Life Lately

Hello? Hello out there! Figured I should stop by since we're almost halfway through February. How did that happen, by the way? 

Here are a few updates on me since I haven't blogged in like, a month. Woops...

Teaching
I have been teaching my first class this semester and it has been going really well. The class is Crime & Justice Policy and it is mostly upperclassmen. The students are really awesome and definitely can get into the class discussions, which is great. Their first exam was today and the grades turned out pretty well so I'm happy! The next unit is talking about courts and corrections, so I'm excited to delve into an area that I'm more passionate about. Also, it takes SO long to prep for one 75-min class (at least 1.5/2 days). SO much respect and gratitude for those who teach all day!

Dissertation
I defended my proposal last week and got the green light to go ahead with the analysis! Now I'm working on that aspect. I need to defend by late March, which means I have to have it to my committee by early March. So basically I have about a month to do my analyses, write up the results, and write up the discussion/conclusion chapter. Bring it on.

At my proposal defense. Hello Powerpoint.

House
So we're officially in the 'pending' stage of buying our first home! I can't wait to go into more details, but that will have to wait until we close at the end of this month. It happened way faster than we expected but God's has very clearly guided us through this whole process and (hopefully) buying this specific home.

Miscellaneous Points

•  Super bowl. We made amazing deep dish pizza, completely homemade. Matt gets all the credit for the crust and he did a great job!

• I miss running. I was recently diagnosed with plantar fasciitis in my right foot so I've been trying to do my stretches multiple times every day. I have been able to run a little bit, but no more than 2 miles. Hopefully I can start building up the mileage again soon because the weather has been amazing lately here in Texas.
• Valentine's Day is upon us and instead of going out as is the stereotypical thing, we are going to stay at home. We're planning on slow roasting lamb shanks and maybe going out for dessert afterwards. It will be my first time cooking with lamb, so I hope it goes well!

I'm sure there are other things, but that sums up a lot of the big stuff. Figured I would at least put this out there so no one thought I had stopped blogging completely!

Five Things on Friday

This is an extra great Friday. Why? Well, read on to find out!


1) School is officially done for the semester. Woohoo! Only had to drive to campus once this week, so that's also a huge blessing!


2) Matt & I will be going with some grad school friends to a local minor league baseball game. Should be fun and my ticket is free, so I'll take it!


3) A dear friend's wedding is on Sunday and I absolutely cannot wait to go celebrate with her. I have known Erin since I was 4 or 5 and I am so happy for her and her future husband! Basically, it will be a blast!


4) I really enjoyed recapping my first year graduate school experiences & thoughts. Catch up on that here and here. That is, if you want a long read. I type a lot apparently.


5) Also, please go here. It explains 39 different ways men use Pinterest, and I think it will make you smile. 


And extra bonus, 6) We will be going here shortly and I am getting so excited... cannot wait to go hiking, sleep in, eat delicious food, enjoy the gorgeous views, and just relax with my husband with no distractions!

Source

Why Grad School?

In undergrad I never really knew what I was going to do once graduation came. With the bachelor degree I earned, there really wasn't a lot I could do with it (that I wanted to do) so grad school was the obvious choice. I took some career aptitude tests to help guide me in that decision and their answer was always clear- PROFESSOR. I would always reject that answer and instead insist on other things. Those other paths shifted from month-to-month it seems, but one thing I knew- I would be anything but being a professor. 


Even when I started my program I was set against going into academia. This avoidance is due to a lot of things, such as desiring a more 'helping' oriented profession, the ability to have a family, and the lack of desire for the stress of a tenure-track position. An important obstacle was the anti-Christian message I received from several professors and I think the public perceives from academics in general. The list could go on. However, this semester things started to change. I still want a family of course and I don't want my job to be insanely stressful-- who does? But I learned I had a lot of misconceptions about being a professor, I learned a lot about myself, and I learned a lot about God's heart. 

I realized that it is possible to have a family and be a professor, too. Oftentimes professors have a lot of freedom in their schedules, so that can be made to fit with having kids, especially with the cooperation of my husband. 


I know how to handle stress for the most part by avoiding it. My first year in grad school wasn't that stressful. I realize I'm just starting and things will progress more that way, but I learned that I do work ahead of deadlines and I do enjoy research, two factors that will really benefit me in the field. I am so not one to put off doing work until the last minute-- putting off work stresses me out so why do that to myself? I have been known to make weekly/monthly schedules of I'm going to accomplish all I have to do by setting deadlines for myself and saying OK, on this day you will do X, Y, and Z. I do know that If I chose the tenure track, it will be a lot of hours, more than 40/week, but if that's where God wants me to be, then that's where He'll put me. 


Most importantly, though, I learned to accept where God has put me and the gifts He has given me. As I previously mentioned, I wanted a more helping oriented position, one that is clearly and directly helping people. Academia and associated fields seem less so. However, what I learned is that God did not give me a huge amount of patience, thus I really shouldn't be a teacher for anyone younger than 18. God did give me an analytical mind, He gave me an interest in reading, in learning, in why people do the crazy things they do. I could go on with this, but the point is that despite my kicking and screaming along the way, God has given me so many pokes and prods along the way I would have to blind not to see the fact that this is where I am supposed to be. 


My program has offered me amazing opportunities already and it is only my first year. I'm happy. I'm enjoying what I'm learning, being able to see the 'real' side of what being a professor is all about and what doing research really means. 


Does this mean I will without a doubt be a professor when I graduate in 3-4 years? I don't know that. It just means I'm way more open to it then I was 6 months ago. I probably will, but a lot of it comes down to finding a job where Matt can get a job, that I feel the position is a good fit for my personality and my family's needs, and all of that fun stuff.


Basically, the answer to what I want to do with my Ph.D. comes down to whatever will allow me to use my gifts to the best of my ability in order to fully glorify God. I should not try to be something I'm not by trying to do something I'm not called to. I very much fit into the world of academia, and that is not a bad thing. It doesn't have to be a profession full of atheists/agnostics who believe Christians don't think or are judgmental. I can be a part of changing that perception. My field will allow me to help uncover the reasons why people commit crimes, hopefully to inform policy efforts along the way. Of course this latter benefit pales in comparison to the former.


Regardless, I'm excited. If I've learned this much about grad school, myself, and God in the first year, I can't imagine where I'll be in 3-4 years from now. It may be some place different, but right now I'm very thankful.


PS: If you read this far, you're a champ. Here's your reward. 


PPS: Sorry, couldn't resist. If you don't get it, go here. 

R & R

This past Tuesday was a pretty exciting day for me-- I got my first R & R. For those of you outside the academic world (which I imagine is most of my readers...), R & R translates to 'revise and resubmit.' Personally- this is a big deal! Why?


Well, my senior year of college I wrote an honors thesis and presented some of my findings at a conference in Vegas. This past fall, one of my new profs encouraged me to submit it for publication. I figured it would be a good experience to rewrite something (AKA take something from 60-something pages to 20) and just go through the process of how to submit an article. I did not expect it to be given the R&R. [Aside- very rarely are papers in peer-reviewed journals accepted outright; the R&R is the standard] I mailed of my manuscript in August and didn't hear back until today.


I open the letter and it read that I just have to revise it based on the [anonymous] reviewer(s)'s critiques/suggestions, and then resubmit. This makes me that much closer to being published in a peer-reviewed journal.


This is a big deal because:
1) I don't even have my Master's yet.
2) When it comes to finding jobs post-graduation, the number of publications is an important factor
3) Dude, publication. That's just cool.


Maybe I'm excited about this because I'm a nerd. But I'm OK with that. Admittedly there is a lot of work involved in the revising process, but hey-- I am in grad school. It's not supposed to be easy, right? 


I'm not published yet, mind you, but baby steps.

Intro to Academia

As most of you know if you have been following my blog for any amount of time, I just started my first year in grad school this past month. One of my classes is Proseminar, which is basically like Intro to Grad School. This past Tuesday we discussed the business that is publishing in peer-reviewed journals. Now, don't go to sleep on me yet! I know those journals may not bring up fond memories for some of you. But, the prof gave us this little jewel that I wanted to share with you.

Seriously-- read it. It's hilarious!

MANUSCRIPT TRANSMITTAL LETTER
Prof. Art Kives
Editor
Journal of Overblown Results

Dear Dr. Kives:

Enclosed is our latest version of MS # 85-02-022-RRRRR, that is, the re-re-re-revised version of our paper. Choke on it. We have again rewritten the entire manuscript from start to finish. We even changed the damned running head! Hopefully we have suffered enough by now to satisfy even your bloodthirsty reviewers. I shall skip the usual point-by-point description of every single change we made in response to the critiques. After all, it is fairly clear that your reviewers are less interested in details of scientific procedure than in working out their personality problems and sexual frustrations by seeking some sort of demented glee in the sadistic and arbitrary exercise of tyrannical power over hapless authors like ourselves who happen to fall into their clutches.

We do understand that, in view of the misanthropic psychopaths you have on your editorial board, you need to keep sending them papers, for if they weren't reviewing manuscripts they'd probably be out mugging old ladies or clubbing baby seals to death. Still, from this batch of reviews, reviewer C was clearly the most hostile, and we request that you not ask her or him to review this revision. Indeed, we have mailed letter bombs to four or five people we suspected of being reviewer C, so if you send the manuscript back to them the review process could be unduly delayed. Some of the reviewers comments we couldn't do anything about. For example, if (as reviewer C suggested), several of my ancestry were indeed drawn from another species, it is too late to change that. Other suggestions were implemented, however, and the paper has improved and benefited. Thus, you suggested that we shorten the manuscript by 5 pages, and we were able to do this very effectively by altering the margins and printing the paper in a different font with a smaller typeface. We agree with you that the paper is much better this way. One perplexing problem was dealing with suggestions # 13-28 by reviewer B. As you may recall (that is, if you even bother reading the reviews before doing your decision letter), that review listed 16 works that he / she felt we should cite in this paper. These were on a variety of different topics, none of which had any relevance to our work that we could see. Indeed, one was an essay on the Spanish-American War from a high school literary magazine. The only common thread was that all 16 were by the same author, presumably someone reviewer B greatly admires and feels should be more widely cited . To handle this, we have modified the introduction and added, after the review of relevant literature, a subsection entitled "Review of Irrelevant Literature" that discusses these articles and also duly addresses some of the more asinine suggestions by other reviewers.

We hope that you will be pleased with this revision and finally recognize how urgently deserving of publication this work is. If not, then you are an unscrupulous, depraved monster with no shred of human decency. You ought to be in a cage. May whatever heritage you come from be the butt of the next round of ethnic jokes. If you do accept it, however, we wish to thank you for your patience and wisdom throughout this process and to express our appreciation of your scholarly insights. To repay you, we would be happy to review some manuscripts for you; please send us the next manuscript that any of these reviewers sends to your journal. Assuming you accept this paper, we would also like to add a footnote acknowledging your help with this manuscript and to point out that we liked this paper much better the way we originally wrote it but you held the editorial shotgun to our heads and forced us to chop, reshuffle, restate, hedge, expand, shorten, and in general convert a meaty paper into stir-fried vegetables. We couldn't or wouldn't, have done it without your input.

Sincerely,
Iam Grantless

 

EDITOR'S REPLY
Dear Dr. Grantless:
Thank you for your thoughtful response to my decision letter concerning the above-referenced piece of excrement. I have asked several experts who specialize in the area of research you dabble in to have a look at your pathetic little submission, and their reviews are enclosed. I shall not waste my LaserJet ink reiterating the details of their reviews, but please allow me to highlight some of the more urgent points of contention they raise:

1. Reviewer A suggests that you cite his work EXCLUSIVELY in the introduction. He has asked me to remind you that he spells his name with a final "e" (ie, Scumbage), not as you have referenced him in the last version.
2. Reviewer C indicates that the discussion can be shortened by at least 5 pages. Given the fact that the present Discussion is only three pages long, I am not certain how to advise you. Perhaps you might consider eliminating all speculation and original ideas.
3. Reviewer D has asked that you consider adding her as a co-author. Although she has not directly contributed to the manuscript, she has made ​​numerous comments that have, in her view, significantly improved the paper. Specifically, she believes that her suggestions concerning the reorganization of the acknowledgments paragraph were especially important. Please note that she spells her name with an em-dash, and not with the customary hyphen.
4. Reviewer B has asked that I inform you that, even though his suggestions were not mentioned in my decision letter, this doesn't mean that he is an imbecile.
5. My own reading of the manuscript indicates that the following problems remain:

a. By "running head," we do not mean a picture of your son's face with legs attached. Please provide a four-or five-word title for the paper that summarizes the report's most important point. May I suggest, "Much Ado About Nothing "?
b. Please make certain that you have adhered to APA stylebook guidelines for publication format. Please direct your attention to the section entitled, "Proper Format for an Insignificant Paper" (1995, p.46).
c. Please submit any revision of the paper on plain, blank stationery. Submitting the article on Yale University letterhead will not increase your chances of having the article accepted for publication.
d. Please double-check the manuscript for spelling and grammatical errors. Our experience at the Archives is that "cycle-logical" slips through most spell-check programs undetected.
e. Although I am not a quantitative scientist, it is my understanding that the "F" in F-test does not stand for a 4-letter word. Please correct the manuscript accordingly.

Yours Sincerely,

Prof. Art Kives

PS If your original submission had been as articulate as your most recent letter, we might have avoided this interchange. It is too bad that tenure and promotion committees at your university do not have access to authors' correspondence with editors, for it is clear that you would be promoted on the basis of your wit alone. Unfortunately, it's the publication that counts, and I'm sorry to say that the Archives is not prepared to accept this revision. We would be perfectly ambivalent about receiving a ninth revision from you .

Initial Impression of Grad School

I had my first two days of grad school orientation Monday and Tuesday and woah were they busy! One of the downsides to where we live is that both Matt & I have decent commutes-- 35 min one way with no traffic. Of course the roads I have to take basically guarantee there will be traffic, so I am going to have to get used to that.

But enough complaining about that. At orientation, there were definitely boring parts, but I also got to meet several of my fellow grad students. I observed that I seem to be the baby of the bunch. Everyone that I've talked to already has their master's and some have been out of school for a while. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it just surprised me that I am definitely the youngest and it makes me feel... naive I guess.

I also got to meet the professors I will be TA'ing for. Now this is where I'm blown away by God's blessings-- my school just recruited some 'big fish' in the criminology world and guess who will be working for them? Yup, me. I'll be serving as a TA for one of their undergrad course and then doing research with the other. It is definitely the best of both worlds and I'm excited to see what opportunities open up because of this.

It's one of those things where you enter into a new thing (i.e. grad school), unsure if it is really the right thing for you. Then you keep on getting all these blessings and it's just such a huge encouragement to me. Sure, these next 5 years or so are probably going to be incredibly difficult at times, but I'm in the right place for me right now.

Tonight I get to go sit in on the class I'll be TA'ing for, as well as have my own first class. I'll also be meeting with my two profs so I'll learn a lot more about the specifics of what I'll be doing for them the next year. Hopefully I can set up a decent weekly schedule of when I'll be on campus versus at home, and maybe arrange that schedule to avoid high traffic times!

I know this post has been a lot of rambling, but I wanted to open up a blank page, write, and see what thoughts arose.

Have you ever been in this kind of situation, where you may be unsure of a new adventure but then just feel ever more confident that you're right where you need to be?

Goodbye Mrs. Housewife

As you may know, I start grad school tomorrow. Well, it's orientation. My first class isn't til Thursday, but I have orientation basically all day tomorrow and Tuesday. TA orientation, Criminology orientation, my college orientation, etc.

It's bittersweet for me really. I'm excited to start doing 'something' and feel like I'm contributing to our household financially (thank you, fellowship!), but I'm going to miss being a housewife. I know, I didn't expect it either. I've always been convinced I would not be a stay-at-home-mom, that I would have a good job, etc. But now I'm not so sure it would be the worst thing ever. Not that I'm going to suggest to Matt we have kids now. Nope, not ready for that.

Maybe I've just been having an extended vacation for the past 3 months, where all I have to do is work out, grocery shop, cook, and clean. It's a pretty nice life, really. Tons of time to read, blog, and find new things to do. I'm sad to be losing this free time. It was hard at the beginning, when Matt would go off to work, do these new and different things, and I would just sit around playing housekeeper. But then starting in July I really started to enjoy it, especially when we started meeting new people through our church.

But it's good to be moving on. The schedule is not the greatest (I have night classes... boo!) meaning less time with Matt, but it just means we have to really make the most of our time we do have together. It will give me motivation to not procrastinate, to make sure I get as much work done as I can during the day.

As for this blog, I'm not going to let it die, no worries! I enjoy having my group of blog friends to chat to and I think I may need to rant at some point about things every once in a while!

So, as I close the door on one part of my life (the re-living of our wedding & honeymoon), I'm ready to start this new one. It will be hard and different I'm sure, but I'm ready.

So... close...

What a crazy weekend this has been! Royal wedding Friday morning, great date night with Matt that night, then Saturday I had a fun party to attend. Sunday was just full of craziness. Other couples getting engaged (congrats to you!), Osama bin Laden getting killed, finding out I'm getting a departmental award, witnessing flight testing.* It has been insane. 

To top it off, I am done with classes for the semester my undergrad career! That is so weird to write/type that... But now I'm in the midst of studying for my ONE final. Yes, it's only one. But it's written. And cumulative. Just like a good college final should be. Of course this is the first time I've had one of those since... umm... ever. We had multiple choice cumulative exams freshman year, but not written.

So yes, a lot of studying.

But that also means I'm edging ever closer to graduation! My final is this Friday, then one week later I walk across that stage! So excited!!!! What will I be doing in the mean time?

• Bachelorette party!
• Packing... boo
• Lord of the Rings all day marathon. It's gonna be great!
• Clean my apartment...

Yeah, that's about it. So looking forward to that. But until then, more studying about signal detection theory, levels of processing theory, and other such cognitive-related things.

Other happy thoughts include the fact that we're getting MARRIED in 26 days and then going here the next day. Cannot wait.

Source

*I can't believe I put all those things in the same sentence!

My calendar

The only weddings stuff going on now is:
-Getting ready for the bridal shower
-RSVP's coming in
-Getting ready for the bachelorette party


So really that isn't my deal. That's stuff for my amazing bridesmaids and parents. In the meantime what am I doing? Well, let me show you:

I may have mentioned once or twice that I'm graduating two weeks before the wedding. At the end of April, I have 2 huge papers (think 20 pgs each or so), 1 presentation, and 1 test all within 3 days of each other. This is how I'm conquering it-- make the world's most detailed calendar. Most days I have to shift things around because I don't normally finish for everything in that day, but that's why I built in some wiggle room.

Yes, it looks gross. But when I'm MIA for blogging I have a legit excuse, right?