Onward To Fowler

I spent a little time this weekend reading Fowler's Stages of Faith Development. The problem with reading entire books is that the authors don't just get to their point! The author has to put in everything including the kitchen sink to make the book. Fowler certainly includes valuable information but much of it I don't need-I just need to get to the stages really! Maybe I'm wanting to cut too much out though just to get to the good stuff!

I went to Starbucks to read yesterday-of course Chatty Cathy and her friend Babbling Brook had to sit right next to me for an hour! And of course the Starbucks in Stephenville is the only Starbucks in the nation that has the music up so loud you can't hear yourself think. Literally I've been in Starbucks from Boston to California and Stephenville is the only Starbucks that is hard to read it because the music is so loud! I can't bring myself to ask them to turn it down though-I just can't be THAT lady! HA!

I just priced the cruise I'm wanting to take in October and it's gone up $200! I'm so sad! That's $400 extra for the two of us :( I should have booked it when I first started dreaming about it! That'll teach me! I actually should take a week off and just work on my literature review. However the quandary is that I need to read, then write so I hate to think of taking time off to simply read!

Hopefully I'll get alot of reading done in the next couple of week/ends and then I can really dig in to the writing. I've gotten a good bit of outlining done on Chickering and have written a brief diddy about Kohlberg. Now I just need to shape it in a way that synthesizes my thoughts related to student spiritual development.

I am excited to actually get writing done. The reading I'm doing is great and worthy and productive but I don't actually feel productive yet. Although I've gotten a number of pages written, I don't feel like I'm actually writing yet.......I know that's silly!

Getting Through Kohlberg

I've spent this past couple of weeks trying to get a grasp on Kohlberg's theory of moral development. I feel like I'm not doing justice to Kohlberg because the review of his material is so short. Unlike Chickering which ended up being about 15 pages, Kohlberg is drastically shorter!

Although Kohlberg liked to use big words, he made his point pretty pointedly and didn't take 15 chapters to do it!

I was exploring getting one of Kohlberg's books but one in "acceptable" condition was $117 and one in "good" condition was $423. So I chose not to get the book! I'll stick with articles and writings by other people about Kohlberg and his theory! I still have one book that will arrive this coming week and will enrich what I've already written, but for the most part, I feel like I've covered Kohlberg.

My next research effort is to turn to James Fowler's stages of faith development. I have Fowler's dense book. Of course the print is tiny and the book is thick. There is just so much to consume for the dissertation. Hopefully I'm breaking it up into bite-sized chunks, but I still feel overwhelmed.

The big scary questions I have looming in my head, which I'll eventually have to address, are: (a) so what? and (b) how does all this tie together in logical sense?

So many of my peers are advancing at a rapid pace, I feel I'm really behind. I feel like I'm not progressing at the same pace my peers are :( It just seems that the reading takes alot of time, then writing about each individual theorists takes time. I'll finally get to the point where I am sewing it all together but right now that seems a good ways off. I wish I knew a way to make things go more quickly! Like maybe I could just skip the reading and writing part and just advance straight to the conferring of the doctorate! HA HA!

Productive Weekend

I spent the 4th of July holiday writing about Chickering. I wrote the Literature Review of Chickering and now I have moved to reading Kohlberg.

Camping, amazingly, forces me to be very productive because there are no other distractions. I wrote and wrote and wrote this past weekend. It was great-the only other option I had was to go outside and hang out......it was 101 degrees outside so I definitely stayed inside alot in the AC and wrote!

This weekend is going to be the same-we're going to go camping and I'm hoping to get alot of reading done about Kohlberg. Good old Kohlbert and his stages of moral development. So far, I prefer Chickering for its readability and practical application. Kolhberg loved his vocabulary and I have to spend time looking up words! It's written from a heavy psychology perspective and since I'm not a psychologist it is a bit harder to read for me.