Pieces of a ManThink it. Do it. Be it. Embellish. |
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10.3.10
Day 69
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
2.3.10
Day 61
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
26.2.10
Day 57
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
23.2.10
Day 54
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
19.2.10
Day 50
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
8.2.10
Day 39
Labels: 2010
5.2.10
Day 35
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



