Intermission - Winter Break

 

searched for the source, but can only find various unattributed uses

For a while that was my argument - it is too late to start. I did the math. It would take 3 or more years to get the doctoral degree, no guarantee of a tenure-track position immediately afterward, so tack on another couple of years, 5 years before applying for tenure, a 2 year process before earning tenure...a solid 12 years from starting the doctoral degree to getting tenure, theoretically the final goal.

That means there is no way I am getting tenure before I am 60, which sounds so incredibly far away, and also pretty close to retirement age.

So, let's give another time cushion and say I am comfortable tenured at age 62. This is the same year I could start receiving my Social Security benefits, so I would be at the level of employment which is the goal in academia in the same year I could first retire.

That sounds pretty weird.

Now, I have colleagues who do not retire until well into their 80s, so I could go 20 years or so as a tenured professor. 

I don't know, though, if that is what I want.

I have to give this some serious thought - at what age do I want to retire? What do I want to do when I retire? 

Right now, a friend of mine is traipsing the globe, exploring all sorts of wondrous places as he goes on cruise after cruise in his retirement. I get to live vicariously through his travels as he posts pictures of glaciers, mountains, deserts, ancient ruins, quaint villages. In retirement I could go to all the places I have wished to visit over the years, see all the architecture I have studied.

Once, I had a retirement dream of opening my own little coffee shop. It would be unique in one, distinct aspect. I would have a library of books available for customers to peruse - and annotate. Annotation would be encouraged, with pencils and pens at each table. As you sat in my cafe and read, you would see not only the words of the author, but the thoughts of other readers.

With no work responsibilities and my children grown and off on their own life adventures, I could dedicate my time to a charity, something I deeply believe in.

In all of these dreams, of course, there is my husband along with me, and his thoughts and interests to consider. The travel idea would definitely be one we could joyously share. I can't see him working in my coffee shop - he doesn't even drink coffee - but the annotated books might appeal to him. Working together for a charity is something I can see.

This all relies on my body holding up and allowing enjoyment in retirement. What will the chronic pain do between now and then? I'd love to think it will go away, that either it will fade on its own or doctors will find a solution. I dreamed the other night that I got a job offer in another country, with an enticement that this country had a successful surgery for my chronic pain.

Not bad, huh? Just a dream, though. It is only speculation - all of it is. Planning ahead relies on so many variables.

So why not plan for the best case scenario, the dream that everything will go my way?

I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Day 14 of Classes - the semester ends.

 Time to celebrate! The end is nigh!

Seriously, every student should celebrate the successful end of a semester. It is no small accomplishment. Semesters are fifteen intense weeks of learning, discovery, and demonstrating that you were present and awake for all of that.

Graduation is tomorrow for my student teachers. I'll be there in my Masters regalia, no doubt thinking ahead to graduation in May of 2026 when I will be able to wear my new Doctoral regalia to celebrate my students. (Yeah, I'm thinking less of my own pending graduation in favor of theirs, but I assure you, looking forward to the day that a colleague of mine drapes that hood over my shoulders is pretty exciting).

But I won't get ahead of myself. I have three spring semesters, two summers, and two fall semesters left before then. I know I will be a different person, having those years of study and growth behind me. One semester alone has left me different.

I did have some doubts in August. Had I made the right choice? Would I be able to balance classes, teaching, momming, spousing, and coping with chronic pain? Would I find the workload overwhelming? Would I actually like any of the people I would be in classes with for the next three years? Would the unexpected come along and thrown me off course?

That last one is still a possibility, but I can definitively say that I did make the right choice, that I handle the workload, that I can balance this new aspect of my life in with everything else. In some ways, I am more efficient than I have been in previous semesters. Knowing that I have my own reading for classes, and my own assignments to complete, I have been on top of grading in a way I rarely am. Teaching writing is wonderful, but I usually procrastinate when it comes to grading. Having so much more on my own To-Do list has made me work a bit harder in all areas of my life.

I joked in my application to this program that one of the reasons I wanted to get the degree was so I could finally stop telling students not to call me Dr. Hyson. I wrote it as a joke, but it was not entirely one. A fellow student presented on the toll contingency has on adjuncts. I almost passed over reading their poster because it was too real in some ways. It's like the way I can't watch scenes where characters severely injure their knees because I know that pain so well.

Will contingency go away after I add that three more letters after my name - Sarah Hyson, MS, MA, EdD? Nope, no guarantee there. Many, many adjuncts have their terminal degree. Some of them are teaching the courses in this doctoral program.

But the ceiling will disappear. I will be eligible for conversion to tenure-track, even if it never happens.

Day 13 of Classes

 I had fun making people angry.

Okay, so it was a righteous anger, and not so much fun as a satisfying result. Poster sessions at conferences are always interesting. Apart from the values of professionals representing a whole bunch of information on a small space, there is always a wide variety of information.

This is one of the reasons I assign something like this to my students (yes, a recurring theme in my reflections this semester). I changed it up a bit for my students this time around. Early in the semester I put them in groups based on their research topics, each group having a thread (or a couple of threads), linking them together. Granted, some of the threads were as hard to see as that spider web on a hike that you walk right through, but they were there. Those groups just had to stretch a bit to find - or wander through the woods of their research before accidentally running into their threads.

When it came time to present, I gave each group two goals - they had to convey their topic and the results of their research while also finding those threads and showing the synthesis of their topics. I love tweaking this end-of-semester presentation every year, so I can definitively say it was the best semester of presentations yet.

So, of course, I was thinking about how I assign similar experiences to my students while a student in my doctoral courses. I like being reminded what it is like being on the presenter end rather than the professor end.

Granted, the presentations at the doctoral level are a little different from what my undergrads present, but I see the same commitment to inform at both levels, the same passion for a chosen topic.

My passion was evident throughout the semester, as I began really working on what I hope will be the foundation for my dissertation. Seeing other people get angry when they saw my poster, saw the statistics, saw the lack of progress over decades, was not just satisfying, it further pushed me to create the change for which I see a desperate need.

Even without classes, my winter is going to be busy.

I'll take a moment to talk about some of that other information I saw from the rest of the doctoral students in my cohort. Several addressed the experience of marginalized communities in varying aspects of education. This included the mental health effects, which was a linking thread to several other presentations (they could have had a panel in my class, too). Other students focused on subject-specific topics: literacy, reading, math, music, play-based learning. Like I said, there was a wide variety, which meant I was able to learn a lot in a short time.

This should serve as a reminder - always stop by the poster sessions at conferences.

Day 12 of Classes

I tend to be wary of self-assessments that ask you to take a quiz and then tell you what kind of person you are. There is an aspect which is interesting - will my existent thoughts of who I am come through in the results of the test? Might the results be skewed because of my self-image projecting onto how I answer the questions, whether or not I am aware of this happening?

In my high school psychology class, we took a test that was supposed to show whether you were right or left brain dominant - right indicating creativity and left indicating logic. The scale of the test was a -20 indicating completely right-brained dominance and a +20 complete left-brained. Our teacher had us form an arc in the classroom, lining up according to our scores. As all my classmates finished sorting themselves out, I asked the teacher whether I should go out to the courtyard and stand there. I had scored a -40. He double-checked my scoring, not believing me initially, but confirmed that I done the match correctly and achieved a score he had never seen before.

I have taken the full Myers-Briggs personality test several times - the full test of over 200 questions, not a set of 20 quick questions on a quiz website - in part because a friend of mine is a certified Myers Briggs practitioner. When taking the test, I can intuit for many of the questions the result each answer leads to. So is it possible that because I see myself as introverted, I am more likely to choose answers which I know indicate introversion? It is certainly possible.

Then there are all the articles out there claiming to debunk such tests.

This was on my mind as I took the Gallup Strengths Assessment, which leaves me wondering whether my internal sense of self had any effect on the results. Taking that one step further, would it matter if it did? After all, my own sense of self could be entirely accurate. Regardless, I found the results intriguing.

No surprise, I ended up being something of an oddball. Most, if not all, of my classmates had their strengths spread out over at least two of the areas, while all of mine fall under Strategic Thinking. 

No matter the validity, or whether any bias skewed the results, I found the answers aligned with what I think of myself. It tells me I crave knowledge and enjoy time alone to read a book, that I see patterns and create solutions to problems, that I am inspired by the future and what could be, that I generate innovative ideas.

Whether or not it is accurate, I would not mind embodying these traits.