Assignment 4 Final

So…it’s all officially over. You can read Assignment 4 in all it’s glory here.

The papers are in, the grades are in, and this past week I’ve been giving myself massive amounts of sleep, comfort food, and grace as I recover from what may well be the most intense term yet. Yeah, between my promotion, birthday, travels, meeting schedule, and massive papers and learning…I don’t think “most intense” is an overstatement.

Good news is that thus far I’ve succeeded far beyond what I ever thought possible and for that I am so so so thankful. In the next week or so it’s time to contact my esteemed adviser, get into the flow of summer research, and figure out how not to fritter away the next 4 months of my life. Today…living small seems to be just fine. In fact…it’s pretty awesome.

DAY 1: Assignment 4 Begins…

And, proposal writing is put on hold for a little bit while the final monster to conquer, Assignment 4, takes precedence. I’ll admit I wasn’t all that worried about Assignment 4 until after meeting with the cohort last night. I think the past month+ has been so challenging+stretching in so many professional/work/personal ways that all I could conceptualize was what I needed to do in the next day or two. The end of April felt like forever away and Assignment 4….yeah, pretty much a 6000-9000 word mirage because I was drowning in the dailies.

But after meeting with the cohort, hearing them ask questions I didn’t even fully comprehend, and looking at the calendar and realizing the sobering fact that April begins like…next week I realized the monster is actually way closer than it appears in the mirror.

So, I know you’re probably wondering…just what is Assignment 4? Glad you asked! Basically it’s called “Planning Research Strategies” and is meant to mimic the “methods” section of my real dissertation. (AHHH!!! real dissertation!!!….sorry, just needed a textual freak out moment because honestly I felt way closer to a real dissertation about a year ago before I knew all I didn’t know…if you know what I mean.)

But anyways, the idea is that we’ve already got brilliance in the research questions, paradigms, inquiries, etc. and now it’s just time to hammer out the research methods, then examine the prospective data collection and analysis strategies (of course, keeping consistent with preciously established theoretical/philosophical orientations and practical research methods). Cake, right? Hahaa….if only.