How I Became Nicole X

Technically, I suppose it happened when I got married. Officially, when I went to the threadbare Social Security Administration and then the bustling southwest DC DMV to change my name. Those events don't mean that when you walk into a meeting at work with clients that you'll remember to say, "Nicole X" instead of "Nicole C"

Wednesday morning I woke up, as usual taking my time to get out of bed. I was still feeling the effects of the near-sleepless night from my dog being sick the night before. I talked to my husband, drank the cup of coffee that he made for me every morning, and went to work. I didn't eat breakfast, which happened occasionally, but didn't think anything of it. When I came to work, I chatted with my co-workers, discussed a couple of projects we needed to get done, and ate a couple handfuls of granola. Everything seemed normal.

At about 11am, I felt a little dizzy. When I haven't eaten this happens occasionally, but it didn't stop. The dizziness continued until I couldn't see and everything stopped for a minute. The only thing I could think was, I needed to call in my co-worker, Melissa. Melissa. Melissa. Finally I got to the point where I could say it. "Melissa." She didn't hear me at first, so I called again. "Melissa."

When she came in, I still had my coat on because as usual, our offices were cold. My heart was racing. I put my head down on the desk and she started fanning me. The world seemed to spin a bit and I was breathing heavily. After a few minutes I calmed down and we talked about it, and even called the on-campus health center. "How old are you?" they asked. "30," I said. "Did you eat breakfast?" they said. "No," I said, a bit sheepishly. "Well, eat something and see how you feel." So I did. Melissa and I took our lunch break, she heated up my food, I ate, and felt a little better. I went back to work on whatever it was I was doing. An hour later, however, I still didn't feel quite right and decided to go home for the rest of the day. On the way home I thought that I might still need some more calories, so I got a smoothie. It was pouring down rain, I remember, as I was paying the meter for the car. I got the smoothie, debated getting a cookie and decided I didn't want the extra expense, and drove home. At least I assume I drove home, I don't really recall driving home now.

B. had the day off from his federal job for Veteran's Day. He might be able to fill in what happened a little more at this point, but I went upstairs to rest and slept. He checked on my heart several times and it seemed to be elevated still, but would go back to normal at times as well. He brought me flowers, marigolds from our garden, and put them in one of the white coffee cups on my bedtable as I was resting.

It seems that when I woke up, we decided to order pizza. At some point, I was on the floor in the fetal position. At another point I said to call our friend Kate, who is a nurse, and she said I could be having a panic attack. "I feel like I'm dying," I said. That was a symptom of a panic attack, she thought. We ate pizza. Then about 30 minutes after that I started vomiting.

Now, you would think that at some point we would have thought, "Gee, we might need to go to the hospital." My husband was worried we would go there and sit for six hours before anyone took care of us. Since I don't remember much of the evening, I can't really follow my decision making process but I knew that in the past when I had episodes of vomiting (usually after a night of drinking too much), if I could just fall asleep right after I threw up, I would stop. This time I would wake up to throw up again. It was terrifying. At about 4am, we decided to go to Sibley Hospital.

I'm at 2 sentences.

...of my proposal. The chitchatting outside is not helping me at all, btw. You want to see the sentences? Here they are:

This proposal explores the transcultural development of an academic dean, moving from the Greek immigrant enclave of Weirton, West Virginia through graduate school, Fulbright experiences in Greece, research and policy at the Office of Education, establishment of a professional association, and finally to a deanship at the prestigious [to remain nameless] University. Threading through this life is a passion for learning, teaching, and promoting the study of other languages and cultures.

Basically I need to work from this to somehow discussing how this passion for other languages/cultures, founded deeply in who Alatis is, inspired his life's work and found many outlets but in other ways put him at odds with the culture in which he was operating which doesn't value other languages in the same way he did. A typical transcultural conundrum. I guess, I don't know. If I knew, I would write it more definitively but at least this is a start.

Writing Stage Fright

Still in the transcription dungeon from my oral history interviews, I came up with a new (possible) solution. Actually, it wasn't my idea, it was my oral history narrator's idea. He asked me if I was writing, and I said that no, I was still spending all of my time (approx. 3 hours 4-5 days a week) working on transcriptions. His response: Sometimes you just have to stop.

So I thought about it. What if I finish up the transcriptions from two more important interviews (approximately 3 hours of tape or 12 hours worth of work) and then just quit for awhile and write the proposal? I can still continue to "check in" with my narrator, but as I develop material for the dissertation it will be more helpful to talk to him and make sure that I'm on the right track, don't have gaps, and have correctly interpreted his words.

So I tried this today - pulled out my now seemingly ancient from a couple of months ago proposal outline, and started to try to put onto paper the beginning of the proposal I had come up with last night.

Nada. Stage fright. And then people came to my office, we joked around, etc. Now that it's quiet again... I think I'm actually scared!

Alright, buck up. Time to work. Let's see if I can go go go!

What is work?

I find myself often asking the question, "Am I working?" Not in the sense of I'm sitting around reading PopSugar (OMG, John and Jennifer are dating again?) or something, but often I find myself reading an article sent to me by a student, sifting around on the internet and looking at something on educational leadership, like the Saving Alma Mater blog which I find thought provoking. And I wonder, am I really working?

The problem in the "knowledge economy" is that when you're really a knowledge worker, work may not look like much sometimes. And wasting time on paperwork and bureaucratic procedures, while it may make you look busy and important, doesn't actually constitute the substantive kind of work that brings results. When you're in a job category such as mine (we'll pretend my title is Assistant Director, since that's the level of work I do), you have to define for yourself what work is and whether or not you're accomplishing it. If you have a good supervisor then he/she can help you define those goals, and even if they're vague, once you start moving towards them it gives you a sense of accomplishment.

I think I've found myself a bit floating - caught between the busywork that can take up a lot of time yet not really making the time for the substantive kind of work that is so essential to what I do. I go from meeting to meeting, meet with student after student, fill out form after form, and I get to the end of the week and think, I haven't really gotten to the big, important stuff that I need to be working on. Anyone can meet with students or fill out forms or go to meetings. It take someone with my skill set to build relationships, find opportunities, and make action plans for going out and seizing them.

Part of this kind of work does mean staying current - really current - with what other thinkers are doing. Maybe there needs to be set aside time each week when I actually do this and do it for real. Also renew my subscription to The Chronicle.

Candidacy!!!

So in a short(ish) time, it'll be "Dr. Cole" to you. I've passed my comps and am now officially in candidacy.

For those of you who don't live in the ivory tower, candidacy simply means that I'm done with my coursework and comprehensive exams and will spend the rest of my time in my PhD program working on my dissertation (although I've been collecting data for the better part of this year, cheating time a bit I guess!).

So when do the raise/additional employment opportunities come in? (see below)

From Wikipedia:
A Ph.D. Candidate (sometimes called Candidate of Philosophy) is a postgraduate student at the doctoral level who has successfully satisfied the requirements for doctoral studies, except for the final thesis or dissertation. As such, a Ph.D. Candidate is sometimes called an "ABD" (All But Dissertation or All But Defended). Although a minor distinction in postgraduate study, achieving Ph.D Candidacy is not without benefit. For example, Ph.D. Candidate status may coincide with an increase in the student's monthly stipend and may make the student eligible for additional employment opportunities.

U Wannabe U

There's a new book out by a sociologist who critiques the new, corporate university and a review of the book here.

Also, there's a critique of the book which includes this synopsis of the book from James Garland's "Saving Alma Mater" blog:

Public universities are increasingly headed by job-hopping professional managers. Like the “efficiency experts” of yore, these new corporate wannabes seek to root out waste and duplication and shed programs that don’t make money. But they mostly chop the academic side of the enterprise, siphoning off money to expand their empires. They have little loyalty to their university and its principled values. They measure their success not by the advancement of learning and the personal growth of students but by the size of their salaries and the bottom-line numbers on balance sheets. They arrive on campuses spouting banal clichés from the business world (“doing more with less”), and their seldom-justified strategies for transformation are mostly empty rhetoric.

"Job hopping professional managers..." who most likely, have a PhD and understand academic culture to some degree. I work at a rather "corporate" university, and I believe that sometimes these sort of approaches are beneficial. Also I'd like to be a "job hopping professional manager." It's funny, though, what I'm discovering in my research is that faculty love to lambaste the dean, whether it be for being too corporate or not protecting them enough or any other host of complaints. It's a difficult job, being dean, and I think that no matter what the era or what the new complaint flavor of the day is, there will always be tension between faculty and administrators.

A Sewanee Tragedy

Shock and sadness. Four young Sewanee women were in a car accident on their way to crew practice, most likely, this morning, and two of them tragically died. Please pray for the souls of Katy and Kathleen and for Arden and Corinee to have a speedy recovery.

I'm almost in tears, this is so sad. Sewanee didn't need any more angels.

http://news.sewanee.edu/news/2009/10/01/university-mourns-students-killed-in-early-morning-accident.380

I love this place

I was walking across campus to talk with a development officer about alumni relations, and I reflected on how great this university is. I mean, that's not to say it's perfect (between furloughs and everything else, how could it be), but sometimes I think that its imperfections offer a really special experience to students.

I'm quite attached to my alma mater, Sewanee, because of the close-knit community it fostered and the fact that my professors had open doors, and often, houses to their students. However, Sewanee lacked the diversity and "messiness" of my present institution. Sewanee was idyllic. It made for perfect look-book photos. Here, you have construction, students dressed like total slobs, and confusion. However, you also have so many more opportunities, so many more types of students from all socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds and from all around the world. Not to mention that generally, they're really great students to work with and for. That's not to say you never get students who feel they're entitled, but generally they are open to learning and grateful for the opportunity. They refresh my spirit whenever I talk to them and I genuinely love working with them.

And this is after walking across our huge parking lot and almost getting hit by 10 cars. Wow. I must be in a good mood.

And we have perfect look-book photos, too, full of students doing cool things in labs, galavanting across campus, and interacting with a diverse and interesting set of peers.

Paradigm shift to me as a published writer???

Oh, if only it would happen!!!

I submitted an article today for publication. I will let you know how it goes. I'm sure I made 9 million rookie mistakes, but I was working on transcriptions today and I thought, you know what? I checked over my citations, I have a good bibliography, maybe they will ask me for some edits but I'm going to bite the bullet and submit this.

And I did. If I get published, dear 3 readers, I will let you know. And I'll provide a link.

Wow I'm so excited. This glimmer of what it might be like to be a real research professor is very exciting. I think my research could be pretty cool.

Next stop is my book!!! Well, ok, by way of the dissertation. And now, returning to transcriptions.

Computer Challenge

Today I'm watching our sophomore students present their computer designs. It's an interesting design challenge - they had $500 to spend on creating a computer based on the needs of their customers and users. The customer/user is the other students in their class, who filled out a survey.

An interesting challenge that allowed them to learn about how to address customer needs and technical requirements, lending itself well to quality tools such as fishbone or Ishikawa diagrams and the House of Quality (part of QFD, Quality Function Deployment).

So far so good! They're always entertaining presenters.

Time

The process of "growing up" seems to be this: a relinquishing of the concept of free time. When I was younger my grandmother used to explain her ability to spend so much time with me as that "You either have time or money, but you don't have both." Her axiom made a lot of sense to me, but now it makes none. I see a lot of people with both money and time, and I see a lot of people with neither. I guess I fall somewhere in the middle, but probably closer to the having no money end than the having no time.

I'm lucky because I don't have to work 80 hours a week; yet it's not like I really have the option to work that and get paid more. And as many other academics know, much of the work you do is unpaid but still "part of the job" - research, coaching students, serving on committees. It's not like I get paid for the 3 hours a day I'm (supposed to be) spending on my dissertation. In theory, it will kick in down the line, but I'm growing more cynical about the whole "hard work pays off" business.

I'd like to talk to my grandma about this again - of course she's not around - but I guess at the end of the day, it depends on perspective. Whenever I feel frustrated, I try to take the bird's eye view and realize that on the continuum I'm doing pretty good. My frustration seems to stem from the fact that this year's "back to school" re-adjustment period has seemed incredibly challenging, perhaps complicated by the craziness of things at home (washing machine broken, no oven, no place to store my dishes, etc) while trying to maintain a positive attitude and get a significant portion of work done on my dissertation.

I think I told my grandma before she died that her axion wasn't true, and if I remember correctly she sighed and said, well, yeah, but you don't want to tell a kid that.

But hard work paying off, that's still true, right?

Right?

Good research on college completion

As it turns out, socioeconomic status is as important as test scores in determining whether or not a student will finish college.

"One striking result of this study is illustrated in the graph below: a student’s socioeconomic status (SES, a measure that combines family income, parental education and occupation) was about as good a predictor of whether he or she would get a college degree as the student’s test scores."

From the White House Task Force on Middle Class Families STAFF REPORT:
Barriers to Higher Education. http://bit.ly/WLjtC

this week needed a 3-day weekend

The first week of school should always be followed by a 3-day weekend. What a week - in one week, we kicked off three classes, matched 60 students to consulting projects, got over 50 students to RSVP for a big event next week, came up with a syllabus for a study abroad trip, and... lots of other stuff.

Yawn.

This could only be written by an English prof

Mad Men. It's an obsession. I'm enamored with the AMC series mostly because of the subtle complexity of the female characters as I move forward in my own life, away from the girlish secretary into some modern combination of Peggy Olson and Betty Draper.

Why We Love Mad Men. The Chronicle of Higher Ed.

Links to Philanthropic Tweets

Twitter has become a necessity in my life - it's how I stay up to date with what's going on in a million different places at once. I'm constantly monitoring who I follow - it's tough because I love to follow funny tweets, but they may not be that useful to me professionally, and there are a lot of tweets that are.

So, by way of saving some info for myself to refer to later when I'm not beat and about to get ready for bed -

90 Foundations that Tweet. Philanthropy 411 Blog. http://bit.ly/NZ2wL

Education Foundations, Etc on Twitter. Jacques of All Trades. http://bit.ly/3aCmp

UPDATE: Just investigating a few foundations that support undergrad education.
Carnegie Foundation
Teagle Foundation (no current requests for proposals, but one to watch - has funded a number of projects at liberal arts colleges)

College Counselors

This Time interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David L. Marcus describes the role of college counselor in college admissions, and has one of the best descriptions of what administrators are to students I think I've ever read:

"I have no doubt that the best teachers are the ones who don't turn it off at 2:55 p.m., who are constantly thinking of ways to inspire their students just like Smitty does. He's a teacher; he just doesn't have a regular classroom. And frankly, many kids learn better by hanging out with the guidance counselor or going to a job or doing an internship than they do in a 42-minute class."

What administrators do to enhance the classroom experience is an integral part of the curriculum. Even at my place of work we call it "co"-curricular - as if it's alongside - rather than acknowledging all the pieces of the puzzle that make up curriculum.

"Q&A: Inside the College Admissions Process." Cruz, G. Time, August 21, 2009. http://bit.ly/1iQ47

Alien Life Forms

Did you know this? It was on this day in 1977 that the Voyager 2 spacecraft was launched. Voyager 2 and its twin, Voyager 1, set out to explore the giant gaseous planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. They did that, and they are still in space, releasing new data constantly. Voyager 2's newest discovery concerns the bubble around our solar system where the solar wind (a thin gas of charged particles, which come from the sun) meets the space beyond our solar system. Voyager 2 has shown that that bubble is irregular, or squashed, not round.

Just in case the Voyagers make it into another solar system with alien life forms, each Voyager has a record that is three-quarters music and one-quarter greetings in 55 languages and various sounds from nature. The music includes Beethoven, Chuck Berry, Louis Armstrong, and traditional songs from all over the world.

I realized that my focus solely on education policy may be a bit boring for some, so just a quick reminder that in addition to writing a dissertation I also have a full time job (which 98% of the time I love) and curiosity about the world in general.

(From The Writer's Almanac for August 20, 2009.)

Why Groups Fail to Share Information Effectively

I got this awhile ago from @amitparikh and realized that I'm definitely going to include it in the syllabus for my fall class. In any case, it's about how you can manage groups/teams to let go of anxiety and preconceptions in order to communicate more effectively. I really think this is one of the most pressing problems in the workplace, and despite modern technology, we still have an inability to get information from the best sources out there - our colleagues!

Why Groups Fail to Share Information Effectively

Why rankings don't matter

Inside Higher Ed reviewed the peer surveys distributed to universities which make up 25% of their rankings, and their findings are shocking. It would take 10 hours to adequately complete this survey, time most administrators don't have. They then end up basing their reviews of other institutions on gut feelings, news reports - in short, the same things that the general public knows about institutions of higher education.

What's worse is that many institutions spend so much time and energy trying to get up in these rankings. My personal feeling about educational leadership is that you should outline a bold vision that capitalizes on your strengths and allows you to move forward. Rankings will follow, or they won't, but wouldn't it be great to be known as the university that doesn't bother with piddly rankings? Instead, we could be known as the university that sets our own standards.

My two cents, anyway.

Reputation Without Rigor. Inside Higher Ed. August 19, 2009

dissert lines

get it? like a buffet line.

j/k people. I've identified a few different lines of thought that I will need to familiarize myself with in order to write my dissertation proposal. Any resources you've found helpful, you think are pivotal to any of these themes, please, have at it and recommend me some good things.

- history of immigrants in America (due to Alatis's heritage as a son of Greek immigrants in West Virginia)
- educational leadership (obvi here, he was dean of the School of Languages and Linguistics at Georgetown)
- history of foreign language education policy, based primarily on policy documents that Alatis has shared with me
- Other? Development of socio-linguistics? History of English as a Second Language? As much as I'd love to include it, I think I'm going to have to excise the English as a Second Language portion of Alatis's life, at least from the dissertation. It actually would be a whole separate dissertation to write about that portion of his life. Guess that's part of the "this is fascinating and out of scope" disclaimer I'll include in the proposal. Have to write on it another time, though, because it brings up issues of socio-linguistics, class, race, and English hegemony.

And OMG, the airconditioning sounds like a stampede all of the sudden. It's interesting being in the "old" (read, like early 1990s) part of the building.

The future of education?

I firmly believe that multidisciplinary education is the way of the future. Now, if we can get doctoral programs and The Academy to hire more multidisciplinary faculty - we'll really make some progress.

Here's some help at least for creating undergraduate programs: Project Kaleidoscope. http://www.pkal.org/

this was so hard to write

Digital possibilities offer a number of exciting new ways to conduct and transmit oral history, but transmission alone does not create a paradigm change as defined by Kuhn. The socio-cultural impact of online communication and communities has a broad-reaching impact on how individuals and societies define themselves. Since oral historians are concerned with the myths that make meaning of history, the context and voice of narrators are key to understanding where a narrator’s story matches the record, where it does not, and why these disconnects exist. In order to discover the essential meaning for narrators of the digital age, online interactions and how they match and do not match actual interactions will prove to be a key facet of oral history methodology as we move forward. The transformation in the conception of the self and of society due to the global flows enabled by technology constitutes the paradigm change, as the possibilities for cultural transmission impact how people communicate with others and make choices for their lives in society.

am i making sense?

A paradigm shift changes the fundamentals of a field of understanding. Alistair Thompson uses this term to describe four major paradigm shifts in oral history. These shifts move the craft of oral history from a modern rediscovery following World War II with the advent of the portable tape recorder through reaction to positivist critics, reclamation by interdisciplinary scholars, and to the contemporary era of digital transformation. Thompson characterizes the digital transformation as a change in the way that oral history will be presented. Access to digital archives will allow recordings to supersede transcripts as the true representation of a narrator’s story, returning aurality to the craft. While those changes as well as the ease of collaboration online stand to transform the methods of oral history, Thompson wonders if this change represents a true paradigm shift “as articulated by Thomas Kuhn, a profound change in understanding that revolutionizes our practice as oral historians” and if “this technological revolution [is] also a cognitive revolution.” Even though the medium impacts the message, technology could just offer a new way to view oral history and not a profound cognitive change. The question might be best put, according to Thompson, to the younger generation more adept with the new and changing landscape of technology.

New media do offer a new way to communicate narrators’ stories, but scholars in a variety of fields have explored the profound effects of technology on the concepts of self that is central to oral history. Elizabeth Tonkin describes oral genres that oral historians must note as their storytellers narrate, and that the first person “I” that we might assume to be represented as they narrate is a literary construction. Several “selves” can be present within one narrator. In Appadurai’s technoscape , supercharged by increasing access to the internet in more places , these selves can influence and be influenced by an exploding number of cultural influences. The combination of globalization and technology will create the next paradigm shift for oral history by impacting both the context and the voice that are central to the craft.

writing quote

Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out. ~Samuel Johnson, "Recalling the Advice of a College Tutor," Boswell, Life of Johnson, 1791

academics come up with all the ideas

I'm having an epiphany, and that is academics come up with many - most - all - depending on how hyperbolic I'm being, and as you know I can be quite hyperbolic. I'm reading Bounded Rationality: the adaptive toolbox and although it's in academese (quite good academese, but technical and dense writing), I'm recognizing the ideas as similar to those I read in Blink. Bounded Rationality came out in 2002 from MIT Press, obviously an academic publisher. Blink appeared in 2005 from Little, Brown and Company, a more commercial publisher. But the main idea is the same - that when we make decisions, we aren't optimizing by computing all possible outcomes and computing the return on investment, but rather using a heuristic "educated guess" approach based on experience, intuition, and observing others who are successful.

I'm sure Malcolm Gladwell did his proper citations and all that - but it comes to this - he made a lot of money off of popularizing a concept that essentially is not his. I guess when I say that by researching and writing, we're contributing to the common good, we really are - just not to our own personal common goods. Few of us get rich this way, although we're the thinkers who are really shaping what people talk about. Well, except for when we talk about Jon&Kate+8.

Exhilarated by nerdy activities

I always love it when I discover what a nerd I am. When I worked at an internship with Women's Wear Daily in Paris, my favorite thing to do was research for the writers. My boss looked at me like I was crazy - she said no one ever liked that part of the job. I couldn't believe that my job was to read. How awesome.

In preparing 3 concurrent grant proposals, I've realized 2 things: a) this is what grad school is preparing you for - writing a grant proposal is much like writing a final paper. Although they should, for one class or another, have you actually put together a proposal. They could then use them to bring money into the college. But I digress; b) I love writing and having it go somewhere - once the grant proposal was finished and is actually being submitted, I felt a sense of exhilaration! Being a nerdy professor preparing grant proposals is clearly what I was meant to do in life.

So to recap, I love to research and I love to write. I love it especially when you have good ideas and make good connections and get funded for doing those things, which then allows you to continue to research and to write. AND, might I add.... to contribute to the greater good.

$$ for Thought

Something to crunch on as I aid my team in preparing a grant proposal.

"How Your Grant Proposal Compares." The Chronicle of Higher Education. http://tinyurl.com/ntond5

HAHAHAHAHA not.

What all these emails we get from our university presidents sound like:

"Dear Colleagues (for the moment):

"The good news is the university is stable. The bad news is you are not.

"The economic downturn has quite suddenly transformed our Superman endowment into Mr. Peepers. Thus the University is required to freeze all salaries beginning July 1 for the rest of the fiscal century. We also must downsize the staff by 200 percent in the next 10 minutes. This means dismissing a number of people who have never worked here. We hope this measure will serve to boost the morale of those of you who were fortunate enough to work for the University. Certain auxiliary services will be cut as well in order to protect the academic mission. In addition to the closure of the library last week, all staff and faculty members should arrange to pick up their children at the University day care by noon, after which they will be sold to the highest bidders.

"Have a great day, and Go Warthogs!"

WOULD be funny if I hadn't gotten this exact email in my inbox last night at 5:15pm.

"We're all in this together." (Robert A. Weisbuch, The Chronicle of Higher Education.) http://tinyurl.com/m8xaol

overwhelmed by internets

My blog has become an organization tool of late. As I prepped for my interview last week, I had written my questions and posted them here. When I arrived at Georgetown and realized I had forgotten everything, I popped into the library, came here, and remembered. Whew.

Now I want to save this search on the NSF webpage because I'm working on putting together a proposal. Clearly, it is helpful to look at successful proposals that have been funded.

Mrs. Obama

How have I missed so many great MObama looks??!? "She walks in beauty" - and confidence and awesomeness and a million other qualities I admire.

Enjoy!

The Michelle Obama Look Book (via NY Mag)

digital paradigm shift

2nd comp question is discussing the impact of the digital paradigm shift on oral history. I'm moving away from "Isn't it great, we can post our stuff online" to "how will this impact our conceptions of self, memory, history?"

Thinking about a couple of different items that may help the thought processes although I need to track them down - recent articles on Facebook and how it has impacted adolescents and their conceptions of self, an article on how the internet has ruined our ability to remember anything (ok, exaggeration, obvi but you get the point), and... well, the fact that my colleague has done a lot of research on the internet and may have come across some research on behavior that may have resonance with what I'm doing. Clearly I have links to none of this. Forthcoming. Hopefully (I wish I could make that short like "obvi." "Hopefi?" Ugh.)

Binghampton Understatement

In my last post, zealous to discredit the Diploma Mill (ugh, title) blog, I understated the Binghampton case. Obviously this is an inappropriate way to raise funds. However, I stand by my point that the analysis is facile. The problem with raising money for colleges is not that we pimp out our development officers. I mean, I don't think this is an epidemic. The real questions lie in the realm of, in our endless chase for dollars, what are we giving up? Academic freedom? Objectivity as researchers? How much money are we spending in order to raise this money (as I think about yet another drive to Baltimore that I will make today to raise a few grand)? Is it worth it?

Being that my own job lies in this realm, these are questions that possibly threaten my livelihood. But we can't be afraid to question the system.

Grr.

If I used inappropriate language more often in my blog instead of focusing on the proper way to cite conference proceedings using Chicago style, then maybe I too could be syndicated and quit my day job.

Former Wonkette intern, apparently. Wonkette is pretty funny, but I'm not sure this guy knows enough about higher ed to really sustain a blog.

The Diploma Mill. (Also I find the title annoying.)

UPDATE: The author is actually in college (Wheaton College). From the entry on development in higher ed, it didn't seem as if that's the perspective he's writing from. Does he realize that even though he might pay around $43,000 for comprehensive costs, it actually costs $55,600 educate one Wheaton College student (Sallie Mae notwithstanding)? (Thanks Google - from a Wheaton College fin aid primer) He cites one instance of a sexual harassment complaint in a development office to illustrate why development is evil. Those people help make sure you're not in more debt when you finish, bud. There are problems with development but this particular perspective on it is facile.

Also, he's just not that funny.

Slow and steady

Either wins the race or is tedious and boring. Or both. At 2:15pm I said, OK, I'm going to go through my big stack of stuff for 45 minutes and make a crack in the database of resources I'm compiling. At 3pm I had read about 5 pages of 1 source, having done actual work work instead (don't you love that I prefer work?). Now at 4:15pm I've gone through one source. Well, I guess that's one more than I had gone through before.

The upshot is that I now have some actual, fact-based questions for Thursday's interview. The two important, educational leadership questions I saw emerge as I was reading dealt with 1) academic freedom and the establishment of NDEA Language/Area Studies Centers (the report was careful to state that because the universities needed to provide matching funds, this kept federal hands out of the mix because it was encouraging the growth of activities in which the universities were already interested); and 2) the need for area studies to "root" themselves in the established university structure. Because the programs were/are multidisciplinary, receiving a major or a PhD in a non-departmental program dooms one to failure in the current academic structure. Thus the centers need to align people from various disciplines.

I could spend a year writing about how that may or may not be the case... I won't.. suffice to say that what if we were to shake it up and make a language/area studies program that was a department? What if all departments were multidisciplinary? The real world is multidisciplinary... maybe it would provide a better link to industry, gov't etc for academia.

Anyway. Back to whatever it is I'm doing.

Today's interview questions

We've focused a lot on your early life and education through your time working in Greece as a Fulbright scholar. I want to focus today on your time at the Office of Education. I was reviewing your curriculum vitae and pairing it up with important language policies, and I wanted to talk a bit about what the Office of Education was like when you began in 1961, which was three-four years after the passage of the NDEA. What was the relationship of the Office of Education, and specifically your division, to the NDEA?

Now, I noticed that you became chief of the Language Research Section in 1965, the same year that the Higher Education Act was passed in Congress. Did your office and you have any involvement with the formation of the legislation for the HEA?

In 1966 you moved on to Georgetown and TESOL. In 1968 Congress passed the Bilingual Education Act. Did TESOL provide any expertise in writing the legislation, influence through lobbying members of Congress, etc?

(Tie this into educational leadership - listening to the trends of the day, sometimes being ahead of the curve. How did he do that? How did he pay attention to the breadth of information and stay current?)

Thanks to JNCL-NCLIS for providing some background for this reasearch!

National Language Policies: Pragmatism, Process and Products. (pdf)
Dr. James E. Alatis Curriculum Vitae.

Evaluation in Higher Education

I've noticed that although we are crazy about evaluation at the K-12 level, there seems to be little to none done on evaluation at the higher education level. Maybe I need to do some more research (as I've found, this is usually the case.)

As usual, I'm interested in qualitative analysis (which, though possibly more time-consuming, produces more fruitful and student-centered results in my opinion). Last year at my college there was some upset because of a report in Business Week that basically resulted from a few unhappy undergraduates filling out the BW survey. At the faculty meeting where it was discussed I thought that a mass ethnography project might be in order. I didn't suggest it because people might have looked at me like I belonged in a hippie commune, but I think some type of ethnography (or a combination of observational methods and focus groups with a set of surveys to follow) might be the key to understanding the student experience.

That's my two cents for the day. Now time for a nap. (I wish.)

A Theme?

Another plane crash dream last night. This time it was kind of like that plane that landed in the Hudson. For some reason I went into the plane afterwards and people seemed to be OK. Weird. If it were just the same plane crash again and again, I might get more used to it, but each time it is a different situation. Something is so terrifying about watching the free fall from air. Also, since is a huge fear of mine, I think it makes it that much worse. Not that anyone would really enjoy dreaming about plane crashes.

I had a great weekend, beautiful backyard Baltimore wedding, but no progress of any kind with the comp question. Some progress on the house though (not that I personally made it, that would be the DH) but I did clean, do laundry and go grocery shopping for the week.

Hopefully can get back to it this evening, although given my sleepless night, we'll see how it goes.

The impossibility of anonymity when using "thick description"

That very long title just a ploy to see if I can get twitter to post more than just the title. I fear that this twitterfeed feedburner openurl stuff is beyond my technological capabilities (ironic, considering I'm writing an article about technological capabilities).

No, seriously, I am on my way to the library to check out When They Read What We Write which deals with this ethical issues of anonymity and thick description. Hope I can also find that Clifford Geertz book. Hmm. Dunno which one that is.

OK, thanks to Wikipedia. It is in the book of selected essays, The Interpretation of Cultures. However, thanks library, they are all checked out or missing. Guess this one is up to Amazon.com because you know (or at least, I'm about to tell you) how obsessed I am with original sources and not using Wikipedia and then just saying I actually read the book.

Off to get When They Read What We Write. C U later.

the inevitable... 2nd day and no longer impressed with myself. Progress stalled, interview tomorrow...

(As a side note, I feel the need to make these titles really long because nothing I put in the body gets on twitter. End of side note.)

Well, I'm blogging and searching goodreads.com for something (anything, please Lord, anything but another article about the ethics of oral history and online publishing! Pleeease!) to read. What I am not doing is finishing up my comp question so that I can then tidy it up, turn it in, and move on to the proposal.

I think lingering in the distance is this fear of the proposal - that I'll be exposed as a fraud, that I have no idea what I'm doing, that I'll put forth all this effort and fail, that I'll never be able to make it as an academic (and a wife, and eventually, God willing, a mother). The other night I had a dream where I witnessed 3 plane crashes in a row, all at the same time, and then had to board a plane at the same gate where there was also lying inexplicably the wreck of one of the Continental planes that had crashed. The dream sort of veered off from there and somehow I ended up at National Stadium for a baseball game, but THAT IS BESIDE THE POINT. I am AFRAID OF CRASHING AND BURNING, people. I know rationally that my fear of being a fraud is merely impostor syndrome and that I have much quantitative and qualitative evidence to refute said notion. It doesn't mean that I don't have it, though, and I've had it all my life (always thought that school success was just "luck" and that one day it would run out, and then I got to grad school and felt it had when I got my first incomplete).

The best anecdote to imposter syndrome (see? I can't even spell impostor so how could I be one?) is to put your head down and just work through it. If I put together some proposal out of left field, then my committee will say, "That's out of left field. Do it again." And I will, and I will have learned, and it will be better. Failure just means you took a risk, and if you're not failing then you're not taking enough risks (thanks to JB for that one!).

Now I am going to suck it up and write about how one can use blogs, wikis, and real-time, push-button publishing and collaboration to make a successful oral history project. Yeah! Go team (of me myself and I)!

back and impressed with myself

I know, you're shocked at the title of this post. Me? Impressed with myself? Never.

I'm reading over my comp questions that I desperately need to finish (was hoping to do so before the wedding but since we moved 2 weeks before the wedding, that did not happen). However, I'm reading over what I have so far and it's pretty good. I may just get this PhD thing yet.

A snippet: (might have already posted this, but since I'm practically a different person now with a whole new name and all, I can do it twice)

Online databases of oral history allow oral historians to preserve participant testimony in the original format, and include the Virtual Oral Aural History Archive at California State University at Long Beach (currently not loading but check back and see if it does. The problem with including links in scholarly work is exactly this!). This website has topically organized interviews and allows visitors to listen to complete interviews on a variety of subjects. The archive also has a key-word index that refers to interviews containing specific words. A more popular although less scholarly project appears in the StoryCorps project, where a mobile recording booth travels the country and allows ordinary Americans to interview each other on a variety of topics. The project produces and airs the stories on National Public Radio on a regular basis.[1] These archives and projects point to new ways to disseminate and popularize oral history, and preserve the oral nature of the testimony collected. There are also numerous ways for individual oral historians to disseminate their work, and I will discuss these in the final section on practical implications of the digital era.

21 days to go? I'm going to seriously freak out soon.

I just checked out wedding website, and there are 21 days to go until our wedding. Yikes. There are so many stupid little things to do, like glue ribbon onto programs and get a freaking marriage license. Change my name. Pack for St. Martin. Finish my comp questions. Move. Unpack. Clean both the new kitchen and the old kitchen. Etc. Etc. Etc.

The big move is tomorrow

The big move happens tomorrow. Most of our stuff is already in boxes. Now I'm sitting at my desk, clearly not yet packed. Hopefully I can do this with some sort of expediency.

It's crazy to think that by tomorrow, instead of 3 cramped rooms and a kitchen we'll be in 6 rooms, kitchen, basement with our own coat closet, linen closet, and laundry room. Wow.

Car inspection fail

I walked out yesterday morning and had a $50 ticket on my car because when I failed inspection, they gave me 20 days to fix the problem. Given the number of balls in the air, you can imagine this did not happen. So I let the ball drop. $50 fine, please.

What's extra special is that because I drive a 10-year old car, the part is taking a week to come in. This meant an extra trip to the DMV - Half Street (unlike most states, DC has one location for all car inspections) this morning so they could re-fail my car, thereby saving me from tickets for the next 20 days.

Because over the next 20 days, it's not like I have much else going on.

our own tv show

When our realtor told us that we should have our own tv show because we were getting married and buying a house in the space of less than two months, I thought, oh, whatever, we can handle it.

As I sat in the house last night staring at the walls covered in spackle, having just got off the phone with my mother to discuss centerpieces and pondering both the shower thank-yous I have yet to write and my still unfinished comp question, I began to reconsider his idea. Only now all I can think is, HELP!!!

If B and I don't strangle each other before we get to the altar, I really think we'll be avle to make it through anything.

Deep breath. Ok. On to dissertation interviews, can inspection, and more sanding.

Vacation???

I need one. Even just a mental vacation. I'm at this point mentally incapable of doing any meaningful work. Which is difficult, because I still have 1 comp question to finish and two interviews for the dissert (I like saying it that way, reminds me of dessert) on Thursday.

Just a quick link about my new neighborhood....

Hoping to post some pics of the new house soon. So you can see the before, the "broom swept condition" that we got it to after a week and a half of work, and, hopefully, the transformation.

http://www.capitalcommunitynews.com/publications/hillrag/2009_May/html/ANC6ARosedaleGetsLove.cfm

Ugh. Thai Noodle Cart lunch is officially YUCK.

This is what I am currently eating for a 3:30pm lunch, and it is just awful. It's my own fault, because I didn't want to walk downstairs to the MBA kitchen to heat up this. It could have something to do with the fact that I followed boiling water directions but the water I used isn't really boiling, it's just the hot water that comes from the water cooler. Oh the glamorous academic life - Thai Noodle Cart instant noodles while you're writing comp questions on a Sunday afternoon in your messy, messy office.

Back to Portelli and the intersection between text and voice.

Second comp question and learning about bulk trash removal - oh the dichotomies of my life

Using Alistair Thompson's article "Four Paradigm Transformations in Oral History" (Oral History Review 2007 34(1):49-70) as a starting point, what are the methods of creating oral history for the fourth paradigm transformation, the digital era? What are the ethical implications of using these new technologies to create oral history?


and...
DC Bulk Trash Removal (Tuesdays for me - call 311 to make appointment)
Best Shop Vacs (for cleaning up crap in a 68 year old Rosedale row house)

I was going to write something about hyperliteracy...

I'm remembering (vaguely) on my way to an event where I mingled with potential dissertation informants that I wrote something in my mini notebook about hyperliteracy. Now I'm working on my comp question and wondering what that was about. Something about facebook? Who knows. Hyperliteracy, people. I'm coining it here and now (but I'm sure it's already been coined.) I just can't win.

And now for some poetic inspiration from the Writer's Almanac

I strongly recommend subscribing to the Writer's Almanac newsletter. You know, that 2 minutes they have on at like 6:47am with Garrison Keeler reading you a poem? Comes in email form, unfortunately without Garrison Keeler.

Anyway, today they have a poem from William Henry Davies, called "Leisure" about enjoying life. Read it and enjoy some life today.

Leisure

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

Inspired by women who find a way to balance their careers and their lives

The other day I went to the gym and saw a friend who had given birth to a beautiful little girl three weeks prior. She was just getting back into exercise, and maybe even taking a little time for herself. On those days when I feel "too tired" to go to the gym, I think of her and it inspires me.

I sometimes read the Mama, PhD blog and while sometimes I think they can sound a little complain-y, it does make real the challenges of combining family life with an academic career. The blog led me to this book, and a great essay by Barbara Jacobowitz which says, "My love for my work enhances what I bring to my children as a parent, and.. the love that I bear for my children brings something extra to my work." She never says it is easy, but is anything worth living for easy?

And no, I am not pregnant. What is it with people? I had a glass of seltzer at the party and everybody freaked out and said I must be. I sure hope not, because I also had a glass of wine. Something about turning 30 and people suddenly think you've turned into mom.

In the beginning, there was this: "My parents were Greek."

When I began to interview Dr. James Estafanos Alatis about his life and career, he told me, “One might want to start from the beginning. And how I got involved in languages at all.”

I said, “Yes.”

“My parents were Greek,” he said.

For Dr. Alatis, his life’s work in foreign language education, the teaching of English as a second language and advocacy for less commonly taught languages begins with Greek. From a Greek community of steel workers and small business owners in Weirton, West Virginia, Dr. Alatis pursued a vigorous academic career that encompasses work in education policy, educational leadership, and teaching. The stories of his origins and his sense of self as a Greek American highlight the transcultural nature of his experience. This exploration of Dr. Alatis’s life examines his fluid movement between cultural narratives of Greece and America, his interaction with the borderland language of Americanized Greek, and his dual experience of belonging to and alienation from the Greek community.

plugging away

I'm still plugging away at work, it's just been a whirlwind of activity in my life. You can tell from my desk, which is a mess.

Currently linking together the Greek-American immigrant experience, transcultural narratives of old and new traditions, and Dr. Alatis's life. I think it makes sense. I'm about to take a look at it in a few to see.

getting ready for comprehensive exams

I'm like, didn't I do this already? In undergrad? Yeah. That was a miserable time of life. This doesn't seem that bad.

I have to write 2 papers (we're calling them "scholarly articles"). Here are the comp questions:

1. Using Alistair Thompson's article "Four Paradigm Transformations in Oral History" (Oral History Review 2007 34(1):49-70) as a starting point, what are the methods of creating oral history for the fourth paradigm transformation, the digital era? What are the ethical implications of using these new technologies to create oral history?

2. Dr. James E. Alatis attributes his interest in languages and linguistics to his upbringing in a Greek immigrant community in West Virginia. How does the literature on the transcultural experience of heritage language speakers illuminate this experience?

Thoughts? You wanna write them for me?

Ok more things I have to learn about.

By the way, this has been a huge week. We're under contract for a house in NE DC. Woo-hoo! I mean, keep your fingers crossed that it all works out, but if it does, we'll be the lovely owners of a 68 year old house with a hideous red-and-white awning, which will clearly come down.

National Council on the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language (funded/supported by CAL? and Charles Ferguson)
Survey by Dr. Allen and Fritz Eeyani on the teaching of English in the US (done by the Office of Education sometime in the 1950s)

A brief list of things I need to learn about...

Origins of the TOEFL Test
Kenneth Mildenberger
Charles Ferguson
History of the Center for Applied Linguistics
...

To be continued....

Wikipedia has ethics, rules, peer review???

I'm discovering the elaborate system that is Wikipedia. Why? One of my initial goals for starting my oral history project is to create a Wikipedia page about Dr. Alatis. Wikipedia does have strict standards for articles which are biographies of living persons; however, I feel that I will be able to abide by their standards as well as those governing the prohibition of original research. As long as I reference Dr. Alatis's publications and other publicly available material (including research I conducted at the Georgetown archives), I think this will be easy provided I apply the Wikipedia standards of neutral point of view, etc.

It is a really sophisticated system. I have often referenced it as a quick way to learn about a topic, but I had no idea how elaborate a community it was. It's actually really cool.

Anyway, you can check out my user page and see what I'm currently working on over there.

lost and found

So I managed to make a pretty good stab at it after my post earlier today. I'm now back into the nitty-gritty (currently reading Wikipedia's policies on creating biographies of living persons.) My eyes are starting to zone out, but here is some of the stuff I have so far:

by way of introduction:
Dr. Alatis's life is important to me because of his profound influence on the field of foreign language education. He discovered a love of language at Greek school in West Virginia as a child, and throughout his life has worked with teachers, scholars, administrators, and students to foster a love of language and find ways to make language education successful. He gave out grant monies from the National Defense Education Act, and he was instrumental in professionalizing of the field of teaching English as a second language by serving as Executive Director of TESOL for over twenty years. Most of these facts, however, can be learned through a quick Google search. Oral history allows me to delve deeper, to ask questions, to hear the story from the individual and those surrounding him, and ultimately to create a new archive of knowledge from an accomplished man. My belief is that Dr. Alatis's story will not only serve to remind the foreign language community of the battles fought over the past 50 years, but as a model for oral historians of how we can use digital tools to breathe new life into an ancient method of collecting history. In this article, I discuss practical, how-to aspects of technologies I have used in this project and their implications for what Michael Frisch calls a return of aurality to oral history as well as ethical considerations of digital tools.

by way of talking about technology:

I also turned to the popular site Wikipedia. Despite the attention that Middlebury College received when their history department limited the use of Wikipedia as a primary source1. Brock Read, “Middlebury College History Department Limits Use of Wikipedia,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, Vol. 53 Issue 24, February 16, 2007. , other scholars find Wikipedia to be a good first source that can often lead researchers in new directions2. Cathy Davidson, "We Can't Ignore the Influence of Digital Technologies," The Chronicle of Higher Education, Vol. 53, Issue 29, March 23, 2007; . The collaborative capability of Wikipedia allowed Ann Kirschner to create an article on Ala Gertner and use the research she had done for her book, Sala's Gift, culled from a trove of letters her mother had kept from her time in Nazi work camps3. Kirschner, Ann, "Adventures in the Land of Wikipedia," The Chronicle of Higher Education, Vol. 53, Issue 13, November 11, 2006. . Wikipedia is often a way for those with similar interests to collaborate in the creation of knowledge, and the creation of knowledge by the crowd has been the subject of debate. I discuss the real-time and collaborative creation of knowledge through technology later in the article.

Voila.

Writer's block = bunch of crap

Well, at least that's what I'm telling myself.

I just sat down to start composing this "article" that I have had swimming in my head for at least a month now, and I don't know what it is - fear, nervousness, anxiety, the sense that I have never, ever read enough, whatever - but I just can't seem to write the thoughts down. Writing seems to be the hardest part of all the research that I'm doing, because every time I'm faced with the blank word processor screen, I freeze up. I even wrote down some partial thoughts at one point to get "warmed up," and it didn't seem to work.

But I can write here, maybe because I can see that some people are listening. So I'm going to warm up here and writer's block be damned.

When I began my work with Dr. Alatis, I entered another world. James E. Alatis was born in 1926 in Weirton, West Virginia. He is the son of Greek immigrants, his mother coming from Chios and his father from Cypress. At 82 years old, he is Dean Emeritis of the Georgetown School of Languages and Linguistics and Professor of Linguistics and Modern Greek. He teaches four days a week at Georgetown, and although at our first meeting he told me that he met with a colleague to discuss his retirement, he shows no signs of slowing down despite a debilitating eye condition.

Why is Dr. Alatis's world so different from my own? I am the daughter of two IT professionals, first generation college student, and avid technophile. During my time as a graduate student, I have conducted many interviews while learning the craft of both oral history and ethnography. I use a variety of technologies to help me transcribe interviews, record my observations, and write my conclusions. Without realizing it at first, I have been taking part in what Alistair Thompson calls the fourth paradigm transformation of oral history, the digital revolution in oral history (1). Ignoring all else that has occurred during the past half century, the digital revolution has created a divide for me to cross when interviewing Dr. Alatis. I have learned that the key is to enter his world completely, and then bring his stories back into my own, where I can use my abilities as a 21st century oral historian to bring new meaning to them, meaning that may have not been possible 10 or 20 years ago.

Ugh. I still feel like there's no "there" there - I'm working through it. Basically I want this to be an introduction to my work - giving the reader some key, interesting details about Dr. Alatis (like why do I want to know about this guy?), highlighting my methodology and especially why I am in a unique position to bring his story to life (I'm adept with technology, can bring his story to a wider audience), and finally, some meat to what I'm doing and how I'm doing it. Also, the goal is that this would be a publishable article - something that would give other oral historians some insight into new ways to bring oral history to life. I guess I can bring up the fact that I'll be using Wikipedia, why Wikipedia, etc, my blog, what that means. Even my Twitter - whenever I post here, it goes on Twitter, which then goes on facebook, which then draws in readers to read about my work and therefore about Dr. Alatis. And all of these things are simple to do. I guess the differences are that I (and others from my generation) tend to create in real-time... we don't research, write, edit, re-edit, edit, then edit some more. We write and hit "publish post," and then it becomes part of the public domain. What implications does that have for our narrators and for our craft?

OK. I'm definitely on to something here. Thank you, Google, Blogger, readers, whomever... I think blogging definitely cures writers' block.



(1) Alistair Thompson, "Four Paradigm Transformations in Oral History." Oral History Review 34 (1) (2007): 49.

still here, just overwhelmed

just letting you know I'm still hanging on. Work has been a bit overwhelming with the influx of new applicants to the program, and then on top of that add dissertation research, wedding planning, etc.

Also I could go into the litany of things wrong with my apartment, starting with the fact that my landlady cashes our rent checks ages late. Also that she complains bitterly anytime we ask her to fix something, like, say, the heat. Or the dishwasher. I'm like, I don't care, lady - you own the place.

But - SPRING BREAK COMETH!!! As in, tomorrow.

transcription is EXHAUSTING

Hi.

I'm exhausted. (Although just reading this article in the Chronicle made me appreciate my lifestyle as a quasi-academic. No, an academic. I may be an administrator, but let's be honest and call it what it is.)

I just spent about 2 1/2 hours transcribing 30 minutes of tape. This is why I have in the past paid to have someone else do it. The problem is you lose the intimacy that you have with the audio file when you transcribe it yourself. The quality of their transcripts was fine, it's just that I wasn't disciplined enough to listen to the audio file and read through the transcript unless I was forcing myself to be the one doing the typing.

It is exhausting though and perhaps after a few more hours of it I will give up and give in.

One great quote, however (cleaned up a bit):

"Underlying all this that I'm going to say to you is based upon the anomaly in this country with regard to any kind of thing, and somebody once said to me, you Americans never do anything unless there's a crisis. So the first crisis was of course World War I, World War II, and we had decided that we ought to have Americans learn other languages." Dr. Alatis

Dr. James Alatis

Is the best.

Also, he has agreed to participate in my oral history dissertation. It's a monumental task. I think I'm up for it. I feel pretty up for it, at least.

Find out more about Dr. Alatis.

William Riley Parker

Is quickly becoming my new hero. He was the Executive Director of the Modern Language Association from... eeeh... well, that seems to be a bit hard to track down. What I can say right now is that it was in the '50s.

What's nuts is that there's so little real information on this guy - no Wikipedia page, nothing on the MLA site except for a prize named in his honor. Maybe this is like a mini-project that I can work on in the meantime. I'm sure my dissertation participant will have some salient information.

an oldie but goodie - the kiss by anne sexton

Thought of this poem today while getting my hair done. I read it for the first time at Duke Young Writer's Camp when I was 14. Summer, North Carolina, a beautiful campus and poetry. Who could ask for anything more?

This is from memory.. so it's more or less correct..

my mouth blooms like a cut
i've been wronged all year, tedious
nights, nothing but rough elbows in them and
tedious boxes of kleenex calling
crybaby, crybaby you fool!

before today my body was useless,
now it's tearing at its square corners,
tearing old Mary's garments off
and now it's shot full of these electric bolts
and see - Zing! a resurrection!

Once it was a boat, quite wooden.
It was nothing more than a group of boards.
but you hoisted her, rigged her.
she's been elected.

my nerves are turned on .... i hear them like musical instruments....
where once there was silence the drums, the strings are incurably playing.
You did this.
Darling, the composer has stepped into fire.

Or something like that. You can Google it and see if I came close. I wonder why that poem was the one that came to my mind, rather than say, "An Irish Airman Forsees His Death" or "The Second Coming" both by Yeats or that one by Gerald Manley Hopkins about the ooze of oil crushed... all poems I have more or less committed to memory over the years because once a professor said it was a shame no one did that anymore and also because in my favorite childhood book, there was a mouse who helped his friends through the long winter by telling stories.

It's a research day... notes from a bunch of articles...

Wow. I just realized that all my posts on the front page of my blog are from February. That hasn't happened in awhile.

The book I'm reading smells like old book. But contains some important points, so I will proceed with the review.

Hoffman, Alice. "Reliability and Validity." In Dunaway, David K and Willa K. Baum, Eds., Oral History: An Interdisciplinary Anthology. Nashville, TN: American Association for State and Local History in cooperation with the Oral History Association, 1984. (clearly I need to learn how to cite correctly. Whatever. You get the idea.) First appeared in Today's Speech 22 (Winter 1974), pp. 23-27.

"One of the persistent challenges presented by scholars to oral history regards the reliability and the validity of the interviews. In this connection reliability can be defined as the consistency with which an individual will tell the same story about the same events on a number of different occasions. Validity refers to the degree of conformity between the reports of the event itself as recorded by other primary resource material such as documents, photographs, diaries, and letters. Now, while it is inconceivable that an oral report might be a true description of an event, its validity cannot really be tested unless it can be measured against some body of evidence. Without such evidence, an isolated description of an event becomes a bit of esoterica whose worth cannot be properly identified." (p.69-70).

Tuchman, Barbara. "The Significant and the Insignificant." in the book cited above. First appeared in Radcliffe Quarterly 56 (October 1972), pp. 9-10.

"The chief difficulty in contemporary history is over-documentation or what has been called, less charitably, the multiplication of rubbish... with all sorts of people being invited merely to open their mouths, and ramble effortlessly and endlessly into a tape recorder, prodded daily by an acolyte of Oral History, a few veins of gold and a vast mass of trash are being preserved which would otherwise have gone to dust. We are drowning ourselves in uneeded information." (p. 76)

Cutler III, William. "Accuracy in Interviewing." Same, Ibid, whatevs. First appeared in Historical Methods Newsletter 3 (June 1970), pp. 1-7.

Basically he says that interviewees have a tendency to inflate or deflate their role in events, that they are concerned for posterity and warp the truth, and that the interviewer must be prepared with information but even then it might not help him get an accurate interview.

Friedlander, Peter. "Theory, Method, and Oral History." Same.

Refutes idea that validity must come from a triangulation of archival records, because in his stody of the Local 229 of the UAW, census data breaks up the individuals into foreign and non-foreign born, but among the latter he sees three distinct groups in his interviews with Local president Edumund Kord. No archival or document record of these groups exists. He writes that "the same problems [of a lack of documentary evidence] emerge in regard to other major questions," which include phenomenological queries such as how the workers experienced their relationship to authority, who were the leaders and what was the structure of leadership within the group, and how the workers' struggle for power impacted their personal lives and sense of social class or status. (p. 133).

The fourth paradigm transformation of oral history

I just read an article about four paradigm shifts in oral history. The first was the conceptualization of oral history as valid for the modern, post WWII era. With the advent of radio, tape recorders, video, and similar technologies, oral recordings began to be placed alongside archival records as authentic and valid records of history. In a second paradigm shift, oral historians created a special place for memory as a valid source of history against positivist (ahem - conservative) critics who claimed that because memory was faulty or because participants remembered the past fondly, oral records lacked validity. Oral historians responded by pointing out that the silences and misremembrances of the past provided valid insight into the relationship of the past and the present. In a third paradigm, oral history became interdisciplinary. Oral historians used feminist studies and identity studies to query the relationship between narrator and historian.

Now we are in what Thomson calls the fourth paradigm of the digital era. As we are able to digitize audio and video records, will digital records replace the boxes of paper records I've searched through in my oral history project? Since we can touch-type, we create more text than anyone can possibly read... think of all the blogs out there with 2 readers. Ahem. But if someone were to conduct an oral history on me... would this blog replace the need for my voice? How would you go through the archival records if everything is on a computer, tied to an email account that someone no longer has access to? If those records, like letters in an archive, are important - should we think about how we are saving them? Digitizing records holds great possibility for providing more people with access to knowledge, but it also runs the risk of losing a great deal of items that previously would have been saved.

An interesting problem. Also I find that if I write a blog post in response to what I read, I tend to remember it better, so also an academic exercise for me.


Thomson, Alistair. "Four Paradigm Transformations in Oral History" published on January 1, 2007, Oral History Review 34: 49-70.

The tedium of research

Today was kind of a bummer, because I went all the way to Georgetown to discover that I had gotten my oral history participant's office hours wrong. OK, you know that because I've already posted it twice. I'll delete that. Blackberry blogging snafu.

Now I'm engaged in the tedium of research. No, folks, it's not all big ideas, unfortunately. (Although lately I have had a lot of big ideas, which result in me forgetting where my keys are, me dropping my check card in the hallway, much to the bemusement of my colleagues). Big ideas are great, but making them work requires tedium. For oral history, this tedium includes digging through archives, transcribing interviews, and, as I'm doing right now, scanning books that apparently only exist in the University of South Florida Library, are on loan to me from the University of Maryland, and which are already a week past due date. OK make that 10 days.

It's not all fun and games - it's deadlines and IRB approval and digging through papers that have no bearing on what you're doing. But I guess it is a labor of love, because despite the tedium I do love what I'm doing. And I'm sure there's an easier way to make PDFs out of my scans of this book, but because I'm thinking about The Next Big Idea I seem unable to figure out how.

Big Ideas become nothing without the tedious labor to make them work. And that's my Big Idea for the day.

i missed him!

I made it all the way to georgetown and my oral history participant had office hours earlier than i thought (and than his department told me they were) and i just missed him. So disappointed. Fits and starts so far for this research.

A response to an article from 1999... ok so I'm a bit late.

Response to Dougherty, Jack. “From Anecdote to Analysis: Oral Interviews and New Scholarship in Educational History.” The Journal of American History. September 1999.

I'm working on this response to an article about developing more scientific validity in oral history. Those things just don't seem to match up. I was thinking about it last night and decided to just start writing as a way to try and figure out my thoughts. Basically, I see oral history as, well, history. While more stories definitely add to the validity of history, I don't think that the language and concepts that govern other social science research will add validity to oral history. Things like getting a sample size that is representative of... well, whatever population you're going to study... that's how you would build a social science research design.

So what, I'm supposed to find a sampling of 80-year old deans emeriti from Georgetown who worked in foreign and second language education? Oh wait - yeah, there aren't too many of those. I'm being cute, but you see my point. More stories can triangulate your data, but using that language suggests that oral history is generalizable. History is not generalizable - it stems from a certain historical and cultural moment.

I'm still working out the details here. I like the idea of taking the terms reliability and validity which are used in social science research design and talking about how they mean different things for oral history. Ultimately, it becomes a question of ethics - is the oral historian handling the testimony of their participants in an ethical way? The answer determines whether or not the research is reliable and valid.

Dissertation reserach begins tomorrow...

I officially begin my dissertation research tomorrow. "Interview"/ explaining to the subject of my dissertation that he is in fact the subject of my dissertation begins tomorrow at 3pm.

OK. That's about all I had to say.

Creating timelines using Google docs - great for oral history work!

So I'm working on creating a timeline for my oral history project. I set up a meeting with the participant today - I don't think it's quite clear about what I'm doing yet to him, an actual oral history of his life - but hopefully when I meet him Thursday it will get nailed down.

The timeline is currently on the wall of my office, which has prompted many questions from students. However, I Googled "create a timeline in google" and found this tutorial, so I'm testing it out. I will attempt to post the feed on my blog.

Civic engagement in the undergraduate classroom

I attended a "lunch and learn" today on civic engagement in the classroom - really interesting stuff. The Landscape Architecture department has a capstone course where the students consult local disadvantaged communities on how their skills as landscape architects can increase their quality of life. From crime prevention to creating more green space, the students talk to adults and children, treating them as clients, and research the best ways to use their land. Their final reports are usable tools for the communities to apply for grants and funding.

It's such a great idea. I love the idea of civic engagement in the classroom. Beyond the idea that's popular in business circles now of "social responsibility," it ties socially responsible ideas such as volunteerism to the importance of engaging in civic life. Expressing your opinion, using your skills to improve the community in which you live, learning how the theoretical skills you use are helping fight the war on terror or keep healthcare accessible or aiding in other public policy areas - this is civic engagement for undergrads.

As educators, we must challenge them to think outside their narrow paradigms of what they know and want to change to fix their views on larger and more distant points. They must be challenged to see how their skills can truly improve and revolutionize the world - more than building a house for a family or working in a soup kitchen. It's got to be more comprehensive, more far-reaching, if we're going to be the generation that erases the me-decades of the baby boomers.

Policy entrepreneurs don't only exist in Congress

I had a comment asking me about policy entrepreneurship and if Rahm Emmanuel was a policy entrepreneur. I'm sure he is, I don't really know since I don't study Congress. Well, I only like the small slices of Congress that impact foreign/second language education. Like the reauth of HEA!

Politics happen in all organizations at all levels. From union leadership to who gets the best classroom, power and maneuvering play an important role in who gets the biggest piece of the pie. I've just been doing research for the good old dissert on the Georgetown School of Languages and Linguistics, and a good half of the memos deal with how many Chinese faculty there should be, how much Instructors should get paid, why so-and-so's memo said such-and-such and how the Dean can't believe that he would contradict what the Dean had said in the Hall of Nations, etc.

The ability to break through the chatter and define the problem is one of the most salient, cut-to-the-chase tools of any actor.

He who controls the message controls the issue...

Players in a policy formulation process angle to have their definition of the problem rise to the surface. Problem definition holds political weight, because “some are helped and others hurt, depending on how a problem gets defined” (Kingdon, 1992, p. 111). If another player defines the problem as located in your department or agency, that player can deflect any scrutiny on his or her own turf. Players have real differences at times over goals, values, and even reality. Boleman (2003) states “[enduring] differences lead to multiple interpretations of what is important, even what is real.” (p. 204-5). Control over what is discussed is a clear advantage. Allison (1999) explains that “individuals may define a problem in radically divergent ways… the definition of the agenda and decision situation can be pivotal” (p. 282). The player who defines the agenda can frame the issue in a way that benefits their goals and priorities. Often those who have the ability to define the agenda are policy entrepreneurs who are able to capitalize on their power bases to get what they want (Kingdon, 1992, p. 179-80). Policy entrepreneurs see problems as opportunities to promote their own goals and agenda.

Just posting as a procrastination device for finishing this darn paper.

Twitter Fail. Also politics.

School started and I've been so busy that I forgot about my linking-blog-and-twitter business. However, I seem to have failed in my endeavor. A lot of the blogs I read have twitter pages, and they have the first 140 characters of their blog appear on their twitter, then the tiny URL. So far it seems as if just the tiny URL posts. Blah.

In any case, I'm hard at work finishing the paper for Education Policy Analysis. I'm over 1/2 way done... the political analysis section is taking longer than I would like. Political analysis has so many elements that it's hard to focus on merely a handful. I'm aiming for power (uh, duh), coalition building/bargaining, and agenda setting. He who controls the agenda controls the game. I guess power is really the governing concept here, though - because without power, you have nothing to bargain with or for, and without power, there's no way you can control the agenda.

Most people see politics as an ugly game but the theorists claim that it takes will and skill to exercise power - and often what people lack is the will, since they don't like the idea of power. I really like this quote from Boleman and Deal:

"Enduring differences lead to multiple interpretations of what is important and even what is true. Scarce resources require tough decisions about who gets what. Interdependence means that people cannot ignore one another; they need each other's assistance, support, and resources." (Boleman and Deal (2003). Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership. p. 204)

testing

So it seems that my postings on twitter are only showing the tiny URL, which is not what I intended. Trying to get the first 140 characters of each blog entry to post... dunno if this is possible... still working on it.

Education isn't a panacea. Richard Rothstein wrote a great article in 2002 called "Out of Balance" that suggests that if we look at equal investments in housing and education, it seems as if a greater return would come from housing. If a child spends 6 hours a day in school and 18 hours at home, which place has more impact on his or her life?

I'm listening to Meet the Press, which is having a roundtable about Obama and what his presidency means for American and for African-Americans. Wait, David Gregory is the father of 3 young children??? Anyway... he's showing Obama talking about pesonal responsibiliy and the home and family as central to children's growth and development. Both education and the home are essential to creating a good society. If parenting is important - how can we pursue public policies that help create safe homes for children that allow them to prosper? Obviously trying to get more people to own their own homes did not work. There have got to be good housing policies that help people succeed in their lives and their children succeed in school. Government isn't the only answer - people do have to step up and try to be good parents - but government should help give them the tools to do that.

Rothstein, R. (2002). "Out of Balance." http://tinyurl.com/9t7ym4

Twitterfeed

I'm excited... set it up so my blogger can update automatically to twitter. Now perhaps I can try out my former goal of writing on this each day to help w/ prep for my dissertation. One sentence of my dissertation a day? I'm sure that would be really exciting for everyone...