Remember the "old blog"?

Remember, before I deleted everything? Remember how I used to talk about avoiding studying for my comprehensive exams? Good times.

Well, seems like I've moved on. Now that I've passed the comprehensive exams (just as I predicted, all 23 of us passed), I'm now officially a Doctoral Candidate. Big whoop. All But Dissertation, good enough for me. I was so excited at the idea of just being a doctoral student that I went out and purchased a new $200 Coach bag to carry my stinkin' books! (Turns out the leather made it too heavy to actually carry with all the books I needed, though.) So now that I'm ABD, I'm now a candidate and not just a student. And that means I really have to work on the dissertation.

During our very first class, the professor kept shouting out "Great dissertation idea!" at every statement. Come on, it was our FIRST class (out of 15 classes). I wasn't sure I was going to stick around for class #2, let alone the dissertation! I didn't need a dissertation idea, I needed a clue on how to actually do my paper for that one class!

A year and 18 credits later (and my fantastic new boyfriend Doug), we were told to prepare the first chapter to our dissertation. WHAT? Excuse me? I still didn't finish half of this program, and now you want me to write 20% of my final exam? Are you serious? I think three people had the chapter completed when that was first assigned.

Another year later, by now we're at 13 completed classes (after my summer experience and several months into Waiting for Ingrid, preparing for my visit trip), we're assigned Dissertation Advisors. What's your topic, Stacy?

My what? My topic? For what? Ooohhh, for the dissertation. I've been so busy trying to find a child to adopt that I forgot to really pick a topic! Well, I started the program wanting to study the effects of technology on foreign language classes. I found some related studies, but there's an entire doctoral program on that topic at another university (where my sister had just finished her Bachelor's degree, by the way), so I'm probably not well qualified for that study. I can do technology or I can do language acquisition, those are my areas of expertise. If I do technology, I have to find the theories on my own because our Instructional Technology class had almost NO theory in it and frankly, wasn't much good. If I do language acquisition, I'm pretty much limiting my options for a position as Curriculum Developer, since my Bachelors and Masters are both in language fields. I wanted my doctorate to prove I can do other things. So I went with the technology option.

Months go by and I can't figure out a viable research question. Something about students' outside technology use affecting their literacy skills? Something about how teachers effectively integrate technology? Something about blogging? All good ideas and worth looking into, but nothing really dissertation material.

And then came The Lie. I kept trying and trying to come up with a dissertation topic. I kept trying and trying to get some news about my adoption process. I kept trying and trying to call Ingrid in Guatemala (like the director told me to do, but the foster mother said she was afraid of the attorney). I kept trying and trying to do the right thing in my classes and teach children then way I knew best. I kept trying and trying to raise money to hire Adoption Supervisors. My head hurt from banging it against so many proverbial walls. Eventually, I just caved and went with the language acquisition topic. It was easier, people comment about how at ease I am when I describe the related phenomena, and the program coordinator (that first professor who kept shouting "Great idea" three years ago) said it was OK.

So I have my topic. And I even did a few papers during my coursework on related topics (that's what you're supposed to do, so you have a literature base available when you start your actual dissertation, and that's why they want you to pick a topic so early in the program). I'm going to explore Heritage Language Learners' literacy skills in the traditional Spanish classroom. The program coordinator gave me a study on gifted ed, seeing how teachers differentiate for gifted students. (My hypothesis treats HLL ability similar to a gift or talent.) I really liked that idea.

Dissertation Advisor (the one who got hit by the car last week) wanted more. He had another good idea. He thought I should compare programs for HLL, seeing if there were a difference in reading scores (reading in Spanish) if students went through a Spanish for Native Speakers course compared to being in a traditional Spanish class. So, I spent the past month looking for literature on the latter (there's A LOT on the former). And what did I find?

Nada. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Just as I thought (and the program coordinator agreed, which is why she gave me the idea, her husband is a Spanish teacher also), there aren't really any studies of HLL in the traditional Spanish class. Everything is on what should be done, or attitude surveys, or parent opinion pieces, or just being in a Native Speaker class. Nothing about teachers, only ONE study done at the middle school level, nothing within the regular Spanish class.

So I met with New Professor (she's new to the school and volunteered to meet with me and another of the Dissertation Advisor's protogees while he recovers), and she totally agrees that I need to focus on the regular class. She's another of the differentiation-type people (differentiation = adapting the lesson to meet varying degrees of student need). Program coordinator differentiates based on gifted/talented identification, New Professor differentiates based on Learning Styles preference (do you prefer light or dark? snacking? music or quiet? group or alone?), I'll differentiate based on language ability. So again, I think I have a topic for my dissertation.

I set aside four uninterrupted hours today to work on the dissertation. Nothing else to do but write (since I've already collected so many articles and books and have so many notes).

Can you then explain why I'm writing this blog post for one half hour of that four-hour uninterrupted block of time?