budding scholar

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I just got news this morning that I made the first major cut in the selection process for doing a Fulbright in Spain next year! I submitted my application back in September, it went through an on-campus Berkeley review, and then it went to the Fulbright commission in New York. The odds in that round were about 16%; they accepted 27 out of 167 applications last year. I did my best on the application but that’s a lot of competition! So now that I’ve made this first cut my application goes to Spain and the committee there reviews it. According to the program they take 2 of every 3 they receive, so my odds just got much better!

Whether I get it or not, I feel really good at this point. Just making it past this point feels like a huge accomplishment, and doing the application at the beginning of this year helped me immensely in focusing my work this year. Whether I get it or not I’m now planning to do my dissertation research in Spain next year.

On my way back from Spain I went to a conference on the second generation of immigrants in the United States and Europe. It was excellent! I presented the dissertation proposal idea I’ve been working on, and we had a discussion about it. We all read each others’ papers ahead of time and I got a great sense of the European literature in my areas of interest. It was very small so there were a lot of opportunities for interaction and getting to know each other. Everyone was either a student, or recent graduate, or young professor. I had a strong feeling of meeting and getting to know future colleagues, from the U.S. and Spain, as well as France, Belgium, Germany, England, Austria, Turkey, and Switzerland.

There were two themes of the conference: education and the city. As I read peoples’ work and listened to the keynote talks, I got excited about perhaps doing my dissertation as a comparative study between two cities, maybe even San Francisco-Barcelona. Need to talk with professors and other colleagues and get feedback on the idea, as well as other things I’m considering for my study design.

One of my goals since last summer continues to be improving how I manage my time. Since I am headed for a career where success depends on using my time well, managing my own time and projects, it’s important to get good at it. The following quote captures my current challenge well:

“Effective time management is a conscious decision where we decide what is important and then plan our time and our lives around these things. The key is to use proactive thinking. Don’t wait and let time make its demands on you; instead, put yourself in the driver’s seat, and decide what you will do with your time.” (from Berkeley student site)

The biggest challenge is sometimes just deciding what is important, and setting aside time to focus on it. Too often I have a list of things in my head, then expect that time to get them done will simply happen. When I have an office where I spend most of my time every day they do end up happening. But as a student the truth is I don’t ever spend whole days in an office, so managing time and getting things done needs to be more intentional. But the key is–we don’t “find” time for things, we “make” time for them.

How do you manage your time? Any tricks for using time well?

Found a great new study spot, in the library up in the Alcazar. A really good place for me to come work when I’m here. It’s funny how so much of the level of work I get done depends on where I set myself up to work. Libraries, offices, and some cafes are the best places for me, and libraries are definitely at the top of the list. The view above is from the library (although unfortunately not from the study room).

Am working on some research for my adviser, reading and writing for my position papers, and reading for the Berlin conference next week. It feels great to be productive!

The holidays are *almost* over (they last until the 6th of January here), and I’m more than ready to get back to work. My goal of finishing a draft of one of my pre-qualifying papers while here is an important one for the progress toward my larger goals this year.

Yesterday I got excited about some interviews I can do here with policy makers and teachers, a kind of pilot project. Immigration is less of an issue in Castilla La Mancha, but it does exists, and I’m curious about the changes being made to the education system. Language courses? New tracks? These are just two of the most typical ones.

It’s going to be an incredibly busy spring, with finishing these two pre-qualifying papers, writing a dissertation proposal, studying for orals, and in the personal realm, two very dear (and local) girlfriends’ weddings. Not to mention planning a honeymoon for next summer (we still haven’t taken one!), and looking into buying a house.

The good thing about holidays is that I feel rested and ready to get to work again!

During my walk (gorgeous break in the rain, up and down my favorite hills in Noe Valley, unusual cold biting my ears and refreshing my spirit), I realized something about what I’ve been working on. My whole idea of immigrants and the contexts of reception, and teachers within them, hinges on an assumption that segmented assimilation theory holds some water in the European context. Some people have argued it doesn’t. But those analyses do not include Spain. So I need to spend some time writing about what’s been said about segmented assimilation in the European context. Indeed, I need a paper that’s just theories of assimilation in the U.S., and theories of assimilation in Europe. Then speculation about Spain, what’s known there, and what might be still to learn. How Spain might be similar to the rest of Europe or not. This is where my first position paper is currently headed.

Several more things I’m interested in learning more about:

• Comparative research of schools. Still think about doing a comparative study for my dissertation.
• Race and ethnicity theories. Ideas of social boundaries, social cohesion. Perhaps something in here should be my third area of specialization?
• Teachers as socializers of children.

Writing more is helping a lot in thinking more about the ideas I’m reading about, and how I will make a contribution. The goal I’m currently working on is sticking to a regular writing schedule. At the beginning of the week I think about when I’m going to be able to do my 2 hours (two 45 minute periods of writing, 30 minutes of professional reading in the middle), and put them in the calendar. So far so good this week.

Working on the last of my class final papers, hopefully ever! Classes will be done next semester. It actually already feels like my work is on its own path regardless of classes.

At the last minute I decided to abandon the empirical paper I was writing for my Immigration Studies class and polish up a proposal I wrote last month that drew heavily on the class. Found my statistics skills weren’t all there yet, and that the dataset had a few major flaws for answering my questions.

So I’m revising this proposal, and am excited to get my professor’s feedback on it. Although I want to keep exploring some more before comitting myself to a dissertation project, I think I have a good idea, and that the proposal has some very good writing in it. I’m excited about improving it.

Failing in the statistical effort (or at least, suffering a setback), despite quite a bit of work, makes me wonder about the process for writing these kind of papers. Do people usually do most of the analysis, then go write up the theory? I feel like I needed to have done more of the analysis before I could really sit down and write the paper, yet the design for the study draws heavily on the literature. Perhaps if the dataset had not had such a paucity of variables for answering my questions it would have worked too.

For the moment, I’m working on the proposal. Have a regular writing schedule set up for this week to keep going on the other project (and a deadline for the statistics project which should help with the statistical analysis piece). I know where I’m trying to get to, just not sure of how yet. The only way to figure it out is to keep working.

I’ve been writing quite a bit, but not here. I even call my journaling about school my budding scholar journal. But there’s a part of me that hasn’t made the leap to being comfortable putting the range of my thoughts out there on a blog. I’d like to start writing here more though, it would be nice to have a network of other “budding scholars”, to read about their process of becoming an academic, to write about my own. To not feel alone when things are challenging. To have a place where my thinking develops.

The truth is writing helps everything for me. Keeping a running journal on my desktop has helped process a lot of big shifts in recent weeks. What would it feel like to have anyone be able to read all those thoughts?

For some reason, as I work to write a 2-page fellowship application (short, right?), I cannot get past the first paragraph. I have 4 pages of text, but it’s now time to condense it into one concise 2-page argument, and I’m stuck stuck stuck. Usually listening to music helps, but not today. Sometimes taking a break and coming back to it does the trick. Hasn’t worked either. What do you do when you’re stuck in your writing at the edit/refine/shape the argument stage?

How many hours a day do you read? How many hours do you spend on writing? What is an ideal or productive amount of time to spend each day for a 3rd-year graduate student?