New Semester, Same Old, Same Old

Well, the new semester has begun, and just like the wise man said, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." I love being in school, but it SERIOUSLY cuts into my "ME" time! I have to sneak in light (think anything that isn't a textbook or article) reading and video watching in small increments, and then I feel really guilty taking the time to do that! It's particularly bad because I got my "fix" over the Christmas break when I watched all my favorite movies and read everything I wanted to read or reread (probably 20 or more books over the two weeks).

Classes are even more tailored to my interests this semester: There's Foundations of QUALITATIVE Research (yep, gave up on the old quantitative class!) which I love; Perspectives in Curriculum, Teaching, and Teacher Ed - this one is my first class with my advisor, whom I am really beginning to enjoy knowing; another "supervised research" class with her; and Distance Learning, which is an online course. I sure do wish I could do online courses for my whole doctorate - I really like that mode of instruction. In fact, I am hoping to teach an online course myself this summer (gotta earn some money for tuition - my grant money doesn't cover summer term).

It's nice to have made some friends, and to get unique perspectives from them in class discussions. At this level, everyone has so many neat experiences to bring to the class - I have several international friends who were educated in their home countries before coming here and I love to find out how education is different in say, Pakistan or Costa Rica, than here. My friends come from different subject backgrounds as well, and it is interesting to think about curriculum issues from a more broad focus.

And then there are the particularly "doctoral geek" issues, like the conversation the other morning with my friend Karina, who did her best to get me a passing grade in quantitative statistics last term. In my qualitative class this semester we are learning the proper way to analyse observations (called 'coding') we have made. Our class project is to figure out the rules for behavior in elevators, so we are doing rounds of observations in elevators. The conversation Karina and I had was related to how much my presence on the elevator as an observer changes behavior, and whether it would be good to have a video camera installed in the elevator to record behaviors when no one is observing, and see if they are different! Where else but in the rarefied atmosphere of a doctoral program would such conversations take place? :P I guess it shows our growing knowledge of high-level academia, at least.