Final week

This is my official final week of work on my dissertation (pre-defense, anyway). I have heard back from both of my chairs, with approval to go forward after making a few changes. I am pretty happy with my version now, and I'm sure it will be even better once I make these changes. Yay. I am particularly proud of my qualitative chapter, because I have less experience with this kind of work, and because it's coherent despite being twice as long as the other chapters.

Of course, I may have more to do after the defense. I'm not sure how common it is to have changes from the committee, but I will need to format it for the grad school at the least. And then of course, many drafts of changes before journal submission. But that should be fun, actually.

In other news:

1) My food poisoning finally ended after a week and a half. Thank god.

2) I have been contacting my interview participants to update their contact info, and find out what the seniors are doing in the Fall. I have heard lots of good news (jobs, college, and an engagement--which might seem too early, but this young woman had a child in December, and she had been hoping her boyfriend would propose when I met her in October). I am happiest about one particular senior who had been the best prepared of all the working class/poor teens I interviewed--ambitious, smart, accomplished. She wants to get a ph.d. in psychology eventually, but had been arguing with her mother over college. Her mom wanted her to go to community college nearby. But she won the argument, and is going to a great state university. Yay!

3) I had a real weekend at home for the first time in a very long time (a year or more?) while waiting to hear back about my dissertation. We went out every night, slept late in the mornings, did a little shopping, and cooked yummy meals. It was really fun, and needed.

4) We also saw the Star Trek movie. It was great! I love Zachary Quinto even more now. Although I did spend the first part of the movie waiting for Spock to cut someone's head open. Also, I thought the actors who played Sulu & Checkov were great.