Graduate Student Blogs

This weekend, I graduate from GWU’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development with a master’s degree in education policy. Over these past two years, I repeatedly have informed friends that I cannot meet on various weekends and evenings because I have pages to read and papers to write. I have worked on group projects where members have lived across DC, Maryland, and Virginia, held fulltime jobs, had families, and still managed to find time to talk about a presentation. I have tried to answer the question about whether the degree is worth it on many occasions.

I have realized that my answer is yes because I have had two years to learn from the members of my cohort and they have been the best part of my program.

 The Education Policy Studies program is small. Each member, however, brought different experiences that added to the discussions we had both in and out of class. We have teachers, both from charter and non-charter schools and from unionized and non-unionized districts. We have classmates who wrote about education, who worked in education advocacy organizations, and who worked in testing organizations.  We have people who had spent time in the DC area and others coming here for the program. We have members who enjoy talking and others who listened.

It started in a bar. Two doc students and a professor were simply discussing literature and theory -- typical bar conversation, you know. And then an idea emerged. Quite a wonderful idea leapt out of the basement of Froggy Bottom Pub on Pennsylvania Ave.

We were going to start a reading salon. More reading? That's a question my classmate and I asked ourselves. But we decided we would find a way to make it exciting for other students and for ourselves. We decided that we would create a space where we could read "for pleasure" outside of our assigned readings.

The idea continued to blossom. It wasn't enough to just read some literature and theory and sit together and discuss, I mean we seem to do enough of that in class. We thought it would be even more engaging if we tied the readings to a location in Washington, DC. The city is filled with resources. Much of what is in the city has inspired both theorists and writers. So we did just that. We built a small community that read a little and explored a little. 

Once you know what you know, how does one come to know more?  I’d guess by asking more questions.  My wife has now taken the plunge back into school and she asked me if scholarly peer-reviewed journal articles were primary or secondary sources.  Without any hesitation, I replied, “Primary”.

This instance brought me back to the root of my anxiety when first entering the HOL doctoral program.  Considering my educational background of undergraduate and graduate studies, I have come accustomed to being charged to come up with “original thought” for so long that it is a constant struggle to now having to solely depend on scholarly peer-reviewed journal articles as my “primary source” for information.  That brings to question, what is truly a primary source?  

According to Dictionary.com, by definition a primary source is a document, recording or other source of information that was created at the time being studied, by an authoritative source, usually one with direct personal knowledge of the events being described.  It serves as an “original” source of information about the topic.  Primary sources are distinguished from secondary sources, which often cite, comment on, or build upon primary sources.

April. It’s all that remains. Once May rolls around, I will have finished my readings, my papers and presentations, my classes, and I’m going to have things called ‘weekends’ back in my life.

Despite having already ordered my cap and gown, I am not done. The April pages of my planner glow with highlighted due dates and Saturdays and Sundays designated for the completion of specific assignments. Scheduling anything with other friends in graduate school becomes a conversation of how I am working on a paper that weekend and they are working on one the next. We’ve put our plans on hold until May. I find myself feeling happy that spring weather has not shown up yet because it makes me feel better when I spend so much time inside working.  

Despite the looming possibility of "snowquestration," it really is almost spring in D.C. Spring break is next week. The daffodils in my office window are blooming, and I'm predicting that the cherry blossoms will be blooming in the next three weeks. (I'm not an expert, though, so no promises.) I'm looking forward to the spring weather and the cherry blossoms, but I'm apprehensive about my last semester at GW.

I'm currently working on my capstone project. Despite a rather bumpy start, I feel confident in my chosen topic and research now. It's been a great experience to mull over everything that interests me and choose something worth learning more about. I'm also learning that it's difficult to be independent. I've worked on most of my larger projects with a group, and I'm completing my capstone independently. Without having other people holding me accountable, I've had trouble staying motivated with my research. I'm easily distracted by a dissenting article and I feel like I need to read EVERYTHING that has every been written about ANYTHING even remotely related to my topic. I'm struggling to focus, (truthfully, Netflix's House of Cards isn't helping, although it has literally nothing to do with my capstone), but I'm enjoying the experience. I know that when I'm finished I will have something to be proud of. 

Graduation is looming, and I'm reading to move forward in my career and finish this chapter of my life. Until then, I'm going to embrace these last few months. Graduate school has been a great experience for me, and I'm fine just enjoying the ride.

Recently, I had the pleasure of headlining a speaking engagement series at a neighboring college to speak to students about my perspective on the challenges and changes of one’s identity would endure while leading the various efforts in a community development initiative.  As I listened to myself open up to these aspiring students that are a year or two removed from entering this “competitive” workforce, I also was taught a lesson.  That’s what happens when one is charged to teach.  He or she also learns.

I revealed everything that I possibly could about my journey coming from an undergraduate psychology program and entry-level position at a mental health state institution to now partaking in a doctoral program and occupying a Federal government position in the field of social services.  I strategically provided a brief overview about me because I wanted the students to have as much time to ask their burning questions, whatever they may be.  We danced through the Q and A session and didn’t take one second for granted.  Our eyes and minds were locked and loaded.  It felt more like 30 minutes had passed by the time I was given the cue that I had five minutes remaining. 

Here we are on a prestigious college campus, in a classroom filled with 20-25 aspiring students that are ready to get out there and change the world.  The last question was fitting for the finale.  I was asked, “Out of the several degrees that you have and the one that you’re pursuing currently, how much of that knowledge do you use at work on a regular bases”? 

My mid-semester blues most often appear in February, which made me perfectly understand Danielle Bierzynski’s recent blog post where she wrote about that state of mind that causes one to question the point of pursuing a degree and whether it is worth the energy even to think about finishing.

February is a cold, dark month and inevitably has the first major deadlines of the spring semester, which makes it the perfect time for mid-semester blues to strike. As I scramble to meet multiple deadlines, class time feels like a burden that takes away time I could use to work on projects or papers for other courses.

I am a little stuck right now and I don’t think I am alone. There are those moments during the semester, or perhaps during your degree, where you ask yourself: Why am I doing this? Why am I here? Will I ever finish? Sometimes these questions are just passing thoughts, but other times they weigh on you for weeks. I am currently suffering from the latter. So how does one get “unstuck?”

I have no easy answers but I have found that shifting my attention elsewhere works. First of all, I have to remember that the city in which I live has so many opportunities to do things that are not school related. I grab my friends and hit the town. Despite the amount of work that needs to be done, I find that not thinking about school, even if it is just for a little bit, helps me tremendously.

Also, I tell myself not to worry about never finishing. I will finish. And in order to actually convince myself of that fact, I’ve set goals for what I want to do after I finish. These goals range from professional to more life centered goals. Setting those goals excites me about the possibilities that await, when I finish. So I keep pushing knowing that the sometimes banality of my coursework is moving me toward bigger and better things.

I wonder would everyone appreciate a sunny day the same way, day after day, if every day was a sunny day.  If there were no differences to expect, would we be excited about tomorrow or would we dread every passing minute?

A life in the world of academia historically has puzzled me since my years in undergrad.  The professors before seemed so certain about any and everything.  They behaved, thought, and even breathed grandiosity compared to us mere students.  I’m human.  So, what I remember about a past experience is what I will anticipate to happen again if placed in the same situation to some degree.  Higher Education has always reeked of competitive sweat throughout a classroom, library, the student center, etc.  I am conditioned to address every professor by his or her formal salutation.  Once entering GW, I experienced a culture shock that began with the request of some, most of my professors.  With the second semester of my second year on its way, I continue to meet professor after professor that insists to be addressed by their first name.  That is unheard of where I’m from.

“I never read anymore since I went back to school.” You’ve probably heard the phrase bounce around between classmates or friends, and perhaps you’ve mentioned the irony of the statement once or twice yourself.

Graduate students clearly have a passion for learning, and graduate students who wish to be educators can often recall the voracity for reading they once claimed in younger days. But somehow, in the slog of semester after semester, reading is the first hobby that gets tossed out of the window of time management. Sure you’re still reading, but somehow academic journals don’t leave you eagerly flipping pages in bed at night. At least most of us don’t feel that way.

Last year, after stumbling upon a New York Times article about fiction and empathy, I found research data for which my counselor brain had been unknowingly searching. The truth that getting swept up in a good story is registered by your brain as if actually happened to you. That meeting characters in a novel is a practice that not only makes a person less lonely, but also actually makes a person more empathetic towards others.

“I never read anymore since I went back to school.” You’ve probably heard the phrase bounce around between classmates or friends, and perhaps you’ve mentioned the irony of the statement once or twice yourself.

Graduate students clearly have a passion for learning, and graduate students who wish to be educators can often recall the voracity for reading they once claimed in younger days. But somehow, in the slog of semester after semester, reading is the first hobby that gets tossed out of the window of time management. Sure you’re still reading, but somehow academic journals don’t leave you eagerly flipping pages in bed at night. At least most of us don’t feel that way.

Last year, after stumbling upon a New York Times article about fiction and empathy, I found research data for which my counselor brain had been unknowingly searching. The truth that getting swept up in a good story is registered by your brain as if actually happened to you. That meeting characters in a novel is a practice that not only makes a person less lonely, but also actually makes a person more empathetic towards others. 

In a week, I begin my final semester in graduate school. Barring any major disasters, at the end of May, I will walk across a stage and return to evenings and weekends free of class work. I will no longer spend hours each week trying to cram in endless chapters from books I can never find in the same place I last placed them. I will not have to navigate through Blackboard trying to remember if a reading is filed under Files or under Discussion or under some other undiscovered folder. At the end of semesters, my friends will not need to worry about whether I have disappeared under a mountain of notes for final papers. With the lure of this freedom dangling only a few months away, I find myself reflecting on whether it was worth it.

Two years spent in classes where more often than not classes ended with the realization of just how much work was left can make one wonder if those two years were well spent. Last semester, I felt like each week I left my Race, Law & Education class unsure if anything would ever change or improve. Issues addressed in Supreme Court cases from 50 years ago still resonate today, a pattern I noticed during my History of American Education Reform class as well. In both classes, we discussed solutions and ideas developed 20 years ago that still had not been fully implemented.

In other classes, we looked for possible solutions only to discover that they needed to be context specific. As we examined leaders in education in my Leadership and Education course, it became clear that the traits that worked in one environment might lead to failure in another setting. Discussions in Policy Issues in International Education for Developing Countries often led to the same conclusion. Ideas had to be carefully adapted for the developing country or emergency situation to have any chance of success.

It is Christmastime, and already I am thinking about New Year’s. Only this year have I realized how strongly I prefer New Year’s to Christmas, and that it might just be my favorite holiday. This doesn’t exactly come as a surprise, given that I am a counseling student—a pursuit that includes constantly striving for greater insight and self-awareness; dedicating my life’s work to helping others (and myself) reach their potential and be their best selves. The celebration of the New Year, with its focuses on self-improvement, leaving behind negative behaviors, and embracing positive changes, is practically the poster holiday for the helping professions. 

Like many people, every year around this time I think toward the future, taking time to revisit my dreams and goals, and identifying what obstacles are in the way. Then I craft those obstacles into concrete resolutions that I can actively work on. I also look back over the past year and make a list of its highlights, as well as things that I’d like to change or leave behind. Sometimes friends and I do rituals, ranging from visioning boards to cleansing yoga to “In vs Out” lists, to mark these processes and help kick off a fresh start. It is a time to take stock, to learn from the past in the name of productively moving forward.

But what happens if we don’t keep our resolutions and meet our goals, at least not in the immediate time frame we’d hoped for? What happens when we invariably mess up, get off-track, fail at something? Far too often, people have an all-too-easy default response of guilt, self-blame, and criticism. We are hard on ourselves, and we hold ourselves to sky-high standards. In many cases there is no room built in to reevaluate, compromise, or celebrate the smaller, slower gains being made and micro-victories won—let alone work through the notion of failure and transform it into anything other than a punitive judgment on our broader self-worth and capabilities.

With one year and one semester under my belt, I am officially declaring that I rid of my childish ways…

…I am now, at the very least, a pre-teen in the intellectual world of academia.  I have been in higher education as long as a medical doctor by now.  But I was a student.  I am now hanging with the big boys (and girls) now.  Not as one of them, yet, but as part of their entourage.  I’m finally turning the corner towards popularity by association.  Day by day I’m gaining more and more traits to solidify my own sense of identity as a person, as a student, as a husband, as a father, as a son, as a relative, as a friend, and as an employee (no order of priority).  I can’t know who I am if I don’t know why I’m here.  I don’t know why I’m here if I can’t know who summoned me.  I can’t know who summoned me without also knowing why.

There’s a purpose for all of us.  Some purposes are given while some purposes are chosen.  Some purposes are self-proclaimed while some purposes are elected.  It was very encouraging to me to attend GSEHD orientation more than a year ago only to be welcomed by an array of diversity in age, race, and gender.  What this diversity has done for me is invaluable.  I have to pass by countless amounts of people, buildings, and marketing schemes to arrive to class on GW campus three times a week.  I see and hear divisiveness day in and day out.  That is until I arrive to class.

In the first days of her Education Policy course and her History of American Education Reform course, Professor Futrell repeatedly emphasized the immense size of the American education system. The number of schools, school districts, students, and teachers seemed impossibly large and incredibly complex. While I theoretically understood how these numbers created obstacles for education reform and the implementation of education policy, it is only through my internship at the Data Quality Campaign that I have fully begun to appreciate the importance she placed on those numbers. At times it seems as if what I learned in class is crashing in on what I'm working on, which, I suppose, is the point of taking these classes and working on this degree.

 During my internship, I have become increasingly aware of how much the complexity and size of the American education system presents challenges to reform. Stakeholders at all levels, from national and federal education organizations to state education agencies to local education agencies, want their voices heard and their policies implemented. During my internship, I have conducted research on education policy and legislation, which has given me a new perspective on why implementing new policy is challenging.

 Through my research on how different states evaluate teacher effectiveness, I have seen how each state, DC, and Puerto Rico each has a different policy with different requirements. Even when states have similar policies, how they expect districts and schools to implement them may vary. If anything has reiterated Professor Futrell’s lesson on the size of the American education system, it has been my research for my internship.

Sorry for the late entry. The holiday got the best of me!!

My last blog post of the 2011-2012 school year discussed my first experience at the AERA conference in Vancouver.

I am revisiting the conference theme, but this time as a presenter and not a mere observer. Four other members of my cohort and I made the trip to Dayton, Ohio for the Bergamo Conference on Curriculum Theory and Classroom Practice. This conference was founded by William Pinar and Janet Miller in the late 1970s and was created as part of the reconceptualist movement in education, which sought to understand curriculum beyond implementation and evaluation.

            This semester, I am taking a fascinating class called “Discrimination and Health.” It explores the myriad ways in which experiencing unequal or biased treatment in society can have direct negative impact on both mental and physical health. The course examines this phenomenon on multiple levels, from individual interactions (i.e. a doctor improperly treating a patient based on stereotypes; the effects of experiencing daily racism, sexism, or homophobia on one’s wellbeing), to broader systemic manifestations of bias (i.e. physical and mental tolls of living in the unsafe neighborhoods that low-income families and people of color are frequently relegated to; hospital policies that subtly exclude the needs of culturally-diverse families.) Each week we read and discuss several research articles clustered around a particular topic; my brain has come to eagerly anticipate chewing through the banquet of food for thought that is always provided.

I have found the material nothing short of electrifying and perspective-shifting: a revolutionary validation of some things I felt I’d “known”, intuitively, for years, and yet so much more to this particular puzzle than I could have imagined before. Although it’s obvious to me now that scientists, psychologists and scholars have focused on this for years, amassed a good body of research, and organized professionally in the name of advocacy and public health, I had no idea that all of this existed, formally, prior to taking the course. As a budding mental health counselor who’s been engaged in anti-oppression and social justice work for years, I’m shocked that it took me so long to locate this body of work; yet this reaffirms to me just how far out of general public consciousness these notions are. Much of our class discussions have come back around to why this is: the slow reluctance of society to change; innate aspects of human nature; dominant group members’ fears and perceptions of “losing” power? Does it have to do with various groups’ financial/political interests at stake, or a de-prioritization of ethics? Are we merely overwhelmed by the magnitude of systemic and institutional change required to address the many-pronged and deep-rooted manifestations of social discrimination?

Such questions-- getting at why people, society, and the world are as they are— can also quickly become much larger questions of meaning and existential concern. I know that being able to participate in these rewarding discussions hinges on my ability to suspend and reevaluate my own beliefs: a willingness to accept others’ experiences as real even when they appear to contradict what I’ve known to be true, and to expand my conceptualizations to accommodate both of our realities. To all of these big questions, I don’t have The Answer, nor will I learn it in this class. There is not one easy, apparent answer to be had. But what we can do in the meantime, as classmates and as human beings, is to learn from each other and learn to love the process, as opposed to fretting about finding the perfect solution. We are learning to tolerate the anxiety of not knowing for sure, of not having one end-all-and-be-all correct answer. This requires certain qualities of openness and flexibility, as well enough self-security to not view others’ perspectives and experiences as threats. Surrendering belief in the absolute, sole right-ness of one’s own perspective requires bravery, but by respectfully allowing space for others’ full realities to exist alongside our own, we are all strengthened, and we become connected as humanity.

When you’re a graduate student, it can become all too easy to get caught behind school walls. Your successes, failures, interactions and aspirations revolve around the university, and you can forget that being a citizen of the world calls for participation on the outside.  You might find yourself saying, “Once I graduate, I’ll have more time to become involved in this cause or that organization.”  

When the truth is, your time as a student is the best opportunity to build relationships with causes that may have absolutely nothing to do with your university. And rather than seeing yourself as a ward of the school, maybe you can start thinking about being an ambassador for your school, and building connections between the academic and non-academic worlds.

Recently, a fellow student and I have had the opportunity to do just this. We saw a cause that we cared about and we saw a deficit in the university for addressing that cause. And instead of just treading water on our own, we are making it our mission to connect people outside of GW who were already doing amazing things to come and share them with students.

In theory, I planned, anticipated, benchmarked, planned again, anticipated again, and benchmarked again and again about where I would be in the first semester of my second year in the HOL doctoral program.  Everything seems to be going just fine and right on task...until the unexpected happened.  The unexpected is defined as something that was not supposed to happen according to my planning, anticipating, and benchmarking.  My son had a bad accident and nearly severed his pinky finger on his right hand (writing hand).  THIS WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN!

FYI, to experience something that unexpectedly interrupts your planning throughout a 3-5 year period is not so bad.  This is true only in hindsight.  It is catastrophic while you are in the moment.  What I find even more challenging than dealing with the unexpected interruption of my master plan (of having no interruptions at all) is maintaining my focus and drive to complete my multiple assignments while or after channeling my attention, time, and effort towards something or someone that takes precedence over advancing my education.

There’s an old adage that is fitting to my point.  It says that the only way to sway someone from griping about a particular issue is to give them a bigger issue.  This is loosely stated.  Actually, I don’t gripe about completing my assignments, but I hope that you get my point.  I put my whole into completing my assignments.  To obtain my doctoral degree is more of a personal aspiration than a professional goal.   I voluntarily allow myself to be vulnerable and become anxious, pressured, and uncomfortable.  It brings drama to the experiences.  But this is a rare and unexpected time that I honestly don’t care.  I have been numb since his accident a few days ago.

Countdown: 2.5 semesters completed, 1.5 semesters of graduate school left

What I’m looking forward to: Evenings without class, weekends without reading or paper writing, that elusive thing called free time