lately...

• As of two weeks ago, I officially have a chair for my dissertation! Yay! I hadn't heard from the professor several days after I'd sent him an e-mail requesting a meeting. He is our department chair but, officially he's an administrator for the university, so he's busy. Also, he's never not responded to an e-mail. (I've had a few professors who didn't respond to a request, instead of just saying no.) Anyway, we finally arranged to meet and from the jump, he basically told me our department doesn't pay him, so I'll need to handle the editing, but he'd help me with all the conceptual issues. And, if I agreed to take care of the editing, he would be my chair. I'd already planned to hire an editor, so I was more than happy to agree to that. Now, the next hurdle is to find three other people who will agree to serve on the committee. so, now i need to create a one page summary of my topic and shop it around to some professors in my department. "Please, sir/ma'am... could you spare some time to help with my dissertation" lol... okay, I won't have to pull an Oliver Twist, but it is a matter of getting the right mix of people together who can and will work together with me and eventually sign off on my dissertation. My chair suggested that I ask Professor Toppertown to serve on my committee. (He's the professor who ALWAYS has to one up your story. If I say I went to Paris for Spring Break, he'll say "oh, yeah, my wife and I took a private jet to Paris for Spring Break AND we rented out the Eiffel Tower." (-_-) As long as he doesn't slow my process, I can handle him.) sigh... half the battle of earning a doctorate is jumping through the administrative and bureaucratic hoops AND dealing with idiosyncrasies. but, i guess that's the case for any situation where you're trying to advance. well, except for the fact that I'm also paying for this...
• So, I was looking at my blog from way back in August 2009, when I first started the program. Wow... it's a wonder I didn't have a heart attack. tooo much going on. I also noticed that at that time, JE was only supposed to come and stay for a few weeks. uhm, yeah... didn't quite play out that way.
• And, here I am trying to move back to Oklahoma. I participated in a webinar a few weeks for the position I mentioned in my last post. A lot of the information was stuff I'd read or heard before, but one thing that became very clear is that the position's very selective (only 2% of those who applied last year were offered a position), which I already sensed. And, really, that's the way it should be. There are also several steps in the process, with a total of 6-8 weeks for the entire process. honestly, I'm over jobs that have these looong windows of time for the application process. i applied for the job over two weeks ago, and haven't heard anything. it's weird because they contacted me about the position and encouraged me to apply, and to hear nothing throws me off. then again, two weeks isn't really that long, so i should probably chill. an organization that i worked for before has some openings in their Tulsa office, and I'm supposed to talk to the executive director about a few of them tomorrow. 
• my goal is to have a new job by April 1, so I'm really praying that things work out and move rapidly. Lord knows I'm sooo over my main job. Of course, I'm THANKFUL to have a job with benefits, but I'm also unhappy here. I just know I can be doing so much more with my skill set.(On a side note, one thing that makes me hesitant to move back to Oklahoma and work is the fact that I'll have to pay state taxes again. LOL... but, yeah, I really do want as much of my money as possible. thankfully, the cost of living is cheap, but still...)
• speaking of taxes, i just did mine today. on the plus side, i'm earning twice as much as i earned last year. on the down side, it's still not a great deal of money. :-/ I also was going to owe taxes, if it hadn't been for the education credit I received. i breathed a huge sigh of relief when those numbers changed from red to green in Turbo Tax!
• so, i finally had my blood work done for the reproductive endocrinologist's (RE) office. They're still waiting to hear about some of the tests, but so far, everything came back normal. which is good, but... if everything is normal why am i experiencing classic PCOS symptoms? I'm supposed to meet with the doctor on Thursday, but I don't have high hopes for the conversation. my sense is he'll tell me the same things an ob-gyn would say, which kinda defeats the purpose of seeing a specialist, you know? one of the nurses just called and they need even more blood work done. to say that i'm angry is an understatement. when i had blood drawn, I actually had to go twice: once to the doctor's office and then to a lab because when they tried to draw a third time (they had to draw blood over a two hour time frame), nothing would come out. she was in the right veins, and my blood would not cooperate. anyway, between those two trips, they took about 12 tubes of blood. And it didn't cross their minds to order the other tests too?! sigh... this is unacceptable.
• in other health news, we watched part of a documentary in one of my classes: Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick? that hour long segment was so interesting. it basically presented pretty compelling arguments that showed the amount of money you earned, and where you lived predicted how long you would live. of course, i'm over simplifying. but, the stats and information were striking. i planned to buy it, but it's not available for home use and the costs for colleges and universities is out of this world. which is really ironic because it privileges the "haves"... yet again. 
• Valentine's Day is right around the corner and I'm not the least bit excited. It's one of my favorite holidays... I know it's sappy, but deep down, I love...love and expressions of it. the cards, candy, hearts, kisses... all that... it makes me smile, no matter the time of year, but especially on February 14. but this year? I'm not feeling it at all. even when I wasn't in a relationship, I'd send the family cards and a little gift.
• ok, ok, ok... so deep down, i'm not feeling Valentine's Day because... I'm not in love with JE anymore. i saw a quote that said something to effect of, "love is what's left when being in love has burned away." and that's how I'm feeling now... I love and care about/for him, but that romantic love has faded. and what's made it all the more tricky/sticky is that i can tell he's still in love AND for some reason he thinks I'm still in love.i guess that he thinks I am because I still do things that are loving. does that make sense?  it's not that I'm angry or fed up or anything like that, so I still do the things I'd do for the people I care about. I just haven't felt the butterflies and things like that in a long while. i know that there will not always be bells and whistles. but, there should be some excitement there.

until next time... 

schoolin' life...

• I had my surgery last Wednesday and all went well! Well, minus the fact that my blood pressure was sky high. sigh... I'm sick of dealing with this. I know the key to lowering it is losing weight, and nothing I'm doing is budging it. I realize that the root issue is the PCOS and I have to get that in check. I hadn't talked with my reproductive endocrinologist in a few months because I'd called to set up an appointment to do time sensitive blood work a few months ago. (you have to come in on day 1 or 2 of your cycle.) and... no one called me back. around the same time, I had my dental issues, and well, I never got around to following up with them. long story short, i e-mailed the nurse last week and explained what happened (when the office did not call me back) and what was going on with my body now. she called me back and basically said that she suspected that I'm insulin resistant, but I'd need to have blood work to confirm it. but, i can't have it done until day 1 or 2 of my cycle... so, the saga continues. anyway, I'm confident that once I start really taking care of the PCOS, everything else will fall into place. When I was diagnosed years ago, I didn't really have to do a lot to keep it in check. Exercise and diet kept the weight down. i mean, i've never been skinny, but I've been at a weight I'm comfortable with... I guess now that I'm getting older (hard to believe I'll be 30 this year), I have to be more aggressive.enough of that medical talk. it might be too much information, but oh, well. 
• You know what I'm interested in doing? seeing a psychic. I know, I know... I don't need any answers, but I am curious about it. I guess you could say I'm skeptical, but not a cynic. This is Austin, so I'm sure I can find one. It's just a matter of me deciding I want to pay someone for that. we'll see...
• It's starting to sink in that next week, I'll be starting my last semester of coursework... EVER. it also means I need to kick things into high gear. I need to finish my dissertation proposal, get a dissertation chair, and then have my proposal defense. and assuming that goes well, by this time next year, I'll be working on wrapping up my dissertation and preparing for a dissertation defense. eeeek!!! that's so scary.  I finally asked a professor to serve as my chair. he hasn't responded to my e-mail yet, which either means he hasn't read it OR he doesn't want to be my chair. actually, it's not about wanting to do it, it's more about not having the time. he's also the department chair and has other  positions in the university. i have someone else in mind to ask, but I'm not sure how familiar he is with the type of dissertation I'm doing, as far as the methodology. I've worked with him before, so I know his working style and personality and like it. (he's the professor that is kinda nerdy looking, but has this smooth Barry White voice that makes me swoon. LOL). I'm just not sure how many students he has right now. 
• so, I was on Twitter a while ago, and clicked on the profile of someone who was RT'd. I look at the person's recent images and lo and behold, I see a friend from Spelman. we weren't bffs, but we were pretty good friends. we even stayed close after we graduated from college. I lost her number somehow and she's not really on FB, so I haven't talked to her in a long while. anyway, what threw me off when I was looking at the pictures is that my friend's dating a woman. nothing wrong with that at all. but... I've always known her to be heterosexual. the same thing happened with a FB friend that I grew up with in church and we graduated the same year from high school. she has two daughters, and then suddenly she's dating a woman. granted, they're both dating studs, but it's still so... odd to see someone switch to the "other team." *shrug*
• I'm VERY nervous about it, but I'm going to go ahead and apply for a position with a charter school opening  in Tulsa in the fall. I talked with the director of recruitment and she said I seemed like a good fit for the position and connected me with someone who's in the position that I'm in, but in a different location. He and I will talk later this week and I'm going to participate in a webinar about leadership opportunities next week. no lie, I'm nervous primarily because the job is a big leap from anything I've done before. it's basically an opportunity to put to use all the things I've learned over the years. until now, I've had jobs where I used the skills, but not in a cogent way that the position will require. that being said, I know I need to move forward into bigger and better things.

until next time...