To do or not to do, that is the question

There are just a few days left before I leave New Zealand for holidays in the US.  Even though I have known about this trip for months, I find myself in these last few days faced with an impossibly long TO DO list that cannot be completed before departure.  Some examples of the last minute items: conduct interviews, transcribe interviews, get business cards, finish chapter of social capital, clean flat, pack, etc…  Now instead of crossing off items, I am trying to prioritise items which must be done before take-off.  Not ideal, but I have a feeling that my sacred TO DO list will not seem quite so important once we land and I see the smiling faces of friends and family again for the first time in 3 years.  Maybe that will be my New Year’s resolution, focus on what is important.  Or I could just stick with my old standby, lose weight and go to the gym.

Reality is what you make it.

I am really enjoying my PhD at the moment – I mean really enjoying it.  Like the laughing, smiling and occasionally snorting kind of enjoyment.  I am trying to figure out why what last month was “the biggest mistake of my life” is suddenly one of my greatest sources of joy.  Surely the ethics approval helped.  Also, starting interviews has been fun.  But even things that should be tedious like scheduling appointments, sending emails, filing documents and transcribing interviews is fun.  It can’t be that I love to transcribe.  It isn’t quick (takes heaps of time) or mindless (although, I can’t let myself think too much or I forget to type).  It is just that I can find the joy within the activity.

In fact, it seems that I have decided that this is enjoyable and just like that it became enjoyable.  Well if it is that easy to make my own reality, perhaps I should start making my own reality more often.

Everything’s going so well!

“Everything’s going so well!” (Harold Zidler, Moulin Rouge!) and then it went pear-shaped.

Unlike Zidler, I know that this feeling is probably short-lived and recognise that eventually things will probably turn to custard.  I can live with that.

Having spent nearly the last 1 1/2 years, sitting in my office reading with little or no contact with people outside the university, I have finally started interviewing.  Well it turns out that talking to people absolutely rocks and I may actually be enjoying my research now that I am interviewing.  Who could have predicted that the thing that would save my research study was researching? (paraphrase – Michael Scott, The Office).

What a crazy world 😉

Giving thanks

In the spirit of the Thanksgiving holiday in the US, I thought I’d remind myself that I have much to be thankful for from a postgraduate perspective.

1. Doing what I love
2. Living where I love
3. Spending time with amazing people
4. Having the flexibility to work when inspired and find inspiration when I am lacking
5. Exercising my brain and occasionally my body
6. Seeing the ocean as much as I want
7. Seeing my family as much as I want
8. Learning and teaching
9. Contributing
10. Knowing that someday I will be done with my PhD and will get paid to have this life

When is a question not a question?

So, I guess this is day 2 and I am preparing for interviews next week.  Besides scheduling appointments in my diary, I decided I should also dust off the interview questions and check them against my theoretical framework and research questions.  I mean even though I am looking forward to getting out there for a chat with participants, I really don’t want to discover 6 months from now that I didn’t ask the right questions.  Well, it isn’t quite as easy as I thought to ensure that I am asking the right questions and now I wish that I had started this a month ago and not a few days before interviews begin.  Unfortunately, here I am and I’ll just need to make do.  Maybe these first interviews will be my pilot?  I guess this is a bit research ala Macgyver.  Now what did I do with the duct tape and chewing gum?

Is this the first day of the rest of my life?

Well, I guess that could be said about every day.  However, I tend to think about it more after I have just sorted a milestone and now the excuses (from the last days of the first part of my life?!) no longer work.  This feels like one of those times.  I have spent the last month or two in a research funk – sick to death of literature review, but unable to start my empirical work until I received ethics approval from the university.  For a good part of that time I completely disengaged from university life and started questioning (again) why I was doing this.  Despite the downside to this phase of depression and self-doubt, the benefit was that I had an excuse for my lack of progress.

Usually I would be mourning the loss of a good excuse, but I am actually feeling quite optimistic about this new phase of my research.  I think that is because part of my empirical research is conducting interviews which means that I actually get to talk to people.  It is amazing how out of touch you can feel after spending months and months in an office reading.  The thought of reconnecting with the people I am studying is actually making me feel a bit giddy.

This rest of my life thing promises to be much better than I feared.  I no longer have images of Office Space, “So that means that every single day that you see me, that’s on the worst day of my life.”  And now see that I this next phase of research might be filled with human contact, progress, and the joy(!) of learning.  Wow!

Word of the Day – (epic)fail

For heaps of reasons in general (like my computer just crashed), but specifically because I have started scheduling interviews for my research (ethics approval pending) and since I am studying social media use it seemed reasonable to communicate via social media. Well, I am connected to some participants in Facebook so I thought I’d try to send messages within Facebook instead of email. I don’t use the “send message” functionality much, but it crashed 8 times while I was trying to send 4 messages. I am still not sure if they finally went through so I ended up using Twitter to contact everybody. Not the best privacy-wise, but at least it works. Hmmm… wonder if I should rethink my research position….?

I bet I am in ethics limbo

Ok, it’s not quite purgatory, but waiting for ethical approval before I start my fieldwork feels a little like, hmmm… well, a waiting game.  I know that I can’t really start talking to people, but I should be doing something, but what?  Should I start making contact and explaining what I am doing?  Should I start making a list of things to do?  Maybe I should work on my theoretical stuff because goodness knows my lit review could use some work.  But if I know me (and I do), for the next week or so I will aimless flit from thing to thing without accomplishing anything using as the excuse that I don’t have my ethics approval.  Maybe I should just take the week off, enjoy the sun, and start my fieldwork refreshed and ready to go?  Well, we’ll see what happens….place your bets.

A bit of Benjamin Button in us all?

I have been feeling a bit Benjamin Button this week.  Well, strictly speaking I am not a creepy man-baby turning into a disturbingly good looking pensioner, but I do have this eerie feeling that I am progressing and regressing at the same time.

I am particularly concerned about my ability to communicate.  Five years ago I had no trouble writing and speaking in complete sentences.  I used proper punctuation, capitalisation, and real words that could be found in a dictionary.  Now I find myself using some bizarre txt-speech not only when txting (see I can’t even spell out “text”) but in other aspects of my life.  Am I 20? I have also noticed my clothes have changed since giving up my real job and going back to school.  Of course I don’t wear skirts and jackets anymore, but now I seem to only wear a single pair of jeans which I keep on the floor when they are not being worn.  In the morning before I dash off to school I search for  the jeans which I know are too dirty to wear when I find them cowering under the bed (think Dr. Seuss and those pale green pants with no one inside them).  So am I 12?  No, because I also wear crazy mismatched coloured tees and tops like a founding member of the Red Hat society.  Am I 80?

I guess I really shouldn’t be concerned whether I am coming or going or evolving or devolving and just enjoy the ride (for as long as I can remember it at least).

On the internet, no one knows you’re a Kiwi

Well, technically I am not a Kiwi (nor a dog), but I do know how comforting it can be to have a virtual persona that doesn’t share all of my embodied traits.  I started reflecting about this dichotomy of identities again a few weeks ago when a developer I met mentioned that his clients didn’t know he was located in New Zealand.  They communicate via online media (email, chat, blogs, etc), so geographic locales do not necessarily influence their interactions.

What I find particularly interesting, though, is when you go from a virtual to a FTF encounter.  I am getting ready to meet and interview (and be interviewed) by people who I have only known online or have mostly interacted with in virtual environments.  They don’t know what I look like (except for the odd photo) or what I sound like or anything about my in-person demeanour.  In fact, I have actually thought about my appearance (brushed hair, wearing clean clothes) in order to be more presentable than I normally am when sitting about my laptop chatting/blogging.  It is a bit like a blind date, but I already know them, so how do you act?  I must say that even though I am nervous, I am excited as well.  I like my life online, but I am really looking forward to experiencing real life (RL) encounters too.

Do you have a funny RL/virtual friend experience to share?  I’d love to hear about it.