Irony is NOT Funny

This week marks the end of my Educ 809 course and my latest submission of my thesis proposal to my committee.  I am personally shocked and amazed how much transformation occurs over time with one piece of writing.  I think I am arriving…

Since my comprehensive exam in 2009, I have been attempting to write a comprehensive proposal towards my dissertation in educational leadership.  My initial beginnings with my proposal never got to a place of completion.  To sum it up, I was distracted.

Get out of the problem.  That was the feedback I was given after I submitted a partial first draft of my proposal.  I was living “the problem” and continued to write about “the problem.”  Unfortunately, “the problem” is not the dissertation.  I had to make a decision.

I left my full-time teaching position to commit my time to writing and research.  This was a radical move and in hind-sight, not fully thought out.  What I do realize today is how important it was for me to write with a clear conscience.  I needed to write.

Months pass and I finally submitted a partial second draft with full intentions of writing and getting out of the problem.  My writing did shift from “the problem” to a new state of being… It’s not political.  I was in transition.  I was angry.  I was frustrated.

The problem was so embedded in my lived experience that to get past the problem was to point fingers as to why there is the problem in the first place.  Wow.  I had no idea.  I was making progress but now I had to get out of the politics… and back into the academics.

Next draft, a new approach to my dissertation proposal… I started to write my proposal from a personal point of view… like a BLOG.  Can you guess what happened?  Third submission of a partial proposal was quickly returned with the comment, “It’s not about you.”

Ouch.  That hurts.  This academic writing process is more challenging than I had thought.  HELP.  It’s not about me?  Then, what is this dissertation all about?  I was feeling lost.  I was walking in the dark and I could not see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I took Educ 809, a seminar course designed to help PhD and EdD students to complete their dissertation.  I thought it was good Karma or good timing.  I needed this dissertation process to be demystified.  And, you know what?  Mission accomplished.

I have finished a fourth version of my proposal today with all that I had learned from Educ 809.  I handed it in to my supervisors and I feel pretty good about it.  It still needs some work, but I tried my best to make it an academic paper to move on to phase 2.

IRONY IS NOT FUNNY.  The contents of my paper was about out-of-field teachers, secondary math, and learning on-the-job.  I questioned how teachers without the content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge can be proficient at teaching math.

What I am learning from my writing as a graduate student is… I don’t have the knowledge or experience to write a dissertation in a few months.  I need to take the time to understand, learn from deliberate practice and engagement, and build a sense of self-efficacy to write.

I am writing about me.  That is the irony.  I am not an expert in educational research or academic writing.  I am learning “on-the-job” what it means to be proficient at being a researcher practitioner.  I am learning.  I am humbled.  I am seeing progress.  Yay me.