I Can "Dissertate"

     I am not, by nature, a true procrastinator. When I need to do something, it gets done. Always, but that does not mean that I do not stress about in on the way to getting it done. I do. I worry about the how it will get done, the when it will get done, the quality of getting it done. I worry about whether or not when I start the task whether or not my conviction that I will get it done will last.
     I experience high levels of dissonance when something that needs to get done doesn't. It makes me uncomfortable and then I begin to worry not only about getting it done, but why I was waiting and procrastinating. And if that happens, then I have just doubled my dissonance, so in the end it does not pay to procrastinate. Now, I must add a caveat. I usually proclaim out loud, even if no one is present to hear, what I have to do. The verbal commitment seems to make it more real in some way and it makes me feel more accountable. Either there is  true human to listen or my collection of ventriloquist dummies will listen. Saying it out loud makes it real. Once that verbal commitment is made, one might wonder then why I might be found cleaning out the junk drawer, organizing the silverware, sharpening my collection of pencils--Procrastination--on might say, but in reality it is not.  It is thinking time. I multi-task. My brain moving in waves in another locale, while my fingers and conscious brain are mixing cookie batter, or cooking homemade tapas. And at some moment, the two will merge and I will get cracking.
     In a previous post, I discussed the special feelings that are affecting me as i begin this dissertation journey. I will not write a redundant post, but summarize by saying that the feeling has been divided between I can do this and I can never do this. So I have been cautiously starting the first chapter, slowly and oh so cautiously-like inching your toes into icy cold water. Each word was agonized over. Each idea that was committed to the page run through the wringer as though there were an invisible army of goons and goblins waiting to strike me with the idiocy of my words or ideas. But no such thing happened. And then I read a series of dissertations by unknown writers who were 'dissertating' on similar topics. And I understand all that was being said. And I realized, I have the knowledge-base I need. And I read the structure and marveled at the fluencies, but realized these were done, format-reviewed, and published. I am still in draft form. I looked at the writing and realized I can 'dissertate' the same way they can. And then it hit me. I can do this. I am perfectly capable of doing this and I will do it. I am going to 'dissertate.'

And so it begins

I feel the urge, no the need, to write this post as I stand with metaphorical new shoes to begin my journey to the land of the Big D. It is not to be confused with Gee’s Discourse with a capital D; it is a separate use of the fourth letter of the English language.

And so it begins:

Four years or so of finished and completed course work, comprehensives done and passed, prospectus in and approved. And now I stand at the precipice? On the precipice? of this journey called Dissertation. A myriad of emotions fill me. Excitement, fear, trepidation, pride, motivation. On Monday I feel prepared and ready. On Tuesday I feel inept and not ready. Wednesday fills me with the knowledge that I know what I want to do and how to do it, while Thursday has me running around in circles, staring at a white screen, totally unable to decide how to start a single sentence. Friday is a rest day and Saturday brings me back to work time. I know that much, if not all of my future weekend spare time, will be devoted to the Big D since the remainder of the week belongs to the classes of pre-adolescent students that need my attention and tutelage. And when I think of them, and of what we do every day, I feel more grounded in my journey toward the Big D because it is what is happening in my classroom and in the classrooms of today that brought me to this point.

The landscape of education is changing and the need to understand how the other big D, the d in digital, is being used to enhance the education of our students today. I am fascinated by everything I see and hear in my classroom, but I have found myself really interested in those students that can be identified as “reluctant adolescent boys”. Not new to the field, much has been studied about how boys are more disengaged and perform less successfully in traditional academic measure of literacy, but my interest is in studying how boys’ other literacy identities - their digital identities- can help academic identity development. I know what I want, and I know what I have to do to get there, but it is a daunting and fearful road. My computers are primed, my margins are set, My APA manual at my side. It is Chapter 1 time- the first of many. There is something special, scary, daunting, exciting about the first chapter. Firsts always have that special something-first dates, first child, first acceptances-firsts. I will hold on to the special feeling that firsts provide and start the journey with a bounce.

Check in every now and then to see where my journey has taken me. Perhaps I will meet up with Robert Frost on that road.