The woeful negligence of this blog has partially been me over-committing myself this school year, as well as making good progress on my research project. The thing with research is it has its highs and lows for a million reasons. The plus side of being on the “high” side is I’m making progress. The down [...]

Last semester, I realized that I needed to take a break from working on so many things. I didn’t take a true break, but I allowed myself more time to just do nothing. It was a good move. Having a more leisure schedule for work/research/outreach was wonderful. Additionally, because everyone else is on break, Boston [...]

It’s almost New Year’s Eve. Even though I know the calendar year doesn’t symbolize much for me (there’s still another semester on the horizon), I can’t help but be reflective on the past year as the news and everyone else I know seems to be doing so. Despite my hopes, 2012 has been one of [...]

This semester I’ve made a conscientious decision to scale things back and do things that make me happy or that are imperative (work). Grad school (or maybe more accurate, life) isn’t always fun and you can get pulled into projects/committees/etc. that are not making you happy. Life is too short to be unhappy if you [...]

I have been working on a pilot study this past semester, which entail visiting other campuses and doing interviews. There are things that are more obvious to have along with me (batteries, a digital voice recorder), but some items are less obvious but still rather essential to me. They are: Comfortable, professional looking shoes. I [...]

My pilot study goes through periods of activity and periods of inactivity. This wouldn’t be a problem except I cannot anticipate when one will hit; with doing interviews, I have to go when people are available. The pilot study was a good idea, as my methodology is slightly changing; for those who don’t know, a [...]

The school year started off with illness; Boston’s sudden colder weather gifted a cold to me. I’m currently fighting it as I type. Beyond that, it is just another school year. I’ve been making more of an effort to socialize, as research is rather a solo effort. As I had predicted, it would be rather [...]

As of Tuesday, I enter my third year of graduate school for my doctorate. I’ve been busy the past few days organizing my apartment to primarily work from home. From a snafu not of my doing (long story, rather boring), it turns out I need to enroll in one more class. That means I only [...]

This summer has been going by so quickly, with the unusually hot weather and ample work to be done. My dissertation proposal/research things are going. A new aspect I’ve telling people about is there is more management and organization of my committee from my end. Professors, as we all know, are typically overworked and overcommitted. [...]

Some of my classmates warned me that during the research process, their homes were pristine clean. Reason being they used cleaning as means of procrastination. It turns out I’m similar. While I am making progress and working on things (namely, lit review), cleaning has become more of a priority. I’m not sure if it’s the [...]