First Day Back

Where papers go to die. Or be reborn.

I've been resisting writing a blog post about the start of school. Obviously, I don't want school to start. Sure, I enjoy being here, being a grad student, writing, reading, researching. But when the semester actually starts, the stress increases, the deadlines become more treacherous, the pressure presses much harder. I feel this way not because I'm hard on myself, which I readily admit I am (and I am and have dealt with this need to be perfect by having a very messy, unorganized, chaotic, sloppy way of doing other things, like crafting. And my clothes don't always match). I feel this way about the start of school because being back in class means being around for criticism. Class equals: reading, writing, and researching and then turning in a paper for FEEDBACK. And I must admit, that I am actually quite good at receiving feedback. I appreciate that my professors want me to improve, and some show me that by slashing my papers. But every time I turn something in, it still feels a little like I'm tossing The One Ring into Mount Doom. My paper is so precious! I've spent hours on it! Please don't just burn it up! Unlike Frodo, I get my papers back, even after it's been scorched a little, and have an opportunity to make improvements.

Indeed, today is the first day of classes. I'll be on campus for a meeting, and my first class doesn't start until next week. So in addition to dreading the deadlines, the criticism, the work to improve, I also dread riding my bike into campus because there are 11,000 new freshmen who don't know where the heck they're going, don't know the little rules of staying out of the bike lane, and don't know that it's actually very dangerous to play Pokeman Go with 45,000 student drivers. Other than that, welcome to the start of my third year as a PhD student!!

I Learned to Can Because I Don't Believe in Divorce

While our backyard has been going through a slow transformation, one thing we did not attempt this year was to put in a vegetable garden. I would have loved to have my own supply of lettuce and be up to my ears in zucchini, but it was not meant to be. Instead, we were given two tomato plants from our friend in Grand Rapids, and we put them in a container on the back deck. One plant was a regular tomato plant, the other a cherry tomato plant. They both started out well, although the regular one started to fade, and we only really got two off of it because the dry summer weather wrecked a lot of them, and also we noticed that one looked like a bite had been taken out of it. Overall, that plant just didn't offer tomatoes we wanted to eat. The cherry tomato plant is still going gang-busters. I just plucked four more off today.

Our little plants of tomatoes are just the right amount for us. Our back neighbor, on the other hand, is literally shoulder deep in tomatoes. He canned 24 quart sized jars a couple of weeks ago. Yes, you heard that right, 24 QUART SIZE JARS. I was chatting with him the other day and when he sees us he hands us some tomatoes. I commented on his canning extravaganza, and he replied, "well, I had to learn how to can because I don't believe in divorce." I imagined his wife saying, "It's me or the tomatoes!!" Then just two days ago Kevin and I were admiring the grass and hanging out in the backyard, and he said, "Are those tomatoes sitting on our side of the fence?" Sure enough, four little tomatoes lined up in a row were sitting just on our side of the fence. It appears our neighbor is now just placing them there for us because he can't get rid of them fast enough.

Manistee and the NCT

Last weekend Kevin and I went on our first backpacking trip since we moved to Michigan. We had planned to do this the summer of 2015, but instead went car camping with some friends who drove over from Chicago. I do love a good car camping trip, but what I really love is backpacking, the kind of backpacking when I can hike in a few miles, stay the night, hike in a few more miles, stay another night, maybe even a third night, and then come back. When we left Seattle, we went to one of my favorite spots in Washington state, the Elwha River and packed in a few nights. Not since 2014 have we been able to do this until last week. What it took was putting on our calendars that we would go backpacking on this particular weekend, and then protecting that weekend from other plans.

After exploring places to go, we decided on the Manistee River Trail, which is about 2.5 hours north-west of Lansing. It is a trail that connects on two ends of the river, and is about 23 miles around. One side is the Manistee River Trail, the other the North Country Trail (NCT). I almost don't want to write this, because then everyone will know the secret, but Michigan is quite beautiful. It's like a hidden gem of Midwest beauty. The further north on the lower peninsula, the more hilly the landscape. Also, the region here means there are so many different kinds of trees, and thus, fall colors are amazing. Don't get me wrong, I love (and miss) the rugged majestic landscape of the NW, but Michigan offers a more rural, rolling, nuanced landscape, with spots of lakes everywhere, rivers, and geological variation (hello Petoskey!) to keep me happy in the outdoors.

Our Friday through Sunday trip was the perfect getaway, even though it rained a little and despite being slathered in bug juice I came out of the woods with about 30 mosquito bites. It was a much needed time outside before the indoor word of school begins.

To Do List Update

Well, the summer is almost over. The semester has officially begun, although classes don't start until August 31st. When the semester starts it just means that assistantships start, which means that I've begun work in the assistant dean's office in the College of Education. (I'm very excited about this! More on that later). I'm recalling that I made a to-do list at the beginning of the summer. And since I obviously haven't been keeping up with my blogposting as much as I hoped, I felt a good place to start after a two week hiatus from posting was checking in with that to-do list. Let's begin:

Read Patricia Hill Collins. I did not read this book. I have a copy, but I didn't even crack it open. Instead, I read a book called American Higher Education, Leadership, and Policy: Critical Issues and the Public Good by Penny Pasque. I know, it sounds amazing, right? It's actually quite good. I read it because it provides a really good example of research design. And since I was going to be doing an observation over the summer, (and that is how the author performs her research for the book) I wanted to get a really good grounding in how someone else does it.
Sew. Uh, Nope. Didn't do it. Didn't even wash the fabric or iron it.
Finish my article. YES! I did this! And I submitted it! I submitted it in late July, and good news, is that it wasn't flat out rejected at the editorial desk. This means it is currently under review by reviewers at the journal. Hopefully in a few months I'll get an answer. So, what I hope for is something called a Revise and Resubmit, or R&R. This means that they give me all this feedback, and tell me everything that is wrong with it, and tell me how to fix it, and then I fix it, and then they might do that again, and then it gets published. If I don't get an R&R, then I'll get a flat out reject. Even with a reject, I'll get feedback, which means I can make adjustments and submit it to another journal. But, good vibes for an R&R. That's what I want.
Begin Case Study Research. Yep! Did that! Read this post.
Run. YES! I ran. I ran in Paris. I ran in Amsterdam. I ran in Maastricht. I ran in Lansing! I just ran yesterday! Still running. I'm signed up for a little 5k and a 10k in September. Little legs are still churning.
Hike. AWWW YEAH!!! Big backpacking trip happened last week. Stay tuned for the post soon.
Write write write. I did do some writing. I finished the article, and I have been doing some writing for my dissertation ideas and epistemology statement. I am also working on two other projects that require writing outside of coursework (because publish publish publish) and although I haven't made a lot of headway, I have made some.

All in all, not bad. :)