T-Minus Four Days

In about four days, I will be catching a plane to the Netherlands. You may be asking, "how can a poor grad student such as yourself make it to the Netherlands?" Well, that is what fellowships are all about. I was given a fellowship along with 15 other students to go to the Netherlands to do research. I have mentioned this trip before, and now the time is finally upon me, when I am anxiously counting the days, and soon the hours before I leave. I am not entirely sure what I will be doing there, but there is some focus on helping with English language proficiency, (yes, even though it is Holland, they speak a lot of English), better understanding and learning about how the education system in the Netherlands is dealing with the immigrant phenomenon, and finally developing a larger curriculum for graduate students at MSU to take courses on global competency. Indeed, all very vague-ish.

One aspect of the program that was not initially part of our study plan is working with a school that enrolls students who have recently come to the Netherlands from countries in crisis. The majority of these students are aged 12 - 18, and are from Syria, Eritrea, and Afghanistan. Many of the students, from what we have learned so far, have not only traveled thousands of miles to leave their home countries, but are also alone. The Netherlands has somewhat of a system to integrate these children and young adults into their education system. Yet because of the instability of the system, and the relocation efforts, many of these students do not stay in one area longer than half a year, and 18 months at most.

Most of the work my group and I will be doing on this subject is in a city called Maastricht, down in the little southeast nubbin corner of the Netherlands. Admittedly, I am terrified. I have realized that most of the last several weeks I have been very inwardly focused on preparing for this "trip" and have somewhat forgotten what I will be doing once I get there. I have also been balancing the knowledge that once we land in Amsterdam, I'm sure everything will be just fine. However, I am also aware that I haven't been thoughtful about who I will be working with in Maastricht, both the teachers at the school, and the students. This will certainly be a journey that may seem to be set in a familiar place (a western country in Europe) yet contains extremely unfamiliar experiences with a very diverse community who I am sure, have many stories to tell.

Backyard Frontyard Yardwork

The past couple of weekends we have been out in the backyard, digging up dirt, planting new things, and making plans for how to revive parts of the landscape around our house. We went to a nursery east of Lansing, called Van Etta's to pick up some plants for the front yard area, and also see about putting in some new plants along our back fence. Additionally, we needed to reorganize our back deck because summer is finally here! Which means sitting outside now while a breeze is still around before I get eaten alive by mosquitoes. So, we redid parts of the front area, pulled all weeds and random volunteer plants along the side fence, mulched, and threw more sod we dug up onto the cardboard that we are using to re-landscape parts of the yard so it's not just all grass. It's coming along, and soon we'll have even more new plantings once all the sod is gone.

ICQI Dancing

For most of this past week I was out of town at the University of Illinois. This was very exciting to me! I drove on roads that I have never driven on, in parts of a state I know very little about. Champaign Urbana, where UI is, is about a 4.5 hour drive from Lansing, and on the way down my friends and I took a little detour to get some candy. Really, there was some construction on 94 and so we went a little different way and just happened to hit a chocolate factory. In addition to the chocolate factory, I realized that instead of playing the alphabet game while on a road trip, because of our detour I could play the "how many tractors cross our path" game (total = 5).

Getting candy. Yes.

The reason I was at UI was because they host a conference every year called the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, ICQI. I was presenting at the conference and was really excited to share the work that I've done with my writing partner Meg. The other two who were part of our panel presentation are in my cohort in HALE, Rob and Aliya. We all presented on using a method called autoethnography to address challenges in higher education. I won't go into detail about our presentation, but I will say that ICQI is a place where many types of research get presented. I joked with my friends that I wanted to make sure I got some ethnographic dancing in while we were there. Despite what folks might think of this conference, it is a great way to learn about methods, and research, and be challenged by new things. (I learned about agential realism. It's, uh, interesting.) And it is a super chill atmosphere to talk about ideas and have a lot of meaningful conversation about interests and passions. Moreover, it's a wonderful place to feel supported and ask questions, particularly for a doc student as myself.

75th Place and 3rd of all Kevins

There were a lot of people.

Over the past weekend we did our 10K in Grand Rapids. It was great! Well, except that we arrived with not quite enough time to spare. A long line at the bathroom, then checking in and some other little parking mis-haps meant that I ran out to the start line right as they shot the blast off go gun, and Kevin didn't get to the start line until 10 minutes after the start. Neither of us really considered that this race was really quite large. And so many people meant for me, and especially Kevin, that we had to jockey around so many others in order to finally find our own stride. It's not that I'm an extremely fast runner, but I have learned my lesson to get to the start line way before the start signal so I can get in with my pace group. There is nothing worse than weaving in and out of people, running up on sidewalks and squeezing past people to finally, at mile 2.5, get to others who run around the same pace I do. However, with all that weaving and slowing down and speeding up, I was actually running much faster than usual, and when I crossed the finish line and hit stop on my watch it flashed "Fastest 10K! New Record!" I was surprised! It was awesome! I was jamming! When it was all said and done, I came in 75th in my age group (35 - 40) and Kevin came in 114th overall out of 3,332 and 9th in his division (40 - 44). He also came in 3rd of all the Kevins who were running that day. We did really well! And I came in under an hour! Take that 6.2 miles!

Long List of To Do

Now that summer is officially here, or rather, I should say, the end of spring semester, I can turn my attention to my to do list of projects, readings, papers I want to spend more time on, and relaxing. I have been keeping track in my mind all the things on my to do list, but I haven't gotten around to writing it all down yet, so I thought I'd use this space to do it now.

Read Patricia Hill Collins. I just bought one of her books and this will definitely be read this summer. I have a very long plane ride coming up where I have lots of time to read this book, and other recommendations and writings from friends.
Sew. I have a pattern for a spiffy shirt that I bought before I moved to Lansing. I have this beautiful light weight fabric with a really cool print on it just waiting to be sewn. I even have muslin to trace the pattern out on after I fit it my size. This may or may not get done.
Finish my article. I have a manuscript that needs to get finished. My goal was to have it done before May 15th. I now realize May 15th is, uh, a week away. It could still happen. Maybe.
Begin case study research (contingent). This to do list is contingent on me getting permission from the group I want to do the research project on. There are some pre-steps I need to take first (like, well, emailing them) and also writing up some questions/thoughts. But I'll keep you posted on this project.
Run. I'll definitely keep running. This is a no brainer, but I do need to write it down.
Hike. There are some really great places in Michigan that I have yet to discover, and I'd love to even just go on a trail hike some time soon. I'm pretty sure I can make this happen. Covered in bug spray.
Write write write. I need to write, and journal about my ideas, what I want to do my dissertation on, what is important to me, how I ask questions, ask my own questions, and really become comfortable with my research identity and my life as a grad student who does research. I'm getting there. I already have a journal started, I just need to fill it up.

Maybe this seems ambitious. But at least it's something to aim for. And I do have priorities for my list, although I think what I've got so far is a good balance of what I want to learn personally, and also include some of my crafty stuff, and also (gulp) get ready for my final year of classes. And the daunting task of deciding on a dissertation topic.

Up Close and Personal

Finally it's Friday. Although as a grad student, saying it's Friday doesn't really mean anything. But now that my semester is over, it kind of means something! My "work" week is over. Unfortunately I agreed to do some research data collection for my advisor so I'll need to stuff that in this weekend. But I'm sure it will be better than last weekend, when we had an opportunity to get up close and personal with our house. It started last Saturday morning, after I came home from a run (training run!). As I opened the side door Kevin was there, and announced that we had a "home owners issue" and that there was "fecal matter" on our basement floor. I at first thought we had some kind of rodent, but then after some explanation, turns out our pipes backed up and well, our own human waste had ended up bubbling over and onto the floor. All plans we had for Saturday turned into clean up. All the plans for mudding the walls, or making shelves, or yard work, or you know, RELAXING, were loaded up into our truck as we drove to Home Depot and rented a sewer snake. It was pretty gross, but I'm thankful for team work and good spirits, especially as Kevin threaded the coil down the drain and said, "I've never done this before!" seemingly interested in acquiring a new home improvement skill. Yep, new home owner skill, but I hope we don't have to do it again Ever.

The Other Blalock

The Other Blalock writes books on quantitative
analysis and methods.

On Monday I went to a half day symposium to celebrate the academic research of Jim Fairweather. Jim was my first supervisor (or what I used to call, my "assistantship research faculty leader person") during my first year at MSU. And I LOVE him. He is one of the smartest, most caring, kindest, and yet also kind of doesn't give a sh*t person I have met since coming to Lansing. He's simply brilliant and has helped me work through some of my own research interests without me even saying much. He has an uncanny ability to listen, and then toss out some crazy smart stuff. It's pretty cool. Needless to say, I have missed working with him. And missed sitting in his office where I couldn't see the floor because it was covered in papers and books.

While there, I met some new people, and also saw some people from my first year I haven't seen in a while. And when I attend things like this, things like "academic soiree things with smart people" I usually kind of hang back and listen a lot but don't usually say much. There's too much to learn! And there I was, small-talking with a woman I worked with last year when I worked with Jim, and up walks another young woman and we shake hands and she looks at my name tag and says, "It's so nice to meet you. I've read your work, yes, thank you it's so nice to meet you" and I kind of sputtered and said, "Uh, wow? What?" and I'm thinking of course, "What work?!?!? What the heck is she talking about??!?!?" And she responds, "Oh, well, I recognize your last name." So I just left it at that because I didn't really know how to respond and the conversation moved along in a different direction so quickly anyway. Please remember, when I go to these fancy smart people things, I just assume everyone is a crazy intelligent academic professor type. Turns out, I'm not the only who does this and I was, well, mistaken for, oh, you know, the OTHER Blalock.

Coincidently, I was in the education building today picking up a paper, and then decided to peruse some of the "free books" (aka, Jim's old library). And as I scanned, lo and behold... the other Blalock.