budding scholar

Black lines on swirls of green concrete floor. Traffic, voices echoing up through the windows from the parked cars below, one floor down. Three years of looking at these buildings, of hearing these street sounds. Three years as a student at Berkeley working my way through milestones, books, articles. A transition point now. I defended my dissertation proposal on Thursday last week, and Friday we moved out of our apartment in preparation for the year in Spain. How appropriate that this milestone would happen the day before our last day in this loft, which fit our lives so perfectly until now (mostly because of the proximity to BART and ease of getting to Berkeley).

A month of transition now, before we’re settled in a new place in Barcelona. Inspired by a friend thinking big, I’m going to take this month as an opportunity to try for a little more, take risks myself, think bigger, share more of the process here. For a while I’ve kept another document on my computer, also called “budding scholar”, where I keep track of ups and downs of the Ph.D. process. Whenever I’m stuck in my work, or inspired, or anything in between, I write there. This month I’m going to bring more of that into the blog, risk sharing it with whomever happens upon this space.

I’m starting with that. But I like bigger goals too, being a goal-oriented kind of person. So I’m thinking about what else to try for this August, in this transitional moment.

Any ideas?

After working harder than I ever have the day finally came and went and now it’s Thursday May 14th and orals was yesterday. Here’s a picture Juanjo took as I was leaving the room for the profs to confer. So much build up. Nerves. Anxiety. Worry. And then the day comes and you walk in there and do your best and hope that’s good enough. And it was. I did my best and feel like I showed all that I’d learned and knew and answered all the questions using what I know and have thought about. Amazing, it’s done! THANK YOU to all of those who supported me the last few months, this last year, but especially these last couple of weeks and days.

…taking an unfinished product, and making it look finished. As said to me this morning by a friend, who says it’s her boyfriend’s (hafl-joking) mantra (he just finished a Ph.D. in philosphy). Such is my task for orals–not some “finished” perfect mastery of the material, but the best I can do with what I have. Making all the reading and synthesizing I’ve done look “finished” when I open my mouth to answer questions on Wednesday.

A last weekend of studying before the big day. Priorities: getting through the last pieces I need to read or re-read, practicing talking out answers to questions with anyone who will listen, and solidifying my mental map of the literatures I’m covering. Personal priorities: get a good amount of sleep in the last nights before the exam, eat well, and get exercise. Luckily it’s the last weekend of work for Juanjo too in what’s been a very busy semester, so we’ll both be working and taking breaks together. Hopefully he won’t mind being my audience for practicing answering questions about policy, immigration, language in schools, and sociological theories!

Did a mock with 4 of my friends today and it was really hard! Got me feeling anxious and worried about how much more work I need to do. Felt like I talked in circles a fair amount of the time, though I know it wasn’t that bad. Was too tired–didn’t get enough sleep last night. Have a lot of practicing to do to streamline my answers so that each one actually has a real point, not just tangential bits of information connecting to what I’ve read. It’s really hard! And it’s different from first year orals, when we were all going through it together with the same material. Am glad I still have time left. Plan for the next week:

• Practice making my answers shorter.
• Write out answers to the questions I’ve put down on the lists.
• Make each answer have 3-4 main points, and draw on readings strategically to make the points not randomly to show I’ve read them.
• Think about each piece of reading and how it connects to my larger areas of specialization.
• Defining key terms, laying out central tensions and debates.
• Practice, practice, practice.

One week from orals. Was feeling very ready and calm. But the anxiety has now hit along with the pressure that comes along with setting off to do my research next year. There’s a lot riding on doing well with these milestones. Figuring out theory and research and how my study is going to make a real contribution seems like it’s 5 steps ahead of where I currently am, but yet I’m trying to get a prospectus done today to send out to my committee.

Three deep breaths. Three more. This is just one step. I’ll have so many many more. I’m working hard, every day, and that’s going to get me to the best place I can be for the exam. And it’s really all I can do. Breathe deep and keep a positive attitude. Looking at this ocean photo from Spain a year ago helps. My life might be urban SF Mission, BART, and the Berkeley campus right now, but ocean views and a week-long vacation are just around the corner… so breathe deep and look beyond the current moment of stress…..

Funny how a pep talk to yourself can actually work sometimes. I’m ready to strike out into the day, hit the library, and try my best. It’s not supposed to be easy after all, but I’ve always gotten through these kinds of challenges by sticking with them and giving a good effort. So here goes, another day of my best orals efforts…

Late nights are the norm these days. Work and studying. Yesterday we spent another Sunday at the office downtown, in a conference room (above is the sunset view from our window). Whereas better work happens with writing when I wake up early, orals studying goes well late into the night. Am not a huge fan of staying up late but I’ll take the productive time where I can get it!

Questions I’m thinking about as I study:

• Who’s the reference group in studying immigrant children (their parents? their peers?)
• If studies were replicated exactly across 3 countries, would they find similar things in terms of immigrant experiences?
• How to think of top-down vs. bottom-up policy in the context of language policy in schools?
• How do cities vs. countries operate as sites of integration?

If only getting through this week, this month, this semester were as easy as making a quilt. Playing with the design. Deciding on colors and shapes. Cutting the squares. Sewing the pieces together. Instead, the colors of my paper elude me. The shape of my ideas hides just out of reach. When quilting I can work for hours, when writing moments feel hard to sustain sometimes.

After taking a much needed break and doing some yoga, I came across this old quote from a fortune cookie “Use your abilities at this time to stay focused on your goal. You will succeed.” And I know it’s true. For a moment tackling the work again feels as easy as quilting. But then the aching wrists take over again as I sit down at the computer. And the night feels endlessly long. And I stare at the screen feeling the stress build, because really, it’s actually not possible to accomplish all of this in the time I have.

As I think about it I remember that sometimes making quilts can feel kind of endless too, but as I sew square by square and see it starting to come together, it’s a lot easier to focus on the finished goal. And imagining how much my friend (in the case of the picture here) is going to like it helps too. With my work all I have is my own satisfaction at being done, and meeting expectations.

Back to it for now, trying to think of paragraphs as squares, of ideas as colors, hoping to find the inspiration to keep at it.

Most of the weekend spent coding, reading interviews, applying categories, refining them, cutting and pasting text. The messiness of qualitative research. Given how close I am getting to my deadline it’s crazy I’m still working on coding. The hazards of committing to things without being realistic about how long they really take. The nice thing is I can do it for hours on end from couch, with my husband. A pleasure of my work for sure. I might be working all weekend, and up until 4:30 in the morning, but I’ve got a guy who can work with the computer pretty endlessly too (especially with 3 classes this semester!) and that makes for solidarity and even enjoyment. We’re really looking forward to next year, to this coming summer, to some time off.

I’ve got a week to finish papers, and it’s going to be a full one. The first paper’s in great shape, just a few edits and then signed off. The second one still needs too much work. Like writeups for the findings I’m still finding. But it will all get done because it has to. And really, these kinds of projects can be endless anyhow, especially with the amount of data I have to work with (3 years, multiple teacher, coach, district interviews…). So it’s good to have an interim deadline. Hopefully people like the idea/analysis as much as I do and it will grow into a larger paper that could become a publication. Thinking about that kind of makes the madness of the current moment all worth it. That and other great news this week about the fellowship application I submitted last September (I got it!).

Working hard on papers and orals lists. It feels good to be framing my questions in terms of reading lists. I can’t help being nervous about my second paper, but I feel really good about the first one. Overall, although it’s stressful, I’m glad to be doing orals this semester. There’s something satisfying about working this hard, having moments this focused day after day. Different from pressure of classes in the past. I feel like I completely own this pressure, I decided to do things this way, to do so many milestones in one semester.

If I could just get past this hurdle with the second paper things would start to feel much more manageable. It’s about the analysis, not the writing, which is a nice change I suppose, after agonizing over the writing of the first paper for weeks.

I spend a lot of time writing in my various brainstorm and journaling spaces on my computer. Here’s a taste–this was brainstorming the text that will tie my three areas of specialization together:

…The core issue I’m interested in is how schools are playing a role in the integration of immigrants in Spain. How does immigrant integration work? What is the role of education policy? How are schools and education policies part of immigrant integration? How are schools changing to respond to new populations of immigrants?…