January 2012
2 posts
1 tag
History of Science & Tech Policy
One of my classes this semester is Science & Technology Policy. The first few weeks will entail a lot of history. I’m taking a quick break from reading Science The Endless Frontier A Report to the President by Vannevar Bush from July 1945. It’s the report that essentially set up the National Science Foundation.
The main themes or justifications Bush uses to urge Congress to...
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Semester #4
Thus it begins again. Another semester.
This is going to be another challenging semester. I’m taking a class with a professor whom I need to be in my corner, but he’s already questioning my worth as a student. I have to take his classes, but I would love to work on a project with him too. We’ll see. All I can do is do my best. If it’s not good enough for him, what can I...
December 2011
3 posts
“Don’t you dare, for one more second, surround yourself with people who are not...”
– Jo Blackwell-Preston (via sleepydumpling)
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Learning to be imperfect
Two Bs!
The first B was a joy to have earned. The second one is ok and I can handle it. I know what I did wrong. Basically I focused so much time and energy on my HR final paper and I neglected my research design paper. The crappy part? Both papers were on the same topic! But I did have to adjust to the research design aspect and well, I guess I just fell short.
A hermana on Twitter sent me a...
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Long time no tumble
I’m starting to think this PhD tumblr is a major fail since I haven’t written here forever. But it’s also evidence of how much time this PhD is taking from any extracurricular activities.
The semester is mercifully over. My HR course was super fun as it made me think in a totally different way. But it’s also the course I am praying that my professor has mercy on me, loves...
October 2011
1 post
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I can't do this (warning: pity post)
I runs through my head more times than I dare count every single day.
I spend every chance I can reading. When I’m not reading for class, I feel guilty. Even when I take time to snuggle with the kid. When I let her have a break to watch TV, she likes me to cuddle up with her. I think, “Gawd, I need to read!” But I snuggle. AND I LOVE IT!
I hate that being a PhD student makes me...
September 2011
2 posts
1 tag
2 tags
One month down...
It’s the fourth week of the semester and I’m hanging on pretty darn well.But it’s late, so my updates will be quick here.
Met with my sociology professor from the spring who was her usual constructive yet critical self. She gave me a lot to chew on. Again, less details the better, but she did say she’d do whatever she could to help me get through the program. That gave me...
August 2011
2 posts
1 tag
Back to school!
Today is the first day of the fall semester.
A quick and purposely vague update on my last post: The meeting with my advisor went really well and I felt a million times better about where I am in my program. She did go over my final paper for her class, which should had gone better for me, but I also agreed with her criticism. Live and learn.
I am reading Brene Brown’s The Gifts of...
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The summer is almost over!
Or maybe it is over since I already spent $300 on books for the upcoming semester.
To get the most out of my money, I used 4 different websites to obtain the best prices. The books where there were no deals at all to be had, I bought from my local feminist indie bookstore. I also bought the one book I know I already have homework in…so the quicker the better on that one.
My program reviews...
June 2011
1 post
1 tag
Finally SUMMER!
Yeah, I’m still here and finally back.
The second half of the semester was rough. My sociology course kicked my ass, but I think I kicked back pretty well. My professor said she was impressed at how well I hung with the soc PhDs. I guess I picked up more sociology theory in my previous GWS courses than I had thought. Or sociology comes fairly easy to me. Because while I struggled to keep up...
March 2011
2 posts
1 tag
So ya remember when I said I felt like I was...
I got my midterm grade.
I got an A!
So now some of you are thinking, “That Veronica…” and shaking your head about how either dumb I am about my own work or how I’m all drama about my work. You might be a little right on both aspects.
But I gotta tell you that it’s been a long time since I’ve worked this hard to simply understand what is going on in the...
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Learning by failing
OK, so maybe that’s a bit overstated, but honestly I know I’m barely up to par in my sociology course. I’m just not use to the style of writing and it took me 4-5 weeks to figure out what I thought was the core issue of what we were reading really wasn’t the core issue. Not that I wasn’t getting it, but you know I was focusing on the branches of an idea not the...
February 2011
2 posts
1 tag
Cheering sections
Last weekend I went to a friend’s son’s first birthday party. It was all family plus us, well we are considered family. It was so good to be with them for the celebration and to see the lil moppet totting around.
My friend’s mom and I sat next to each other for dinner. As we were chatting she turns and says, “So, the last time we talked, you said you were going to start a...
January 2011
5 posts
1 tag
We interrupt this semester plan for...
Due to the MLK holiday, only one class this week. And what a class it was!
We discussed Paradoxes of Gender by Judith Lorber and it was a fab discussion. We really dug into the paradox of talking about gender while also working towards a gender-free world. It really parallels some of the debates I’m having in my head about raising an empowered girl with knowledge of women’s history. I...
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Semester 2 - Week 1
My plan for two classes will go forward!
Monday is my public administration course which is taught by one of the faculty members who will be very important to my PhD. They are the gender person in the department. She greeted me in class with, “You are taking the sociology course, right?” Yes. “Great!” So yeah, right there I thought, two classes this semester.
Then I...
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Back to School!
My first class is tomorrow night! I’m pretty excited for it. My other class is Thursday and I’m equally excited for it.
Monday’s class is about diverse workforces and Thursday’s class is about gender. That’s it, gender. Hell yeah. And not one Judith Butler book to purchase. I’m sure we’ll read something by her, but not an entire book. I have a hang up...
Comments on -- er, off
Since I couldn’t figure out how to reply to an awesome “reply” I received, I installed comments. Gah…if anyone has a site to help me with replies, please let me know. Thanks.
***********
thecurvature replied to your post: Comments on
Everyone has this question! The answer, though, is that there is no way to reply to replies. Other than to copy the reply from your...
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Raining books
The best part of any semester is getting all my textbooks. Today the USPS brought me Feminist Foundations: Toward Transforming Sociology, Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It and ‘Paradoxes of Gender. These are all for my sociology course called ‘Gender.’ Yay! On top of this a friend who is teaching a seminar on feminism asked me to teach one...
December 2010
1 post
1 tag
There is too much. Let me sum up.
This blog has been itching at my brain for the month that I’ve ignored it.
First of all, a huge shout out to my PhD Cheer Crew. I could not have made it through my first semester without them. Each time I felt like I had made the wrong decision or wasn’t smart enough to do the work, they would be there to remind me of a million things. There were times when I felt like I was being...
November 2010
5 posts
Inspiration from my cheer squad
I highly recommend having a cheer squad for any occasion, but especially for the slog that is graduate school.
1 tag
Need some help on feminist theory
I’m working on a table for my final paper about feminist public administration theory. What this table will do is summarize a bunch of different feminist theories. I’ve already summarized radical libertarian and radical cultural theories. Now I’m on psychoanalytic and gender feminist theories. And here’s where I feel like I’m stuck.
I summarized radical libertarian...
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I almost quit last week
While I know that I won’t be getting near a dissertation anytime soon, the idea of it looms over everything we do in class. Rightly so, our semester project is doing a literature review on a topic that most likely will be related to our dissertation. Honestly I haven’t touched that project in a few weeks.
But it was the super dense readings for class last week combined with my first...
October 2010
4 posts
1 tag
Empiricism vs Relativism: Where does a feminist...
Or where should a feminist public administrator fall?
Last class was about the divide/debate between empiricism (the idea that facts are facts) and relativism (there are no facts, things are relative). While it seems that most (75%) public administration scholars fall into the empiricism camp, I can definitely identify with the relativism camp.
And this ability to see both sides in a way that...
I need to own this shit
I work in a field where I know for a fact that there are gender differences in how women and men decide to take a stand, to own an opinion and then voice it. A ball park estimate is that women need to be 80-90% sure of their statement. Men need to be just a smidgen over 50%.
Take a moment to take that in.
I have been studying things like this for over a decade. I know it. It runs through my head...
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I stand on the shoulders of many as the hands of...
As a student of history, I try to go through life acknowledging the fact that I stand on the shoulders of those who came before me. At the same time, I far too often fail to remember all the hands that support me right now.
I don’t believe in the myth of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. If I pulled myself up from a working class upbringing to this middle class life, it is because as...
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Remember, remember the ass kicking of September
Last month was ass kicking, but it was my ass that was kicked.
I had a big deadline for work (that I made, but not without pushing my boss to her limit) and thus homework took a back seat…again. And this is what our graduate program director and my professor were talking about. This program is too intense for it to ever take a back seat to anything. But in my life, other things do have to...
September 2010
6 posts
Missed class last week
and I feel lost. Or is it disconnected?
While I was in my leadership session (which ironically was on campus!) I kept feeling like I should be in class. Perhaps because I finally had some concrete questions to ask. I have one more paper to read for class on Wednesday and then of course to write my reading journal, but I can’t wait to get to class.
I knew that public administration was a...
Stumbling through week four
Or would it be Tumbling? *shrug*
Last Friday was a big deadline day for me at work, thus I was super focused on those two deliverables and ended up burnt at the end of almost each day last week, but especially that Friday. And thus my reading suffered. Then on Monday at 3 pm our professor emailed to say that she put a week 5 reading into the week 4 folder on the class website. And...
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“Women bureaucrats can be active ‘crusaders,’ not passive...”
– Vivien Hart (1992)
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Week 3: Getting into a Groove
As I was brushing my teeth tonight I was recalling how I had made myself a schedule for this semester. I had planned my days out from 6 am to midnight every day of the week. Email, work, commute time, family time, homework, class and a little bit of time to write or blog. I’m glad that I didn’t mess up the mirror laughing at the idea that I could schedule anything in my life.
I failed...
“Writer’s block doesn’t mean that you don’t have anything to say. Writer’s block...”
– Sandra Cisneros (via superhussyisms)
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Week Two
Well that was waaay better than last week! I got almost all my readings done. The part I didn’t get done was an uber-long paper that started to not make sense. But class was better, I think, mostly due to me understanding how class & the reading journal was going to go down. Seriously, I need to know expectations so I can rise to them. Thus my fear of new settings. But once I know them,...
August 2010
6 posts
How my first class went...
On Wednesday I attended my first class. And I got my ass swiftly kicked. First, I went in knowing that I missed two readings. One I thought was in the text book only to realize I needed to read the original source. The second I just couldn’t get my hands on. I tried to get my hands on the book so I could photocopy only to find that while the library said it was on the shelf, it was not. I finally...
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New rule
No matter when I blog, don’t send a tweet out until AFTER homework is done. Trying to write up notes while Tweetdeck is going off is distracting. Although, how often do I write something that sets off Tweetdeck and my comments?
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Where experience caused my first fumble
I already muffed a homework assignment.
The first thing listed on our syllabus appeared to be chapter one in the text book assigned. I read it for my masters degree and re-read it cause well, it’s been almost a decade since the first time! I took notes. I underlined. Then as I closed the book after reading another 5 essays, I noticed something. The first chapter wasn’t listed with the...
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Last weekend
This is the last weekend before I start classes. Not sure why I keep thinking this is my last weekend considering that I received my syllabus and I have read just over half the articles I need to read for class. I’ve started, yet just not with that whole “OMG, I’m sitting in my PhD class!” moment.
Wednesday was orientation and it was fine. Our director of graduate studies...
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OMFG it's August!p
August. No more can I say that I’m starting my Ph.D. program next month or at the end of summer. I’m starting it THIS MONTH!
I’m even registered for the one class that hopefully will ease me into this long and grueling adventure. Yes, it will be tough, but it’s a theory course and I’m always good at theory courses. It’s also taught by someone I need to get to...
June 2010
2 posts
1 tag
Advising take one
Yesterday I had my first advising session. My first year advisor is a professor I had when I was working on my master’s degree. She’s firm but fair. The session was super quick. She said that she’s not worried about me tackling the research aspect. She also said that if I wanted to, I could start approaching other faculty members to be my actual advisor(s). This was due to the...
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October 2009
1 post
