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.