Well before starting a blog, I promised myself that I would not become a blogger that did not update somewhat frequently, well I have failed... Although my intentions were good, I have not been writing very much. So I will try to get everyone up to speed on what I have been doing. No worries, this will not take very long, since a lot of it relates to school work and that is not very fun to read. First and foremost, I moved!!!!
I am now a member of Savannah and loving every minute of it. It is a great neighborhood. It has almost 5,000 residents, along with a dog park, multiple parks, swimming pools, and full gym. It is almost like living in a resort, but I am lucky enough to live here everyday! So that has been great! My mom was kind enough to come help me with my move and I was all moved in and unpacked within a week...
I then took a stay-cation for a week where I just rested and watch a ton of movies, TV shows, and got to reconnect with some old friends. During this time I did become addicted to The Tudors and Dexter... And if you are reading this now and have some opinion on either please know I have only made it through the first two seasons of The Tudors and the first three seasons of Dexter... No spoilers please!
After that I began teaching Summer I, which is a five week course that met twice a week for 4 hours. To say that was tough is an understatement. All of the students had 8-5 jobs and then came to class from 6-10 p.m. It just made for a long day. Plus being newer to teaching, I did not think to eliminate projects, so I had to grade everything super fast and get feedback to the students quickly, while I was doing this I was beginning preparation for my Comprehensive
exams, so this meant that I needed to meet with every professor in each of my topic areas (Organizational Behavior, Organization Theory, and Human Resource Management) to get any insights on how to study or what to study. Below are pictures of my office, or what I now know as the most popular room in my house!!!
At the beginning of the summer I began outlining all my articles from each of my Seminars, each seminar's outline is about 80 or so pages... I know that it seems like a lot, but really, each seminar had between 6-8 articles a week * approximately 30 pages per article * 10 weeks, that is a lot of information. So it took some time to get everything into a manageable state. Which leads me to what I am doing now...
Comps!!!!!
I know, I know, right about now you are jealous! I now am just studying for my comprehensive exams. So what this entails is being able to know all the main authors in the three subject fields, along with breadth and depth of each topic, and finally having my own novel ideas of how to integrate different components within a subject area. So essentially, questions are comprised of of three parts normally, a historical overview of the field, then a linkage of two concepts, and finally knowing and seeing patterns for future areas of research. Although this is a very daunting task, as one professor put it, if you pass your comprehensive exams, it is essentially saying that you have the knowledge based to be a Ph.D., and since that is only 1% of the population I feel like you have to work for it. But after I finish my comprehensive exams I will be officially finished with the course work and just be ABD (All but dissertation). So it is worth all the hard work and effort.
So this is how comprehensive exams go:
First, you have to turn in a pre-comp paper or research experience. I am working on my paper now and it will be reviewed by the graduate committee and if it is good then I will be allowed to take my comprehensive exams.
Then tentatively on September 17th, because the schedule is not quite set, I will sit in a room for 9 hours and be given 4 questions in my main topic area (OB) and I answer 2, then 2 questions I answer 1 in each of the other areas. After I have completed that I will be given a one week take home exam which I will turn in the following Friday.
Then I have 3-4 weeks of freedom ( it is relative, since I will still be teaching) while 3-4 graders grade each of my answers. I am sure I will be a nervous wreck, but that is how it goes. Then if I pass I will be on to my dissertation. The great thing about the research experience paper I am working on now, is that it will hopefully morph into my dissertation. So that is what I have been up to this summer, and the rest of the summer will just be studying and working on my paper. I am headed to Canada in a few weeks for the Academy of Management Conference. I am really excited about that! That is all for now, I better get back to studying!!!! Yikes :-)
