2009: What a Rollercoaster!

Where exactly did 2009 go? I can't believe we're about to ring in the New Year! And oh my, doesn't 2010 sound so...out there? I mean, remember watching those movies back in the day (e.g. the Back to the Future series) when they'd talk about the year 2000 or 2010 as "the future" - flying cars, futuristic gadgets, whole meals in pill form?

Wow. 2010. Weird. (And I'm not just saying that because it's the year I turn 30!)

Anywho, I thought I would take a minute to reflect on the past year. I filled out this silly thing a few days ago and it asked me to describe 2009 in 1-2 words. My 2 words: Roller. Coaster. Let's take a look back, shall we?

January: I started the New Year off with high hopes for a new job back in my home state of WI. I braved the cold, icy weather and traveled out for an interview early in the month. By the end of the month... a job offer!! Hooray! I would finally escape the ever-tightening clutches of my evil boss...thank goodness! I also started this little blog! Such meager beginnings... it's come a long way...

February: Dissertation defense! Finally! The month was full of celebrations, packing, and goodbyes. I left my job a little earlier than planned...again, thank goodness.

March: With the help of family and friends, the truck and car were packed tightly and off I went to Wisconsin. In torrential rain. Then snow. Good times. I dove right in to my new job. It felt like I knew my new coworkers forever. As if things weren't crazy enough, I also decided I was going to buy a house.

April/May/June/July: These months felt like such a blur to me. I was essentially homeless. Yes, my good friends were kind enough to let me stay in their guest room for a long time (thank you!), and yes, my parents lived just an hour and a half away, but I didn't have my own place. My furniture was in storage. I had limited clothing options. I didn't have my dogs. I didn't feel settled. At. All. Plus I was seriously hunting for a house during this time. I made not one, not two, but three offers on houses before one finally stuck. Woohoo!

August/September: Renovations. Home improvements. Still didn't feel very settled, but I got to see my family a lot! My friends Nacole and Jason visited in August, which was so awesome. I missed them so much, so it was great to be able to hang out for a couple days. Work kicked into high gear and left me feeling exhausted a lot, but I still had time for projects! :-)

October: New carpet. I finally started unpacking for real and settling into my new home. Took a trip to Minneapolis/St. Paul for a conference (which wasn't great) and got to hang out with my brother, which was the best part anyway.

November: Lots of projects here and there, more nesting, and many many trips to thrift shops. I have an addiction. Spent an afternoon at my alma mater to give a little talk to a couple of classes. Also got to reconnect with some faculty members, which was a lot of fun. My mom, sister, and I had our first annual Black Friday Craft-a-Thon when we made book wreaths. And I had a couple of helper elves come visit and magically decorated the house with snowflakes while I was gone to work.

December: Snow. Snow. Snow. Lots of work on projects, a little Christmas shopping, and some baking too! Quality time with family, too much food, and a week-and-a-half off from work! Woohoo! I need to take more vacation, more often.

So that's it. My year in review. It's really no wonder time flew by. And why I was exhausted. It was a year full of stress, excitement, goodbyes, tears, newness, and surprises. I'm hoping 2010 is a little calmer...though I've got some big ideas for the New Year. Check back later to see my 2010 To-Do list!

A Spot of Sunshine

One graduate school credit..... $395

Dissertation paper and printing..... $40

Microfilming fee..... $65

Finally getting your diploma... Priceless

Yes, I finally got it! If I wasn't essentially broke and out of the office this week, it would already be framed and hung with care on the wall. Oh well. It's here. It's tangible proof that I am indeed finished with graduate school and that I really do have credentials!

Yes!

My baby girl dissertation is now out there in the world to fend for herself! I survived the Graduate School submission examination! Nacole made me promise to take a picture, so here she is, just before she went into her envelope! Sorry Nacole, no pink bow.

I had to buy new paper this morning, then run over to Office Max, then run back to campus, wait for "the verdict", and then take the approved copies over to the library. Whew! But I did it and it's finally out of my hands! For real! I'm so happy.

I got to spend a little quality time with some people from my Department, which was nice. I'm going to miss everyone there, but I promise to keep in touch! Oh, and I turned in my keys. You know it's final when you turn keys in...

Now I just need to finish packing...

Dissertation Nation

Well, it's official! I will be submitting my dissertation to the Graduate School tomorrow!! I've gone through all the revisions, the long checklist of formatting and printing rules, gotten the necessary cashier's check, filled out the surveys and the release form, so the only thing left to do is get it printed and turn it in! I tried to print my dissertation from home, but the darn printer left a smudge on the top edge of the pages and I'm afraid the Graduate School people will see that and send me away.

No, I'm not kidding, they look it over carefully before they accept it... here's a little 2-part comic from http://www.phdcomics.com/ to illustrate my point...

I love that all these people are lined up waiting for him to turn it in... Is it disbelief? Hope? It reminds me of a marathon or something... all those people cheering him and supporting him to the finish line...

A moment of sheer joy and jubilation as he turns his baby in... and then...

BAM!

the painful reality of "university specifications."

Which is why I'm going to have this puppy printed. No way a stupid smudge is going to get in my way! I've done the hard part, I guess someone else can do this one thing.
Besides, I still get to do the best part- submit it and be done. Forever! I might do a happy dance right there in the library!!

Keep your fingers crossed for me! I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow!

My Lil' Girl is Growin' Up!

My lil baby girl dissertation is growing up so quickly! My, how time flies! She now weighs in at 99 pages!

Since I didn't have any pictures that fateful night she was born (for which I've received a bit of flack from some of you), I have included my official signature page! I've removed last names to protect the innocent... I've included the text below, just in case you can't read what it says...

"WE HEREBY RECOMMEND THAT THE DISSERTATION PREPARED UNDER OUR SUPERVISION BY HEIDI A. ENTITLED OPINIONS OF MENTAL ILLNESS AND HELP-SEEKING AMONG COLLEGE STUDENTS BE ACCEPTED AS FULFILLING IN PART REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY."

Hopefully my revisions will soon be finished and I can take my baby girl to the Graduate School and then to her new home in the library! I'll keep you all posted!

Save the Drama for Your Mama!

I'm getting tired of drama. I've had quite a bit of it lately and I really don't need any more!

I woke up motivated and ready to work on my dissertation revisions. I turned on my laptop and waited... and waited... and waited. Things were running so slowly and the programs were non-responsive. I spent the next hour trying to remove unnecessary programs, update my virus software, scan for viruses and spyware, and figure out what was wrong! Grrr. Finally, I got things up and running...

Right now I'm taking a quick break from making dissertation revisions. These revisions fall into the "Tedious and Boring" category- things like APA style revisions and grammar corrections. My next set of revisions will be "Rearranging"- I think that category speaks for itself. Lastly (I hope), will be my "Additions" category, also known as, "Things I Stupidly Left Out." I'm really hoping all of these revisions go quickly because if they don't, there will be some drama. I don't want to rewrite my whole paper. I want to get it turned into the Grad School before I leave Colorado... messing with that stuff long distance is too much!

The house I was hoping to rent fell through. I found out yesterday afternoon. I most likely won't be able to get into a place until April 1st at this rate, though I'm not entirely homeless yet (thank you Gina & Jason!). So, without a place to live right away, I need to send the dogs to live with my parents for a while and I need to figure out how I'm moving all of my stuff. I would love to use one of those PODS units to move and store my stuff, but I'm afraid they're going to be very expensive (I'm checking prices later today). I could rent a truck or trailer and then rent a storage unit until I find a place to live, then figure out how to move everything from the storage unit into my new residence... Cripes. Too much drama.

One of the dogs decided to have a midnight snack last night. The culprit pulled my bread (about 1/4 loaf) off the counter top, ripped open the bag, and ate it all. There weren't even any crumbs left in the remnants of the bag. My diagnosis? Stress-induced nocturnal snacking.

Cloud...9???

I didn't think I'd be saying this quite so soon... but I need to work on my dissertation. I took the weekend off and now I need to get back to it, so I can make the necessary revisions and be finished. But I seem to be having some difficulty getting going on it. So I've set a few small goals for myself this morning and hopefully that will be enough to jump-start me!

I still haven't heard back on the house I've applied to rent. It's starting to really drive me nuts.

I'm not sure what else to say... this might be the most boring post ever. Maybe I need some coffee or something?

Call Me Doctor...

I did it! I passed my oral dissertation defense yesterday afternoon!

Lee said I "nailed the orals" and I got some other really great feedback from my committee members. My toughest committee member was even impressed by the fact that I had knowledge at my fingertips- I could speak to his questions, give him examples of research and didn't get too flustered by his "rapid fire" questions. Although... he did ask me a statistics question that I know and have read all about but when he asked me, WHOOSH!, it went right out of my head. So I grappled with what to say, gave it my best shot and then he said, "No, not really." I'm sure my face got a little red, but I did laugh and made a lame joke about it. Maybe that's why Larry told me, "Nice job today. You are so skilled in the verbiage; even when you are a little off base you are so very skilled. Congratulations!!!"

It was fun. Of course it was nerve-wracking, but I did have fun.

So then I chatted with some of my friends in the Department and went to Starbucks to meet Canadian friend Steve. We had a nice chat and then I was able to just sit and relax by myself for a while. I tried the new Vanilla Rooibos Tea Latte and it was wonderful (and caffeine-free --I was already quite wired). I highly recommend it. I also enjoyed a Red Velvet cupcake. It was really quite perfect- I was in a comfy chair, sitting in the sunshine, sipping my lovely tea latte, and Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin were playing! Love it!

The evening festivities got started when I met up with some friends at Cafe Vino in Fort Collins. I have never been there, but it was very cool and hip (thanks for the suggestion Talisa!). It was great to be celebrating with my friends...it was humbling to see so many people at the table with me. I had a fantastic time, I laughed a lot, hugged a lot, and had to have someone drive me home... but instead of stress dreams I dreamt of beaches and I woke up smiling.

Today I am going to go clean out my office at work: I'm leaving work earlier than expected, which is A-OK with me.... I would like to keep having dreams of beaches.

Ramblings

Happy Presidents' Day! I'm glad today was a holiday, because I needed another day to take things a little slower. I did a little packing, some cleaning and laundry, took a much-needed nap, and read a little for fun. Oh I did some work stuff too...I have more of that to do tonight.

This week is going to be very hectic:

• Tonight I'm having dinner with one of my former supervisors. I'm excited to see her.
• Tomorrow night I'm going to talk to a group of grad students from my program about my "fascinating job" - the professor that invited us to speak to her students literally used those words. So, when should I tell them that I just quit my "fascinating job" for something much, much better?
• Wednesday we'll travel to an office site to do a brief presentation (I bet it will take longer to get there than it will to actually present) and I have last minute preparation to do in the evening.
• Thursday morning, we travel to a different office site for another training (different topic) and then I head over to campus for my defense! I'm going to have coffee with Canadian friend Steve and then get together for a little celebration with some other people! Hooray!
• Friday will hopefully be a typical day...
  
  Last night I sent my defense PowerPoint to Lee and he wrote me early this morning saying, "Looks GOOD!" so I guess I can basically cross that off my To Do List. I also started reading through my whole dissertation, but didn't get very far. Instead, I started filling out a mound of paperwork for the graduate school and for my new job. I didn't get through all of it, primarily because I can't complete the new job stuff until I know where I'll be living, my new employee ID number, etc.
  
  Speaking of a place to live... I sent in a rental application for one of the places my family checked out this weekend. I still haven't heard anything back. The suspense continues....
  
  Oh, and in case anyone was wondering... I start my new job in 4 weeks!

Dissertation Nation

The big day is a week away! I've been trying to work on my presentation and prepare for my defense, but I've been so tired and distracted. Work has been nuts lately and needless to say, (but I'm sayin' it anyway) I have a lot on my mind!

Anyway, my PowerPoint slides are coming along very slowly but I need to speed it up a bit- Lee wants to see them soon. I need to sit down and read my full dissertation as part of my preparation ... you would think that I would know that thing inside and out, but it's amazing how quickly the small details escape you when you've been working on something for years. Literally. Years. It does give me some small sense of accomplishment to see that stack of paper sitting on my table (and a sense of sadness for destroying so many trees in the process).

I know this research isn't going to save all of humankind or bring about world peace or anything. Heck, I know that few people will ever read it in its current form! But I do hope that I can take what I've learned and share it and/or use it (perhaps at my fantastic new job). It's turned out to be an OK project, though I would've done some things differently had I been able.

A couple of people have recently told me that their dissertation defenses were "anticlimactic". I can see how it could feel that way, though I've taken the long, winding, bumpy road to this place (sometimes not by choice) and so I am guessing I will feel a sense of relief and pride when all is said and done. I'll probably call my mom crying again, to tell her the good news.

When I defended my Master's thesis, someone told me, "Heidi, just enjoy this experience today. This is your work. You really do know the most about your work. So savor this moment. Enjoy it. Have some fun." Now, it may seem difficult to associate fun with presenting your research to highly educated individuals who are there to question, critique, and judge your hard work, but I did enjoy and savor that moment. I felt like I was able to sit down with colleagues and talk about research and education and I enjoyed it.

I plan to do the same with my dissertation.

It's a Girl!

I wrote this the other night/morning at approximately 1:20 am. I didn't think to put it in my blog right away. Anyway, here is my "birth announcement." Enjoy!

Oh. My. Gosh.

I'm listening to the most lovely sound...my printer. My printer is bringing my beautiful baby girl dissertation into the world. She is a total of 91 pages, about 11 inches long, and a beautiful shade of Ultra Bright White. This might sound cliche, but the first time I held her in my hands, caressed and counted each little page, and gazed lovingly at each precious word... I fell in love. I will soon send her out into the world to face criticism & rejection, so these moments are precious....

Ahem. Well...I'm over it... I'm cloning her now to be distributed to my committee later this morning. :)

Oh! Baby girl dissertation clone #1 is finished!