"We write our own destiny. . ."

My latest fortune: "We write our own destiny. We become what we do."

I think I am almost well again. I feel like I lost a lot of valuable time this week being sick, but I am still moving forward. Have I mentioned how amazing my research assistant is? Carla and I put in another three hour coding session this week and tackled the adolescent focus group data. Something Carla is very interested in is the presence of cycles. Obviously we know there is a cycle of poverty, but there seems to be a cyclical nature to other things related to poverty as well. The biggest one seems to be the car -->job cycle. Basically, to get a job in a rural area, a person needs a car, but soon it becomes necessary to have a job to pay for the car, and the person is right back where he or she started.

Monday I am presenting at the Maine Counseling Association Conference. I got out my proposal yesterday to put together the presentation and discovered that I am presenting my dissertation. Eeeek. Did I think I would have at least preliminary data analysis done this fall when I committed to this? Okay, don't panic. I know for a fact that I am not ready to publicly make any claims about my research findings. I am spending today doing analyses and trying to come to some conclusions. I think I am just going to focus on the data I collected from guidance counselors and triangulate those data with data from students about similar topics. That is a more manageable slice. I will keep you posted.