I know my body is screaming, “What in the hell is going on?” After traveling for 20 hours, and getting to sleep in its own bed, for a glorious 10 hours, it thought it was back on track. And then what do I go and do? Pull an all-nighter.
I was awake the entire night, finishing up my Verbal Data Analysis class assignment at about 7:45AM, at which time I logged into work at IBM.
I left home at about 4:45 to be at the 5:15 presentation of STC‘s PhD Panel Discussion program in Caldwell G109. This was an opportunity for master’s students to learn about what is involved in applying for and being accepted into a PhD program in general, and in the Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media (CRDM) PhD program in particular.
I had the idea for this program last year in STC, but we never got around to organizing it. And we wouldn’t have this year, either, if it hadn’t been for Christin Phelps, who “took the ball and ran with it,” in terms of setting it up, advertising it, and actually being a panel member herself, as a first-year student in the CRDM program. When I left for Australia, we were still in the planning stages, and I arrived home, two days before the event, and it’s all a “go.” I so appreciated that.
We had four people on the panel (two professors in the program, actually the Program Director and the Associate Program Director), and two students currently in the program (a third-year student in addition to Christin as a first-year student). We asked “canned” questions of the panel members, and then opened it to the floor for participants’ questions.
We had nine attendees, and several questions were asked during the open discussion. All in all, I’d check this off as a big success. I wish we’d thought to have a feedback form ready for the attendees. I created an online one, and will see if the others think we can reproduce the names of the people who attended.
Verbal Data Analysis class followed shortly after the PhD program, and at times I felt totally lost in there, and at times I felt I was “getting it”—a little bit anyway.
I was going to do my reading and discussion board posting assignment for Rhetoric of Science & Technology down at Helios, but I didn’t have either of the two books I needed with me, so I went home.
I finished my last posting at 11:45, and then called Irene, who had IMed me a little earlier in the evening. Her mother’s cancer is back, which is very, very sad news indeed.