-day: clinic work and class prep. Both seem to take a lot of my time, and I feel a little bit at sea with some teaching issues. For the past few weeks I have been leaving the house at 7am and returning at 9pm, or in some cases working until about 10 when I get home. I have been feeling pretty overwhelmed.

The other front-burner issue is, once again, applying for internship. I have to update everything APPIC, including essays, hours, and sample reports, as well as getting new letters of ref once again. I am not looking forward to this, though I tell myself that it won't be as bad as last year. I tell myself this because I have to get all this done this month, probably during the weekends.

I also plan to work on updating my AAPI this weekend.

I was really hoping to send off at least just the ONE document for submission to Appetite before sending the application, so I could include it.

I am also disappointed that I have gotten only one more integrated-report-type assessment over the summer. I did get a couple of full-battery OCD assessments. However, the LD assessments were in short supply at the clinic until August, when tons rolled in. I did snap one up, but coupled with the moving, wedding, and OCD assessments, used up every waking second of every day. My supervisor over the summer advised me strongly to not take any more until the Fall Semester.

However, now that it's Fall Semester, I haven't had a chance to catch my breath yet...if it weren't for internship app itself, I could probably fit in an assessment in a week or two! Catch-22.

Post-nuptials

2005-09-07T14:01:00.000-07:00

It appears that the whole wedding/moving thing threw me about a month off-course.

However, I am married and have moved. I have my schedule set up for the student clinic and begin teaching my new classes tomorrow.

I met today with A., the grad student who will be helping me in my data collection. Now that I finally have approval, it sounds like it has a good chance of actually getting collected by the end of the month with her help and that of my undergrad assistant.

A. and I set up general times/schedules for which the students can sign up--early afternoons, since she must pick up her kids after that. I hope that the undergraduate is still interested in doing a little work and can do some late afternoon/ early evening collections.

Tonight I will send A. the recruitment letter for the profs at her department (increased chances of getting participants!) and I will distribute some myself at the Psych Department. I will see the undergrad student tomorrow in class and ask what she would like to do.

AWP Logos

2005-07-08T06:40:00.000-07:00

Below are the two designs I created for the use of the Association for Women in Psychology conference. (AWP organizing being one of those ongoing tasks I can't really quantify into a bar, but which certainly takes time anyway!)

While I was only supposed to be designing the Women of Color Caucus T-shirt, I had to start by desconstructing the original design that RS had anyway for what I had in mind. This was a black-and-white sketch of three intersecting figures that she found, and that people generally seemed to like for use as the overall AWP 2006 conference logo. I not-so-secretly hope people prefer my updated version--I do!

After I scanned in the B/W image, I electronically "traced" over the three individual figures to extract them. (More painstaking than it sounds!) Then modified each one to be more graphically appealing (i.e. redrew the hands entirely, reproportioned body parts that were obviously crooked after being disentangled from the others, etc.)

Then I made them into solid, block-print seeming figures. These figures I colored into warm earth-tones for the WOC shirt design (as well as moving the legs inward so the figures could "stand" more normally), and also created a fourth figure to round out the grouping.

At this point I had already done the hard work of updating the individual figures, so I took the three original figures and put them into a circle, re-creating the original "Intersections" image with a more "graphic" look.

AWP logo sample

2005-07-08T06:37:00.000-07:00

AWP logo sample
Originally uploaded by doctorlizardo.

This is the overall logo I am proposing for the 2006 AWP conference.

I based it on a black-and-white drawing that one of our organizers found regarding intersecting identities. (I think this one would sell T-shirts better!)

WOC logo sample

2005-07-08T06:34:00.000-07:00

WOC logo sample
Originally uploaded by doctorlizardo.

Here is the design I am proposing for the Women of Color Caucus 2006 T-shirt. I based it on the overall new AWP logo I made (above).

I thought it might be nice if this year we had logos that were different, but co-ordinating.

Wednesday

2005-07-07T05:48:00.000-07:00

Did almost nothing on the Appetite document.

I did start training my undergrad research assistant on scoring the GRISMS, which I will be using for both the mini-study and my dissertation. So I guess I made some progress on both of those projects. (I'm training my assistant by way of learning it myself.)

Also responded to an email from Dr. M. regarding the status of my HSRC proposal, in which he basically just wanted me to add a few lines of text to the bottom of the informed consent section and email it back, which I did.

He also mentioned something about how my changes to the consent form based on the checklist will make it easier for the participants to understand it. I have no idea what he's talking about, because I haven't made any changes to it other than adding the HSRC contact information. I had already used the checklist when constructing the thing in the first place.

I think the HSRC committee members are either completely mad or reading some random document that isn't my proposal, based on their comments.

Nevertheless, it looks like I will soon be allowed to begin data collection.

Tuesday

2005-07-05T19:32:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I developed a clearer idea of my intended flow of the paper and began some headway, which I continued today.

I've used some pieces of my thesis. Some parts were rearranged to accommodate the new menu-item data, and some parts were modified. I have filled in other parts with new material.

I feel the intro/background is basically intact at this point, and the method section is almost done. I will be writing up the analyses section next.

Based on the format of the accepted articles I've been looking at, I may be including too much detail--for example, in the instruments section. I may simply end up with a shorter document than those others. If that's the case, then I have completed more than 29%, which I have based on the average word count of accepted articles.

I hope to finish this by the weekend, but will be semi-busy tomorrow and gone at the Anxiety Clinic on Thursday--that day's usually pretty much a wash, especially given the 4-hour round trip. I hope I can get a lot more done tomorrow, perhaps in the evening.

@

2005-07-04T15:29:00.000-07:00

Accidentally deleted half my blog template sometime yesterday, so I have to rebuild it when I have the time. It's been a huge hassle, since there's something wrong with my laptop that causes it to kick me off whatever internet connection I'm using after about 30 seconds, and then I have to reconnect. Lots of things disappear when posting that way.

Monday

2005-07-04T12:08:00.000-07:00

While I had an outline for this paper, I began to have a hard time over the weekend fleshing it out. I felt I was spinning my wheels, despite my "deadline" of finishing at least a draft by next weekend.

After reviewing my findings again (notes from the conference) and re-running a few of the figures in SPSS by way of regaining familiarity, I had a little better idea of where I wanted the discussion section to go. Then today I found some background literature essential to the entire paper.

While reviewing this material and looking for related material took some time, perhaps it is not wasted. I now feel I actually have a theoretical framework for my intro, background, and discussion.

When I know where I'm going, the stuff seems to "write itself" instead of plodding the way it does when I'm trying to figure out the material in each sentence.

Weds

2005-06-29T20:36:00.000-07:00

I think I mostly have the background/discussion section done. It's hard to know what to include and leave out. The specifications say to be as concise as possible, but the reports I've been looking at are not my idea of concise. (You know my idea of concise is to make eye contact with the reader.)

I'm not sure about keeping a particular paragraph I have in the intro, but I guess I can decide that later when there's actually a structure to edit.

And there's some stuff I might add in later, instead of taking stuff out. I can't tell yet.

Tues

2005-06-29T08:12:00.000-07:00

I found the requirements for submission to the research journal Appetite and also have reviewed a number of its recently published reports. It seems that most reports are 7,500-8,500 words.

I made an outline based on my findings as presented at the AWP conference, and have begun fleshing it out with text from my thesis.

However, the emphasis is slightly different. In my thesis, I did not include anything associated with the independent post-hoc "validation" of the menu items. But in this report, those findings are central.

Thus the emphasis is not "how do masculinity and femininity measurements directly relate to nutritional composition" but the more subtle and (to me) more interesting "how do people see food items" and "how do masculinity and femininity measurements relate to which items are chosen".

First Post

2005-06-29T07:23:00.000-07:00

Hopefully, having a blog that tracks my progress on various projects will help me to feel like I'm accomplishing something, and perhaps even keep me on track.

"To-do" lists are depressing because the list only contains things you haven't done yet, not how much you've accomplished.