Dissertation Update

All right- I thought that I would spend a little bit of blog space talking about the main project occupying my life now- MY DISSERTATION. I work on it 5 days a week, usually for an average of 8 hours a day so it literally is a full time job. But, you would think that I didn't have this "job" due to the lack of posts about it, since most of the posts are about the various activities and travels in my life. I learned the hard way in college that I actually function more efficiently when I have other activities besides just SCHOOL.

I was out of control at BYU. I have honestly NEVER studied so much in my life- it was pathetic. I was on-campus all day, from 8 am to 10 pm and studying in-between my classes. I greatly limited my social time because I felt that my focus needed to be on my studies. I actually regret this a lot because I had such AMAZING friends who supported me and that I would hang-out with in my limited free time. It was so pathetic because they would come and find me on the 2nd floor of the HBLL (Harold B. Lee Library) in my study area because I had my own locker there so that I wouldn't have to break my back lugging my books everywhere. My GPA from BYU was good (good enough to get me into grad school which was all that I cared about), but not the best. Why? I think it is because I literally drove myself crazy by studying TOO much and reading into the multiple choice questions. I rocked the essays and things that I had to "show my work", but I did horrible at multiple choice tests because I would always be thinking of the exception and would misconstrue what the professor was looking for.

I decided that I needed to have some BALANCE in my life- that I need to devote equal time to work/school, social, spiritual, and cultural adventure time. I work really hard and then I play really hard as well. And, I find that all other areas- particularly school/work- are more successful AND I am much happier all around. This is a very long, roundabout way of explaining why the focus of my posts has been more on my cultural and social happenings. Its definitely a lot more exciting to post photos of these events, rather than of some of the newspaper and medical journal articles I am coding :-)

People always ask me how my dissertation is "going" and my reply is that its "coming" along. The next question is when am I going to be done with it. According to my latest evaluation with my adviser, I will have a rough draft done by January (I left the date fairly vague to have some flexibility). I'm no math major, but I do know that leaves me with about 9 months to finish it. To some, this may seem like a lot of time, but when you have to assemble something that is book length and of good enough quality to impress a committee of top scholars in your field, its not that much. BUT, I am happy to report that I feel this goal is possible. I will have to continue to work VERY HARD, but it seems likely.

I have just finished coding nearly 600 newspaper articles from the New York Times for all of their archives for my three topics: hormone replacement therapy, silicone breast implants, and antidepressant suicidality risk in youths. I wish that I am completely done with the newspaper coding, but I still have 4 other papers to go. The nice thing is that I can now do a purposive sample with all the articles for a 3 year period and then just random sample the rest. Thus, I will still have a fair amount of articles but less than before. I've written a fair amount on the background of each topic and I need to start formulating it into chapter form.

I am just so grateful for WILLIAM that he has a great job so that I can just have this dissertation "job" and not have to have another one!