"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.

Young Professionals

I just want to say a special thank you to all of the student teachers who patiently listened to me today at their Professional Day. They were a gracious audience despite the fact that my voice sounded like a teenage boy and I kept coughing. The other funny thing was that the cold medicine I have been pumping into my system makes me feel a little fuzzy so sometimes I could not retrieve the words I was looking for while I was talking. I certainly didn't feel like my usual high energy self. Maybe that's good though, because I suspect I can come on a little strong at my usual energy level. I look forward to hearing feedback from the presentation and about all of the good work these student teachers are doing in the field!

The Code

So the second I proclaimed that I finished something, I got sick. I wasn't serious! It was just a small little piece done. I refuse to be a martyr though; I take cold medicine every 4 hours and switch the the night time stuff around 11:00pm. I'm not messing around with this! I may or may not have taken a nap yesterday in my office, but you gotta do what you gotta do right?



I want to give a special thank you to Carla for spending hours with me this afternoon coding the interviews. Carla is amazing and if she decides to go to graduate school and/or do research in the future, she will do great things with it. I am so glad to have her, because I can't really talk about the data with anyone else. I can talk about big ideas, but no one can actually read the transcripts (and who would want to unless money was involved). It works better for me if I can talk things through and process what I am thinking about. Hence another reason why the blog is back. Even if I am talking to myself it is good. Continue reading if you want to know about my coding process, otherwise stop here. . .I won't be mad.



Really? You want to know? Okay! Today we worked on the 13 Educator interviews. I have spent the last few days doing in vivo (line by line) coding on hard copies of the transcripts. The point of in vivo coding is not to "look" for anything, but to just see what the data tell you. So, in the margins I write notes that are in the words of the speaker. From there, we create a list of codes that represent what was most salient across all thirteen interviews. We generated a list of aproximately 15 codes. Then to increase reliability, we both coded an interview together. We read through and decided which codes went with which pieces of text. We also had to add more codes that we had fogotten to capture all of the data. We did two interviews like this to be sure that we are clear on the definition of each code and what text should be assigned to each. (Some text and be coded multiple ways).



Now we move to the software. Now, some traditional qualitative researchers say that one should not use software for data analysis. It should all be done by hand with hi-lighters and scissors and pages and pages of paper. I disagree. I use HyperResarch which is a program developed my a professor at BC. Basically it is a tool that organizes the data, it doesn't actually do any analysis. It does allow me to select portions of text and assign codes, and then go back and look at one code and see all of the realated text from all of the interviews. This feature is invaluable in the writing. I recommend HyperResearch to anyone doing qualitative data analysis. You can also use photos, video, and sound in the program. I used it on my last study and found it to be amazing.



Now I am going to memo about each code to clearly define it for future reference. Tomororw I will start assigning the codes to the interviews.

Another Step Closer

I just finished Transcribing!!!! It is such a good feeling to be done with this step. I only managed to lose one transcript in the process, which I was shockingly calm about, considering it was about 7 hours worth of typing. But the second go round allowed me to get a deeper sense of the emerging themes, so it was good for me.

I have to give a special thank you to my research assistant, Carla. She has spent many hours typing and checking and now I am ready to move on to the next phase of the research: coding the data. The part I love about transcribing is getting to hear all the paticipants' voices again and reaffirming for myself how brilliant adolescents can be. In my first study on adolescents living in rural poverty, I was amazed at how articulate and hopeful my participants were. Once again, they have put difficult constructs into words and are going to bring a voice to a marginalized population. I don't know yet how I am going to take all these rich data and synthesize them into a cohesive chapter. This will be a challenge, but I am really glad to be there!

Coping Mechanisms

As the stress level rises and the deadlines approach, I think there are some decisions that need to be made regarding the dissertator's sanity. Here are my coping mechanisms:
1. Facebook.
2. The Crackberry.
3. A good massage therapist. I go to Serenity Holistic Massage in Farmington, 779-6671. serenity@beeline-online.net. I highly recommend that everyone go (even if they aren't doing a dissertation) because Emily is amazing and you will thank yourself!
4. The animal shelter. It is a nice place to read while cats sit in your lap and let you pet them. Disclaimer: Don't wear black!
5. Befriend a bartender at a local bar and make a once a week date for dinner and a reality TV show, while editing chapters.
6. Sleeping.
7. Blogging about absurd and ridiculous things that come to mind while trying to do actual work.
8. Holding breath (not advised).
9. Eating (see previous post).
10. Daydreaming about free time and what I will do with all of it next year.

Little D

A wise woman once told me that writing my dissertation would be like having a baby. I got the metaphor, but I didn't realize that physically I would start to look that way. I am now affectionately referring to my midsection as "Little D."

Back at it

I have not been posting of late due to some technical difficulties and then just feeling that I was behind and couldn't catch up. This morning I decided that it doesn't matter and now I can use this Blog as some comic relief and a way to share this last bit of the experience with my friends and family. The past few months have had their fair share of melt downs and challenges, but I am in the home stretch. I will be defending in June and putting this all behind me. I know for a fact that I won't have time to update everyone on my progress personally, so this will be a way for people to check in if they want to and laugh with me as I push through one of the most stressful times of my life. Please check back regularly and feel free to send me comments and things to think about. I will see you at the end!

Livin' the Life

February 5, 2009
I am really trying to embrace the fact that the life I am living right now while collecting data is, in itself, data collection. Like most new researchers, I love the idea of living my research. Of being in it. I was excited when I had to drive an hour to do one interview because that is how things are in rural Maine. I thought it amusing that the road I traveled to one school was almost impassbale, thinking "no one would believe this." But then this week came and now the fun has worn off a little. I was collecting data. The group was brilliant, I left feeling great. I decided to stop at the seedy gas station in town that is famous for selling gas about 5 cents cheaper than anywhere else in central or western Maine. And because I am on a budget, I need to get cheap gas. I filled up my tank and then my car wouldn't start. Being in rural Maine and knowing no one (no social capital for me), I had to have it towed 30 miles back to Farmington (at $3 a mile after the first 5 miles). Then, I took it to the guy who has his own garage because he has the best rates (and I can't afford to have VIP figure out what is wrong with it). And he isn't open on Fridays (this was a Thursday), so he couldn't look at it until Monday. Anway, I had to reschedule my next data collection appointment because I had no way to get to the school. In the midst of all of my stress and mental break downs, I just tried to use it as research. My expeirence echoed what I have been hearing in my interviews about transportation being a barrier to so many things. I understood what it was like to be stranded, to have to bail on something at the last minute because I had no other choice, and to not get my work done because of something beyond my control. So, $500 later I am loving life again and understanding what "researcher as participant" means!

Shout out!

I have submitted my Intent and had my meeting with the Dean. My committee is awaiting their official invitations to participante. Phew!
I want to give a shout out to the principals of the nine schools where I will be collecting my data. They all approved my proposal and gave me permission within a week of receiving my letter!! Thank you so much for your support. I am looking forward to working wiht you on this project.
On another note, the paper I co-authored with Dr. John Maddaus of the University of Maine at Farmington has been submitted to the Journal of Research on Rural Education. Keep your fingers crossed for us.

Identity

The discussant in our paper session at AERA mentioned that she found it interesting that when one is looking at rural poverty, the participants are lacking a distinct identity because they don’t have the added identity of a minority race or ethnicity. I disagree. I think they do have a distinct identity and it may be their ruralness, but it may also be other things that define them. It could also be a white identity. My participants showed that they were defined by their rural location. I don’t think they are lacking an identity.

Success

I listened to a presentation at AERA by Michael Corbett, a sociologist from Acadia Univeristy in Nova Scotia. He has looked at rurality as a sense of place. He talked about changes and the changes that rural youth must anticipate and adapt to during emerging adulthood. He made a point that really made me think. He said that most recently he is wondering if it isn’t that working class families aren’t serious about higher education, but that in fact they might be more serious and see higher education as a way to get a better career and make more money. They may put pressure on their children to know what it is they want to do and then pursue that career path through education. When the children can’t live up to those expectations, they may not follow through at all. In contrast, the more well off parents may be encouraging the period of emerging adulthood and may push their kids to go to college to explore and find themselves, versus knowing from the start.

Generational Poverty

I find myself getting worried about our students, about their success and whether or not they will make it. There are some participants from my original study whose aspirations were high and who wanted to achieve very high goals. Several of them did not achieve those goals and it isn’t because they didn’t try, but because there were other things. This is a complex issue that is so frustrating for practitioners. What I am wondering is if this is because we are trying to change generational poverty. We are trying to interrupt something that is entrenched in a family and it embedded in an individual’s history, context, and biography. So, my questions is. . .does it take more than a generation to break the cycle? Upward Bound is only 40 years old, so it is really too soon to tell if the children of our alumni will all go to college and if what Upward Bound did for them was to change the culture of their families, but they could not benefit from the program in the way that we had intend for them to.

The Intent

I finished my first draft of my intent. It feels like things are much clearer. I have felt unsettled about going with the hope theme because that was my word, not theirs. Now I am much more comfortable with the decisions I made to really just look at resilence and how my participants define it. It is usually the dominant society (middle to upper class) which defines what success is and it is quite possible that an adolescent growing up in rural poverty could in fact have a different definition of what it means to be successful and resilient within this context. The implications for gaining a better understanding of how this population defines success and resilience are numerous for practicioners. I think I will also be able to try to get at why many of them are not successful (by the dominant culture's standards). I have also worked out the details of my methods. I have decided to conduct my interpretive focus groups at 7 schools with approximately 50 kids. I am then going to do 5 nested case studies where I interview the parents and a teacher that is connected to five of my participants. The nested case studies will help me to triangulate my data and add rigor to my study.

My next issue is funding. I have applied for a research assistant through UMF, so if I am able to get one to help with the transcribing, then that will be a huge asset. I am also looking for other funding options so that I can compensate my participants and their families.

Changes

I have recently been hired as a full time Educational Counselor at Upward Bound at the University of Maine at Farmington. My new job starts December 17 and I am ready to immerse myself in the culture I am studying and get this dissertation done! I think this is going to be a great opportunity for me and I am so excited to start working.

In terms of progress. . .I just finished my problem statement. This is like an introduction where I lay out the major argument for my research and state the problem that it will address. I hate the fact that it is called a problem statement because I am not looking at problems (a deficit model), but at what is working for these kids. Anyway, when all is said and done I feel like I have many problems: most of the research is on urban poverty, most of the research is quantitative, most of the research tells us the factors present for resilience, but not the process, and hope is a cognitive construct. So, now it feels like a disjointed mess that has coherence in my head but not on paper. I think some feedback will help me to circumscribe these problems and figure out how to couch my research in an argument that makes sense.

Most importantly, I feel my energy coming back, my focus regaining, and my desire to find answers to my questions getting stronger again. That is a good feeling. I know that when I get to Maine and I settle into my office and my new space I will be able to be more productive and make substantial progress.

Shout Out!

I'd like to give a shout out to my dissertation seminar cohort who gave me some very helpful feedback today for my intent. It is just nice to know that there are other people who are in this with me and who want to finish as badly as I do.
There. . .I said it out loud, publicly: I want to get out of here. I think I have found my motivation again and I am ready to dive in and get this thing done!