Spring Break

It looks like I haven't posted here in a while. I guess I've been a slacker in lots of ways lately. Last week was Spring Break and the week before was finals week. I'm feeling guilty for taking the chance to goof off quite a bit, after finishing up my classes from last quarter. Here are some photos of highlights:

While Jessica and Celia enjoyed an alpine lesson at Timberline Lodge, Ferguson, Monique and I went nordic skiiing at Trillium Lake. Monique and Celia had lots of fun during Monique's visit. The fun of taking Monique to the airport on the MAX for her trip home made the parting a little less sad.



















After Monique went back to Chicago and her work as an acupuncturist and Chinese herbologist, the Wheeler-Parises took a trip through the Willamette Valley and across the Cascades. The children really liked all the animals. One our our first stops was for a family of goats. The highlight of Peterson's Rock Garden near Redmond were all of the peacocks that strutted around like they owned the place.




Next, we stopped at Silver Falls State Park. This is an amazing little park in the foothills of the Cascades. It has something like ten different waterfalls that flow over basalt cliffs, some of which you can actually walk behind. Here I am with Ferguson behind South Falls inside the park.






















We spent the next two nights in a rustic cabin on Suttle Lake, just over Santiam Pass on the other side of the Cascades. I really liked the ponderosa pine forests and we all enjoyed the dry sunny weather afforded by the Cascades' rain shadow. The middle photo above is Ferguson and Jessica walking to the headwaters of the Metolius River, near Sisters. This river suddenly erupts from the hillside in a cold water spring. On our second morning at Suttle Lake, we awoke to several inches of new snow. We took the hint and went tubing at Hoodoo Butte on our trip home. Celia really liked it but Ferguson preferred the warming hut to blasting down the mountain in an inner tube through the blowing snow.

Last but not least was the Enchanted Forest, Celia's favorite part of our trip. This little amusement park near Salem has lots of fairy tale scenes for the whole family to enjoy. Here is Celia with Miss Moffett.







***

So now it's back to school. The quarter started yesterday. I'll be taking two classes again, a second statistics course and an MSW class on relationship-based interventions with youth. It's good to get back to school. My time is now halfway over here. I feel like I really need to buckle down this quarter and make some good progress on the research projects I've started.

I'm also hoping that my recent existential funk will soon pass. I'm not sure where it came from, but I've spent a lot of time brooding on my future recently. Maybe I'm empthasizing with all of these college students too much. Maybe I'm reliving my own college days when I spent so much time wondering what I would do with the rest of my life. Or maybe this full immersion in an academic setting has got me confused about my role in society. I don't know, but I'm hoping that throwing myself back into school will allay some of this self-questioning. It's frankly just a bore to worry about the future. I much prefer distracting myself with the present.

Portland is beautiful this time of year. The cherry trees have all announced that spring is indeed here with their explosions of pink and white blossoms. And every time I see a forsythia I can't help but wonder if it was the burning bush that Moses saw.

Finals Week

It's St Patrick's Day here in Portland. I made sure to wear some green today, but then I felt guilty when I realized I hadn't done the same for Celia. I had this horrible thought about the kids pinching her mercilessly at school today. Then I looked down at her pantleg as we rode the bus this morning and spotted a sole green stem of a flower on her pants. Whew. Kids can be so cruel.

It's finals week. I had two take home finals assigned. I just turned one in today and the other is due tomorrow. I'm feeling pretty good about them, but the one due tomorrow is slightly confusing. I've tried to contact the professor to ask some questions, but I haven't had any luck. So I guess I'll just do the best I can and hope for the best.

It's been less stressful than I thought it would be. About the only stress I've had recently is a run-in with a graduate student. I seem to have offended this person and they've taken it quite personally. I didn't mean to cause such a row. But as silly as the matter may be, it's always hard to encounter such interpersonal strife. I guess all you can do is seek a peaceful resolution, treat the person with respect, and move on. That's what I'm trying to do, anyway.

Finals week has been nice by freeing up time from classes and homework. It's given me more of a chance to write and work on some other projects. Right now, my main project is an article on school-based mentoring. The goal is to submit something for publication to an academic journal. It seems a bit daunting, but I'm looking forward to learning about how the whole article submission process works. I'm also learning a lot in the process of writing.

I've also started a little writing on the guidebook for youth mentoring professionals. I'm trying not the let the magnitude of the project get me down, but it's a bit paralyzing to think about it. I guess the best strategy is just to start writing, one small chunk at a time.

I really enjoy writing, but I'm not sure I'm cut out to do it on a daily basis. It's pretty scary to think about. Last week I read the piece in the New Yorker about David Foster Wallace and his last days. I keep reflecting on how sad it was to lose such a brilliant mind and gifted writer. I never knew how mentally ill he was. It seems all too common to find genius and mental illness wrapped up in the same person. Maybe its selfish to wish that he was still around to share his gifts the world. But I still do. I can't help think about the works he could have produced during a long life. Here's to you, DFW. I hope you've found peace.

Reality

It looks like I haven't written a post here in a while. I guess I've sort of hit the doldruns. It's probably natural and something that will soon pass. It feels like I'm hitting the stage where the newness of my situation has fallen away. Now my life feels more like reality and less like a departure from it. And those demons that I thought I could dodge have reminded me that they're still there. I wasn't fooling them one bit.

OK. Big deal. The demons are back. Probably Lent is as good a time as any to wrestle with them. And so it goes.

Probably the highlight of my days lately has been my morning commute. Now that Celia's in school, I take her on the bus every day. Then I ride my bike from her school to mine. It's lovely commuting with Celia. We get to spend about a half an hour together on the bus. Lots of time to talk. Today I brought a few books to read to her. Pretty soon she'll be reading to me, I think. She's gotten good at sounding out words. She just needs more practice and confidence in putting them all together. We've also learned our bus driver's name and usually get to sit in Celia's favorite seat (rear window). If the seat's occupied, she will usually ask the person if she can sit there. Invariably they give it up to her.

I'm still learning lots in school. A recent class project has taught me more about the pluses and minuses of collaboration. It's given me much food for thought on collaborative research. I'm still trying to understand how this joint writing of research papers works. I'm sure as I get into it more it will become clearer. I'm just now learning how much hangs in the balance when it comes to research publications. I never knew how important it is for people's careers. All these issues about where something gets published, the order in which the authors are listed, how much something gets cited by other publications are things I'm just learning about.

When you step back and look at it, the way research is produced and published doesn't seem very well adapted to having an impact in the world outside academia. To even get access to these research publications, you generally need to be part of a University or research center that subscribes to the publication. And then if you want to try to read the research in a discerning manner, there's a lot you need to know. I'm still learning how to read these papers critically and I've been at this for a few months now. And then, to top it off, if you want to get ahead in academia, you have to spend your limited time outside of teaching writing for these research journals. The time you might spend working with community organizations doesn't seem to count for much in terms of academic advancement.

It's a crazy world like all the other ones. I never said the non-profit world worked any better. Shame on me if I did.

I've made some more progress on some of my other research projects. I've spent a lot of time in SPSS lately, trying to understand the data in Tom's school-based study. A few other projects are still waiting for review from PSU's IRB. This is a committee that reviews research proposals involving human subjects. I've also been thinking about trying to write something to make sense of all the research on school-based mentoring lately.

Next week is finals week. I got one take home final today and I will get another one tonight. I can see my weekend disappearing. Late next week, my sister Monique is coming to town. I'm looking forward to seeing her and introducing her again to Ferguson. Every day brings a new word from his mouth. Maybe he'll have a sentence to string together for her.