Going Sexy for the PhD

At least I'm a little more high-tech than this.

I've turned in 3 of the 5 assignments for my qualitative methods class, the latest one a transcript from an interview I did. I actually did two interviews, because in my effort to find someone to interview who was in my interest area, I accidentally found two. Even though this created more work for me, on a personal level it was extremely valuable. I spoke with two women who work in the office of Faculty and Organizational Development here at MSU. First, I should note that even though I often dreaded some of my jobs in Seattle, what they did help me learn to do well and without fear was reach out to people I did not know, make an introduction, and ask to meet. So much of my role in the nonprofit world in my previous life was all about community building, so I don't shy away from this task much anymore. Particularly here at MSU, I've already met so many people who I will continue to keep in touch with and I know who can support me with my work in the HALE program. Anyway, the two interviews I did for my class served two purposes, 1) to fulfill an assignment for a class and more importantly, 2) to meet new people who do work that I am interested in the subject matter I am interested in (that would be faculty development in higher education, and how practitioner-faculty teach).

So, back to my assignment. I had two hours of interviews that I  could transcribe. For my assignment I only needed to transcribe 30 minutes, but because I wanted all of it I needed to find a way to quickly transcribe. I also had about 12 hours to do this because I wasn't able to schedule my interviews until the day before my assignment was due. As I rode my bike home the day of the interviews, I had a stroke of genius. There is a tool on my Mac that takes spoken words and transcribes them. I've used it in the past when I have long quotes I want to add into papers, and it's faster to read it into my computer (and more accurate) than typing it out. I thought, "That's perfect! I'll just play the interviews into my computer and Voila!! Transcribed!"

Unfortunately, this is how it transcribed some of my interview:
Going to sexy so that goes from on 21st Dr. Push your milestones along the way articulate research university that include the ranks from assistant professor since successful but also a variation in their responsibilities so that a research university the primary mission*education teaching research and something was a service but because were laying quietly also the average age

So... that didn't work. I went back to using a tool that uses my tab key as a pause button and transcribing from there. *Sigh, I guess no laying quietly while transcribing. And at least I'm a pretty fast touch typer.