It's Move-In Time!

The weekend is barreling down upon me! Saturday at 8:00 a.m. we throw open the doors and welcome the residential students to their new homes.

It's such an exciting time!!! What a gift to be a part of this time of this students' lives. This week has been Residential Leader training--what an AMAZING group of wonderful leaders. Wow the RL "Class" of 2010-2011 absolutely rocks!

Distracted Weekend!

This month is whirling by so quickly. In some ways I want time to slow down and let me capture it but in other ways I want to hurry up and get August over with. There are so many things going on at work during this time of year that I feel like I'm jumping from minute to minute. With work related to my doctorate I need to slow down time!

Weekend after weekend slips by and I'm not getting my stuff done like I want/need to get done. I feel that part of me is apprehensive to begin, to jump in with both feet. It is almost like I'm worried I'll be too overwhelmed with all the information that I'll drown and not be able to find my way out.

It scares me to think about waiting until April 11 to really roll up my sleeves and get things done. I feel like I'll be spinning my wheels until then. I feel that I can't really get serious about my dissertation and proposal until after I get comps out of the way. Part of me has even thought about dropping the PhD and going for an EdD so I can get started. The "Activator" in me is ready to get busy. But is that the right thing to do?

So, should I "stay the course" of the PhD which means likely having to wait on the comps in October (2010) and April (2011) and then doing my proposal/dissertation OR should I check on dropping the PhD and going the EdD route which may mean going straight to the dissertation?

Thoughts?

Weekend Update

This weekend I’ve spent most of my time reading and finding articles on a strengths-based philosophy and team effectiveness. I read a couple of dissertation literature reviews on strengths (one was Louis, 2008 ( so very thankful she was THOROUGH)) and have a long list of books I need to get from the library as well as making a rather substantial order from Amazon. I anticipate spending time writing about the strengths-based philosophy definition and the two schools of thought then go into the StrengthsFinder tool itself. It seems there is a good bit of information in the technical report itself so I need to get that document as well.

Team effectiveness looms a bit larger for me. I am really starting as a blank slate on this topic so I’ve been looking at both some dissertation literature reviews and then beginning to get articles that seem to appear over and over in the reviews. My worry though is that I’ll miss some huge work that is out there. But I guess the worst thing that can happen is that I miss it, I find out I’ve missed it and then I go back and get it. Problem solved! I have found a good number of articles to get me started this week and we’ll see where I land by week’s end. So far I have a definition of team and work group and am beginning to work on effectiveness. Although I have about 16 articles waiting on me as I avoid them now by working on this blog entry!

The area I haven’t tackled yet is trust. I have a stack of articles that is waiting on me but I’m thinking I’ll just really cover one construct at a time.