First week of classes

It's 9 pm on Sunday night and I'm feeling pretty energized considering the time night, etc. It IS almost my regular bedtime, you know. (Sad, I know...but, I am getting older, you know.)

This week was the first week back to classes at work and this first week of spring semester has ALWAYS made me exhausted. My schedule doesn't gradually work itself into a frenzy like it does in August. It goes from 0 to 100 in five seconds flat in January and it usually makes me tired. And, I was tired yesterday. Other than taking Maranda to gymnastics at the Y, I pretty much sat/dozed on the couch all day long. I need a day like that every now and again. Plus, I had a sore throat. Bleah. That seems to be getting better, though.

This week was a great week, though. I had two separate programs that were my responsibility, which is really the first time that's happened since I started this summer. Everything else that I've worked with has had others really doing the bulk of the work and I just showed up. Don't get me wrong....that's been nice, but what a wonderful sense of accomplishment when your events happen! I did have help for both events...a committee for one and co-workers for the other....which was nice and very helpful.

One of the programs that I was working with was our Scholar in Residence program. This year, we had Susan Komives on campus for a day and a half. For those of you in Student Affairs that are reading this, you probably know how wonderful she is. Well, after spending all of Friday together and a good portion of Thursday together, I'm feeling really motivated about this whole dissertation process. I may change my topic to look exclusively at quantitative data (never thought I'd say that, did you?). And, she's suggested that I use a data set that our college recently collected through a survey that was done via her graduate students last spring. She also suggested that if that data set won't help me do what I want, I may be able to use the national data set that they collected (as long as none of their students are in process of a similar research question). How cool is that?!

Now, I've gotta make time to really start working on it. Plus, I need to make sure that my advisor is okay with using a data set that's already been collected. I can't imagine that he wouldn't be, but you just never know.

Today, Maranda was at a softball clinic for the most of the day and I was fairly productive while she was out of the house. Plus, Mark was at work....which helps. So, my goal for the week (at Susan's suggestion) is to somehow "touch" my dissertation topic once a day even if it's only for 15 minutes. So, I'm going to try to keep track of that.

Well, I hope you're weekend has been as energizing as mine and if you're taking classes, good luck with them!