Back to work...a dissertation dispatch

After two blissful weeks off (after defending my preliminary exams and finishing the last final exam of the last course of my PhD program!), it’s now time to hop back on the research bicycle. Currently, I’m working on my dissertation proposal and struggling a bit to better define and narrow my question. Here, I’m sharing a bit of my research journal. Hopefully, this will be a way to stay accountable to the process of writing a dissertation and, possibly, will be at least somewhat interesting to at least one person with an Internet connection.

Something I did with my time off…planted tomato starts that I grew from seeds. Despite really loving gardening, my thumb is like a really, really, REALLY pale green, so this is big for me. I will share my newfound secret in a future post (cue suspense!).

I heart journaling. I have written about my weekly work journal several times (here and here). So when I kept hearing about the concept of a “research journal” in my methods courses, I was—of course—intrigued. As I’ve worked through papers, prelims, and early drafts of my proposal, I’ve jotted ideas down in a running journal of all the things—grocery lists to t-tests. But now that I’m single-mindedly focusing on my dissertation, I thought it might be time to dedicate a journal to this process.

The tools of the trade: high to low tech. Most crucial? Obviously, cup of coffee.

This will be messy. This journal will be a place for me to work through ideas, themes, codes, etc. and, therefore, most of it will be garbage. So, if you—sole person with an Internet connection—are reading this and thinking, Wow, this is garbage, I say to you: Thank you. You have not only an Internet connection, but also insight and a discerning sense of taste. Comments are welcome. Dialogue is welcome. Your half-formed theories are welcome. Trolling is basically never welcome, but as an intelligent and discerning person you already knew that.

My dissertation Chair said she always asks her advisees the same question: What is it you want to know?

For the first time, I noticed that the memo notebook has all these informative links at the beginning for research (mostly aimed at kids). Hilariously, the first one is for the CIA…and it’s a Facebook page. I feel like there are so many reasons NOT to hit the CIA’s Facebook page. Is it just me?

This is where I struggle…development encompasses so many things…what if I have 100 questions? Also, Esther Thelen talks about human development as being like a mountain stream, so the word made me think of her.

speaking of our mother…this is happening…for about the next year :<

I wonder….I am ambivalent. I think Judy Wacjman—author of Techno Feminism and a theorist I’ll lean on for my dissertation—captures this well. There’s lots of hype about all the UhMayZing things technology can do, but I wonder, in the day to day, is it improving the lives of women and children? Making them worse? Something in between? And, given that these advances aren’t going away, how to we navigate the new world in a way that supports positive developmental trajectories for women and children?

A Hollywood Star in my dissertation sidewalk

More to come…I’m a little obsessed with this topic…there’s material for about 7,000 dissertations here. Research study after research study shows that mothers do hours of unpaid domestic and caregiving work above that of their (male) partners—not sure what research says about same sex partnerships yet—even more than when they’re single parents! This comes in addition to the persistent gender pay gap. Technological advances of the past few decades have increased productivity greatly, but only significantly increased wealth for the top 95% of the population. It’s tempting to completely devalue that unpaid labor (especially when I’m loading the dishwasher), but actually…kids need food, shoes that fit, caregiving. Where does this labor fit in our highly technologized world? And how do we embrace technological innovation while also being true to the soil and the spit-up? Big questions for a Tuesday, I know.

Who benefits?