The End of Week Four

It's Friday afternoon and I'm getting ready to leave the office a little early to start helping with the moving process. We need to be out of our current place by tomorrow evening, so tonight we'll start packing our belongings and cleaning up.

It's hard to believe that my first month has almost passed. It's been a busy time, but I feel much like I am still getting into the groove of a new lifestyle down here. It'll probably seem like that for a while longer, with a new house bringing a new commute, new routines, more packing and unpacking. Luckily we'll get the rest of our stuff next week, too, which has been held in Tacoma with the moving company for the past three weeks. It's funny what you miss when you don't have it. The top three items that I miss are: 1) my espresso maker 2) my chef's knife and 3) my saucier. I think once I get these things back, I'll feel more at ease. It reminds me how central a kitchen is to my concept of a home.

It also makes me realize that we probably brought way too much stuff with us via the movers. Other than items like the ones above, we've been fine without many of our everyday belongings. It's so hard to know when you're leaving for six months, though. You probably can't really know what you're going to need until you are there. And we probably simply live with way too much stuff. Hopefully, we'll weed through what we brought down and donate a lot to charity before we take off for Alaska again. There's no sense shipping something again if we don't really need it, is there?

It's been another good week in academia. I got some good news on Wednesday when I learned I'd be getting a full refund of my tuition and textbook cost for the qualitative research class that I had to drop. With this refunded, I'll be able to take more classes next quarter. I'm already starting to think about what classes I'd like to take, and what will be most useful to me in the future.

Yesterday, I had a great conversation with David DuBois, a mentoring researcher who's also on a fellowship through the WT Grant Foundation. David was a big support to be during my application process and I've learned a lot from the conversations I've been lucky enough to have with him. His fellowship has embedded him at Big Brothers Big Sisters, both at our national office, and in the Metro Chicago agency. We are coming into this fellowship from opposite sides of the research/practice divide and it's interesting to compare notes about our experience. We talked about some possible collaboration yesterday and I'm excited to see where that might lead.

And today, I met with one of the PhD students here at PSU to start looking at some of the data gathered from participants in the Summer Institute on Youth Mentoring. He showed me how to code the questionnaires using an analytical software called AtlasTi. I'm excited to dive into the data soon and try my hand at coding the questionnaires from the second year of the Institute. Hopefully we'll be able to learn something of what happened as a result of the Institute back at the participants' home organizations. I've been trying to read about qualitative research methods on my own to prepare for this. I imagine there will be a lot of trial and error as I get into this and hopefully I won't mess anything up while I am learning!

To start thinking more about how research actually gets used in a practice setting, I've also picked up this great book recently, Diffusion of Innovations, by Everett Rogers. He's an academic, but the book is written in a very clear fashion, with lots of real-world examples. So it feels rigorous but accessible at the same time. Besides helping look into how the Summer Institute has functioned to diffuse innovation, I'm hoping it gives me more ideas about how a research guidebook would best be used to diffuse concepts in the mentoring field.

Today was also my second fencing class. Class got canceled week when the teacher threw his back out. This week, we learned how to hold the saber, how to advance and retreat, and how we should stand in en garde. He made us keep poses for a very long time to start to train our muscles. I have a good feeling I will feel some muscles I never even knew about before long. It's a good class though, and I''ll be excited to test our new moves out when we get suited up next week.

Besides moving this weekend, I've got some homework for classes on Monday and Tuesday. I'll also be evaluating the applications for our new Mentoring Research Advisory Committee (or whatever it's title finally becomes) at Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. We're creating a committee of peers from around the Big Brothers Big Sisters network to read research articles, discuss them, and make recommendations to our network. It was great to see the amount of interest in research out there. We received 23 applications for eight open seats. I'll be meeting with Keoki Hansen, BBBSA's Director of Research and Evaluation, on Monday to compare our scores and pick who will be on the committee. This committee is one of the ideas I proposed in my fellowship plan and it's great to see it starting to take shape. I'm excited to see what changes this committee might bring to our national network.