Research Update

I suppose I ought to be more faithful to this blog and update more often (I tend to update my "other" blog a lot more frequently).

So, what's there to update about my lonely dissertator's life?

It's been frustrating and scary and exciting at the same time. Frustrating in that I want to spend all of my time focused on designing my dissertation proposal but I can't. Life gets in the way. Scary because my dissertation looks like it's going to be a heckuva major project that has never been done before. Exciting because if I can pull this off, it will result in a real contribution to the field--it may even be a landmark study.

My advisor (my new advisor, that is) told me today that there is safety in the committee. If they feel like I've taken on more than I can chew, they can sometimes redesign the whole thing and make it a lot more simple and d-o-a-b-l-e.

Doable. That would be nice.

I dropped the "I"

I am no longer ABDI (all but dissertation & internship). I finished all 500 hours of my doctoral clinical internship as of yesterday. So now, I'm truly ABD.

A couple of things have transpired for me and my dissertation.

First, I've completely changed my internal committee members. I had planned originally to do quantitative work and so I selected people who would appropriately help me in that regard. With my change to qualitative methodology, I have felt a strong need to change to people who understand the qualitative research process. It is VERY different! With that change set, I am now happily going to start on my dissertation proposal.

Second, I have decided to collect my own data in my home country. It's ambitious but there is really no other alternative for me. I feel that this is the only thing that I can do and feel like it is work that truly matters. I don't want to spend my time doing work that does not feel important and significant to me. I want to publish my dissertation, I want to allow my dissertation to be the launching pad for my research work into the future. The extra effort will pale in comparison to my motivation to do my dissertation. At the end of the process, I want to be able to say, "that was really meaningful work!"