What I learned from writing the QP

DISCLAIMER: I'm writing this before I know my results, just to make it a bit more authentic. If I fail, I will let you know and maybe disregard this following information :-).

In lieu of a proficiency exam, some PhD programs require a qualifying portfolio (QP). This portfolio is usually written after you have already taken some of your courses and is another test of sorts to see if you are suitable for a PhD program. They vary from program to program, but generally include manuscript writing, grade reports, and professor comments. Your submission is expected to reflect your best work. 

I could write pages, and probably should have, on the internal journey which took place during this process. I submitted it two days ago and I find out my results later this evening. Since I value reflection, it sounds like the perfect time to consider what I've learned.

1.  My Writing Process
I went into the QP with a strong idea of my manuscript topic. I did months of reading before I wrote a word. I finished summer classes in early August, let my brain rest for two months, and read tons between October and December. I started to draft in November and got about 1000 words in, but I realized I just wasn't ready yet. My first complete draft was finished the middle of January and my second in early February. I let it sit for a week and went through two or three edits before I let it go. But through it all, I've become more comfortable with my writing process. When I got writer's block, my husband (a writer as well) encouraged me to just freewrite through it. This helped immensely and in my next manuscript, I want to add this strategy. I learned that ideas need time to ruminate in my head and that's fine. Everybody has a slightly different process.


2. Have Self-confidence and Support
If you have been accepted to a PhD program and completed classes, you CAN complete the QP. You have suggestions from your professors for revisions, your experiences, libraries of books, and a brain chock-full of knowledge. It's easy to say this now and I should have had a wall mural painted in my house those days when I woke up grinding my teeth after dreams of misplaced periods or when I got stuck during my final edit in the sixth level of Miscrosoft Word tab hell. But you can do it. Pour yourself into it. Enjoy it and produce something amazing because you CAN. Show yourself off, you little smarty pants. 

No one can help you with your QP. That's the point. It's your work. You can verbally bat around ideas and such, but no one (other than an approved writing center tutor) should help you write it. But sometimes you need encouragement, a cup of coffee, a new perscpective, a correction in your insane thinking (because trust me, you will engineer the crazy train at one point or another), or a hug. Go to your cohort who are doing the same thing and your friends and family who are willing to trust that you are doing something difficult even if they don't understand it. Strangers work at times too. And get out and talk to a tree if you need to. The fresh air will help. I couldn't have done it without my husband, patient friends and family, and amazing cohort members (go IUP Summer Cohort 2012!).


3.  Annotate your Sources
Haha. They told me to do it as I went along. I over-estimated my memory power. I would read through a book, sticky note the crap out of it, make a mental note of its awesomeness, and put it in a pile. Sometimes those piles ended up under my bed. It was heart-breaking to find that perfect source somewhere under my bed after I finished my manuscript and revisions and was in the cleanup process. It also took me unnecessary hours at the end when I had little energy and was starting to lose interest. As I've read more since then, I'm starting to save and annotate even something small about the things I'm reading.

To inadequately justify my lack of effective annotating during the research process, I just couldn't find a system I was comfortable with. Some people use EndNote or RefWorks. I tried them, tried something like a notecard system, and couldn't get it right. I tend to gravitate to open platforms for organization as most programs don't allow me to do exactly what I would like to do. I'm using www.evernote.com now and between all the space I need and the tagging capabilities, I like it. I will try and blog on that in the future if anyone is interested. 

I've just thought of a million other ideas to write, but too much information at once doesn't help anyone.  I let my QP baby go on Tuesday and I'll find out how she fared tonight.  In the meantime, I will feed my QP developed coffee addiction, use my QP iPad skills to change between programs like a Star Trek crew member, and maybe even add a new source to my personal research annotated bibliography. I'll let my brain rest for a few weeks and before I start dreaming about my dissertation....

Writing Prompt

I peeked through my curtains into the night to see what it was…

via Tumblr http://eriemax.tumblr.com/post/37248933290

The Jotting Imperative (or The Zen of Notes)

And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything. Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terrible, stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost for ever.

This is not her story.

-The introduction to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams

If you have ever had an amazing thought and said to yourself, “Wow, that should be my next Facebook or Twitter status,” you should have a handy way ready to jot that down. Immediately. I believe that every human walking this earth has insights, probably daily, that are profound and should be somehow shared with the world. I also believe that so many of these thoughts are lost in the shuffle of life. Don’t live under the mistaken impression that because it was profound, or important, or even just really cool or interesting, that you are going to remember.

Insightful Thinking

I’ve not done any research on the issue, but I do have a hypothesis that  just the opposite is true. The thought patterns that it takes to reach a profound insight or conclusion usually comes in a string, or a series of thought. There is calculation involved, so recording a theory just as you grasp it is very important. The uncomplicated thoughts like “we are out of milk” can come and go, but if you forget these thoughts there is generally only a small consequence. But complicated theories such as “if I do A, then B happens, which makes me want to C, and then I feel like D. So I have to avoid A at all costs so that I never feel like D” will come and go so quickly that you may not even remember you had an insight into the problem at all. As soon as real life hits you, they are gone.

These are the things that I want to know about you. These are the things that need to be put into the stratosphere of information that others can have access to. And even if you keep these things private, you should keep them for you. But these are also the things that run in door, say hello, grab a beer, and leave forever if you don’t invite them to stay for a while. Inviting them to stay, in this case, means writing them down.

The good news about writing down your thoughts is that you don’t really need too much of a mental boost in order to remember your thought, which means, a tiny little bit of writing will go a long way. For instance, in my A through D example above, you might just write down “A --->B --->C----->D, so don’t A.” This is all it will take for you to remember. If you are a writer, you may want to elaborate more on it later. If you just want to remind yourself not to do A anymore, then you are set, with that one little note.

Some more good news is that all of this works with memories, too.

Memories

The practice of writing down your thoughts comes in handy in so many ways. It doesn’t just work for complex thought. It is a great way to record your memories, and all it takes once again is a few words to recall the mental pictures, sounds, smells, emotions, and events surrounding the memory.

I have a note from a couple of years ago, while I was visiting my parents. My father is a mechanic, and he was in the garage fixing a customer’s lawn mower. He came inside the house with his finger cut almost halfway through. He has been a mechanic for nearly fifty years, so cut fingers are nothing new to him. However, when your finger is half off and blood is pouring forth, you would tend to think of yourself as currently “not OK”, and so it was with my father. I was standing at the kitchen table, and my mother was on the phone at the time. She has been a nurse for most of her life, not to mention the wife of a mechanic for most of her life, so this is, to her, just another little incident. She remained on the phone, while my father paced back in forth in a worried way at first, and then a panicked way. They were getting more annoyed with each other every second this went on, my mom because her phone call was being interrupted, and my dad because she was ignoring what was obviously his imminent death.

As I stood there surveying the scene, I thought to myself that this was really funny stuff that I could use in some future blog post, or some future comedy act, or whatever. I felt as if this needed recording. So I pulled out pen and paper, and wrote three words. “My father’s finger.” Those three words are all I need to recall this entire scene. I may lose some of the finer details, but the important stuff is all there in my head when I read this note.

Larger Works

Janelle is working on her doctorate, and as she reads all of her books she has some pretty profound thoughts. I try to encourage her to write about each thought as they come to her. Luckily for her (maybe?) she has me, and I can’t stand to let a thought a good thought get old before it’s written down. SInce you don’t have me, you may have to write this stuff down yourself.

If you are working on a large project, or want to write a book in the future, it is much easier if you start logging your thoughts now. It becomes an arduous task to try to write a book if every bit of your research is taking place during your writing. It is difficult to become inspired, and it is difficult to get things done if you are just plinking along a little bit at time. However, if you have a plan to write a book, or a dissertation, or anything in kind in the future, and you start compiling a database of this information now, you will be able to search through your thoughts. Sure, some won’t work out, but they may fit into a second or third book, so it was worth jotting it down.

If you write down every thought that you have that even remotely relates to a project, you can then store it and forget about it. Remember, your writing at this point doesn’t  have to be wonderful or beautiful, or even good, as long as the thought is projected in a way that you will remember. All of this can be worked out later, compiled in the future where you can take the time to turn it into something beautiful. For now, the important thing is the sloppy, disorganized act of getting the thoughts down. As in all of life, things go from sloppy to refined. I learned this from my piano teacher when I was eighteen years old, and it worked, and it has worked in every non-musical situation that I have applied it to in the past twenty-two years. You start out with a bunch of slop, and you begin to turn it into something exquisite. I’ve never really been a proponent of procrastination, but when it is used like this, I think it is one of the smarter things that you can do.

Your Personal Database

What we are seeking here is a huge personal database of memories and thoughts that you can use for writing ideas. They can relate to one work, or many works, they can relate any way that you want, but what you will have is a wealth of ideas that are mostly your own, and definitely ideas with your own perspective. This database is invaluable when you want to write something but you have nothing to write about, or if you are really stuck somewhere within your own work, or when you are ready to put together that amazing dissertation.

How the Heck Do I Do It?

Your guess is as good as mine. I use the Evernote application that syncs to my phone and my computer, and an online app so I can access it from anyone’s computer. But don’t do that just because I do. Everyone’s needs are different. I also have a little notebook that I carry with me because there are times that it takes longer to type into my phone than it does to just jot it down. There’s also something a little more satisfying about filling up a notebook. I have used notebook, loose leaf paper, business cards, calling my phone and leaving myself messages. It was a process I went through and that I am probably not done going through. Anne Lamott, in her book Bird by Bird, suggests index cards. It worked twenty years ago, and it is probably just as efficient today. Following the spirit of sloppiness, as long as you are doing it in some way, then you are doing it right.

All of this is to simply say: don’t let your good ideas get lost forever just because of some terrible, stupid (regular life) catastrophe.

BeFunky!

The BeFunky Photo Editor is a great online app for simple edits to photos. It's becoming one of my favorites due to the ease and speed of use, the intuitive nature of the left sidebar, and some import and sharing options. I should point out that BeFunky gets a high rating on its Android and IOS apps.


Import:
You have the option of importing your photos from your computer, Facebook, previous BeFunky uploads, Flickr, Photobucket, and Picasa. The headline on the selection box says "Where's your photo at?", presumably placing the preposition at the end purposely for humor, or to sound homey.

Editing:
There are too many editing features to list here, my recommendation (as always) would be to play with the application yourself to see just how powerful it is. You get all the common editing features, plus some amazing filters, artistic renderings, frames, text features, and a large sticker selection, labeled "goodies."

Sharing:
Once you are finished editing your photo, you get some great sharing options as well. You can create a BeFunky account, and start your own photo stream there. You can also save it to your computer, and share on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Flickr. THE BEAUTIFUL thing about this sharing option is that you can, in one click share to all of these services, or just some of them, just by flipping the "Yep/Nope" switch on each sharing service.

For educational purposes it is definitely worth using from a couple of standpoints. First, it encourages creativity in students by letting them "play in the sandbox", just to see "what would it look like if..." It is also valuable to show them (and point out) how well put together the app is. Since anyone can publish whatever they like online, there are some apps that were good ideas to start with, but they just aren't well thought out enough to be useful. And of course, there are some apps that weren't even a good idea to start with.

BeFunky is a well-thought-out, good idea that can work for many different people for many different reasons, and for that reason, I believe that the word should be spread.

-Matthew A Bennett

NPR: Educators Worry Revamped GED Will Be Too Pricey

http://www.npr.org/2012/11/28/165916695/educators-worry-revamped-ged-will-be-too-pricey

This recent NPR story caught my attention, not because of the higher cost of the GED test, (which could be taken care of quite easily with an income based test fee), but because of the following statement found at the end of the article:

The New Haven Adult and Continuing Education Center has begun to ramp up its computer capabilities to prepare for the online exam. But Walker says the change presents another hurdle to students here: Fewer than 20 percent of them have computers at home.

"So if we don't show them how to use a computer, they're never going to be able to pass the GED, because they won't be able to do it online — and that's the way they're going to be delivering the test," Walker says.

If we don't start looking at technological literacy as a vital part of literacy, we really are going to be leaving people behind without a chance to flourish in the modern world. Though the test will be more difficult for some people, it is a good thing that the GED tests will be given on a computer, and it is a good thing that those taking the test will need to have at least a rudimentary understanding of computers in order to pass.

You don't have to have a computer at home to have access to a computer. The library is a good place to start. People should be encouraged to "get in the game." 

from http://eriemax.tumblr.com

Gaming and Changing the World

This video really affected my view of technology. Affected is too weak - transformed.

Thanks Jane!

Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world

That's My Idea!

Collaboration has an integral role in the modern classroom.  Small group work allows students to construct their knowledge in a social setting, experimenting and revising ideas among their peers.  I have used small group work for in-class performance based projects for years, but not for writing. 

I often forget that people actually write collaboratively all the time.  Business writing of manuals, proposals, and contracts is rarely done by only one person. My only experience outside of class is in my personal songwriting.  I tried to collaborate many times with others and was not particularly successful.  If I got stuck in a song, I would ask for help and sometimes that would lead to the changing of my original ideas.

Our personal construction of sentences is unique and writing in English allows for a lot of flexibility.  We pick out the correct word from a number of possible correct words and put those words in order to convey the message we want.  When writing becomes collaborative, we must consider the melding of different styles and the necessity to let go of a personal, unique style.  Those with stronger well-constructed ideas or notions may be uncomfortable with the experience.

Not only can collaboration produce a more well-thought out, peer-reviewed idea, it can also encourage us to develop as individuals.  The age of the isolated scholar is near its finish.  The internet and mobile communication has changed that.  If we take Facebook, collaborative writing/thinking is happening all the time.  Person 1 posts. Person 2 comments. Person 1 adds more information or changes his/her idea slightly. Person 3 chimes in and the process continues and repeats.

Considering Facebook and similar social media venues, we must address writing as something very public.  I actually don't feel that many under 30 have a huge concern about this.  People are desperate for connection. They want to be known.  Writing publicly helps them with that or at least helps them feel the goal is being accomplished.  In an academic setting, there may be two main concerns: stealing of work and losing face.  When we post something publicly, anyone can read and get "inspiration" from our idea.  That “inspiration" could become outright copying and the potential for individual accolades decreases.  Face-saving is also an issue. Many people, in the academic world or not, do not like to appear sloppy or stupid.  Public collaborative work is often in the "in progress" stage.  It has mistakes. It has inconsistencies. In its working stages in may portray an image that not all members approve of and it can affect the reputation of those involved.

In the end, I would like to encourage and participate in more of it.  I'm not quite sure how to do it successfully myself, but I predict it will occur increasingly in the future so I'm ready to give it a go.  Any takers?