Pieces of a Man Think it. Do it. Be it. Embellish.

67.68.69.70.71.72.73.74.75.76 77.78.79.80.81.82.83.84.85.86 87.88.89.90.91.92.93.94.95.96 97.98.99.00.01.02.03.04.05.06 07.08.09.10

... 21 to go. Only three weeks but they'll be tough ones. I've just been transcribing the first two of my interviews. They were about 40 minutes each and the transcription took an hour for each, which isn't bad. I'm going with partial transcription of the key points and the dictation machine is a major timesaver. Once it's up and running you just need to press the right foot pedal to play the tape back, and after pausing it automatically rewinds and plays back the last few seconds before you stopped which makes it very natural and easy to continue the thread. The only problem, sitting here at 4.30am doing this, is that my feet have to poke out the bottom of the slanket to operate the foot pedals and I've also taken my slippers off so that I can feel the pedals properly so they're FREEZING!

The last couple of weeks have been absolutely non-stop 18 hour days. I've taken to falling asleep on the sofa about 7pm and then trying to get to bed with the kids at 8pm. Last night I fell asleep on the bed with Louis and woke up about ten minutes later to find him looking at me, wide awake, probably wondering why I'm such a lighweight!

Labels: 2010

... 29 to go. Gearing up for interview fortnight starting Thursday. It has again been bizarre to get a direct taste of the student experience provided by my employer. Getting a recording device has proved virtually impossible - we've some in the library apparently, but they're issued on a first-come-first-basis. In practice this means I've asked them for about 9 days straight, only to be met with blank looks and shrugs of shoulders because they're all out. How the hell are you supposed to coordinate your research interviews when the equipment loan is like the national lottery?

Anyway, one good thing has come out of this farce, which is that in the course of my bitching and moaning about my predicament, my friend Cathy told me about transcription devices with foot pedals. These apparently enable you to jump back and forward in your interview recording with a footpedal, so you don't have to keep stopping the typing. Brilliant! It should save hours and hours. I've sourced a supplier in Cheadle and will be off there tomorrow to pick one up. Cost is a bit steep - £160 - but I should be able to sell it on eBay afterwards for about the same. So, bring it on!

Labels: 2010

... 33 days to go. This is the week the big words came into clearer focus. Since talking with my supervisor on Tuesday I've been re-reading some theory, reflecting, and developing a new understanding of where I am.

I realise now that my approach up to now - gearing up to test hypotheses with control groups, operationalised variables and 'classic' experimental design - has been influenced too strongly by my scientific, logical, rational background.

I've realised through the recent coaching that the subjects' perception of the process, especially around their goal-setting and motivation, is messier than this world view would suggest. As a result, I'll still be assessing some of those original hypotheses, but I'll also be focussing much more on understanding the subjects' inner meaning and experience as they've engaged with the training and coaching processes. Apparently this reflects a more constructivist epistemology and an interpretivist, phenomenological theoretical perspective. Phew, glad we got that straight.

I must admit it's a bit uncomfortable inhabiting this post-positivist world, and I don't know what I'll be able to assert at the end of it all, if anything, but it feels much more like a learning and development experience, for sure.

Labels: 2010

... 36 to go. So, why did the chicken cross the road? Because earlier in the day a 2-3 metre length of scaffolding fell about 100 feet off the top of the new Stockport College construction site and landed on the pavement where the chicken had been walking 10 seconds earlier. Yes, that chicken was me and that's what happened yesterday.

I think you're supposed to sell all your possessions and walk the earth barefoot after something like that happens, but this morning finds me again studying sentences like this;

"Ideographic methods that enable verstehen such as ethnography are, for the pluralist, the methods appropriate for fulfilling their commitment to exploration of actors' phenomenological worlds."

I can't make any sense of it. A dyslexic student once told me that they experienced words 'swimming' on the page; that's just what it feels like. I can be reading something for a good 10 seconds before I realise I was reading it a couple of minutes ago. This is what being a goldfish must be like. The funny thing is, though, my dog-eared text is littered throughout with Chinese translation in pencil. I can't even conceive the will power involved in getting your head round this tosh in another language. They shall inherit the earth, deservingly.

Labels: 2010

... 40 to go. A whole 11 days has passed since I last posted anything, much of which was gearing up for and coming down from Nick's wedding. What a great day, and what a perfect reflection of the love in the world for Nick. A highlight for me was meeting my cousin, Catherine, and Nick's mate, Toby, again for the first time in over 20 years. It was wonderful to see how well two shy, unassuming teenagers have blossomed into such fine people. Toby's speech, especially, was something to cherish.

Eleven days of non-posting on the study front is a bit scary since it takes me past the half way point. A lot of that nervousness comes from knowing that I've not been doing much 'study' in this period in the sense of sitting at home hunched over books. I should really have an understanding of research methods pouring out of my ears at this point, whereas in fact I've been resisting Messrs Gill and Johnson ('Research Methods for Managers') for weeks and finding other things that need to be done.

However, maybe things are not as bad as they seem because during this period much of the nuts and bolts of what needs to happen has been progressing steadily - questionnaires, training and coaching. This must be the equivalent of cruising at 36,000 feet - less nerve-wracking and interesting than take-off and landing, but actually comprising the bulk of what is needed to get from A to B.

So today I'm going to grit my teeth and tackle those research methods in the hope that I don't look like a tit next week when I catch up with my supervisor. If I can do it successfully then hopefully it will spur me on to start gearing up for the two weeks in March when I plan to write everything up. At the moment the prospect is looming on the horizon like a prison sentence, but I just keep telling myself that one day I shall be free.

One man who's already free - literally - is Gil Scott-Heron, and quite a lot of my recent displacement activity has been driven by a growing frenzy about his April UK dates. Talking to siblings at the wedding, I realised that it must be strange for them to see a grown man in a state of such fevered excitement about seeing a grizzled old poet growling away at the organ. However, I've literally been waiting years for this; I can't even count the number of times I sat searching the web in the early hours to see if he'd been released yet, and then it happened.

Even after that, though, I never, ever imagined that he'd actually work again, let alone get back into the UK. It's truly a dream come true. Enjoy...

Labels: 2010

... 51 to go. So much for slacking on the early starts. This last few days I've somehow managed to wake at about 2.30 and not be able to go back to sleep. There's stuff to do, of course, but there are also limits, and for some reason I just can't bring myself to sit reading 'Research Methods for Managers' in a cold room at 3am. I will try and make a start before the weekend, though, since the wedding will take over after Thursday, and I at least want the ideas for the next phase to start percolating this week.

Labels: 2010

... 55 to go. I'm just now flying past Wembley on the Virgin Invader Pendolino, headed back up North after a day in London. I'm expecting hot towels and champagne for the £270 ticket that my dumb institution provided through its outsourced travel agent, but all I have is a woman opposite me sneezing. I told them very clearly that the trip was £95 on thetrainline.com but I guess it was more than someone's job was worth to act on it. One to remember next time we're being lectured about the current economic climate and the need for efficiencies.

Next time I pass this way it'll be for something truly priceless, though; the return of Gil Scott-Heron at the Royal Festival Hall in April. He was on the Today programme this morning, sharp as ever, to promote his new album;



Still reasonably on track study-wise despite slacking a bit on the early starts lately, although since I'm progressing a lot of the work at work, so to speak, this isn't a showstopper right now. I trained my group of guinea pigs yesterday and it went well, so I now have 2-3 weeks of phone coaching ahead and a meeting with my supervisor in a fortnight to hash out my research methods. I have a general sense of where to probe in the final evaluation interviews, but I'll need to wrap it in some theory and big academic words. I have my heart set on epistemological.

Labels: 2010