The Gold Standard
I'm decked out in my gold Chelsea boots and gold dissertating ring today. NYC is having that weird in-between Spring weather where it's sunny and warm and then cold and windy and rainy and then something else all in one day. So I'm wearing layers of summer clothing (long dress over cotton stockings, camisole, summer shirt gathered and buttoned at an empire waist)and I got to put on my suede cape and a floppy brown summer hat that struggled against the wind. (I've found the cape is amazingly good at blocking out the wind!). I was greeted with a whirlwind of attention at work. It amused me greatly. One of my staff said I look "like an English lady."
bluestocking79, I'm lookin' at you for the biggest laugh, in this case.
Yesterday I met with my advisors to go over my outline for the first two chapters of my dissertation. I suggested to my Chair that if I wrote them and my methods section over the summer, that I could defend in the Fall, finish up and graduate by December. Her response was "Well, maybe May?" Apparently, I wasn't counting on the amount of time it would take her to turn around my writing with numerous edits. :snerk:
Both my Chair and my second thought I was on the right track. So that felt really good. Now I need to get writing, and also pin down Robert Smith? who has agreed to discuss Structural Equation Modeling with me. I am wondering what I can offer to barter in exchange for ongoing advisement. (Queue sniggering from all the Whovians on my flist).
After my meeting I got together with my friends KS, soulsister101 and tennis_bear for an unearthly amount of food - three kinds of chips/fries, onion rings, fried pickles, burgers (I had a crab cake sandwich) and alcoholic milkshakes. It was the perfect antidote to the listlessness I've been feeling in the past week. (Though the binge eating *really* has to stop now).
Then on the walk home, KS and I talked about sex positive feminism among other things. I lamented earlier on FB that I missed out on seeing Susie Bright speak at the Strand on 3/31. She was such an influence on my young adult formulative years in the early 90s. I definitely want to get her new book.
It was interesting, though, chatting with my Chair about my dissertation. Since she is not at all familiar with my subject area, she is eager to both learn and to be the "novice eye" during the editing process. Chiefly, straddling the line between 101 and advanced scholarship so that my dissertation will translate well to social work publications for those completely unfamiliar with my topic. But it was also interesting spelling out for her the unique ways trans people experience racism and sexism that had not occurred to her. I gave her an example of an African-American guy who experienced "driving while black" for the first time (men of color get stopped on the drive from NYC to Philly quite often while women of color and white men don't, because it's apparently an active drive for drug dealers and men of color are often criminalized). we also talked about the benefits and limitations of the concept of privilege, and how my theory (social citizenship) works very well to frame the issue as one of the State and larger society rather than the individual. My second advisor, who is a clinical and administration person, asked about the feasibility of using a life stages model. I quickly nixed that, and discovered I was actually teaching him something about social policy analysis.
I am struggling to figure out how many individual published life stories and specific legal cases to use in my literature review. Most of what's published falls into this qualitative arena, and so I'm filling a real gap in the literature with a primarily quantitative (though mixed-method) study. Right now, the gold standard for quantitative exploration of employment discrimination is a single national study that was conducted by the NGLTF several years ago and just published this year. So it's exciting to be bringing important work into academia, into my profession, to widen the pool of people fighting for employment rights. It does not escape me that, as academia is wont to do, writing my dissertation will serve to legitimize the voices of people who should be respected in their own right. It is the whole point of why the TLC gave me their data set in the first place.
And now, back to work at my shelter job. Here's hoping LJ hasn't gone down again when I hit the "post" button.
ETA: As a reminder, I have plenty of Dreamwidth codes if anybody wants one.
bluestocking79, I'm lookin' at you for the biggest laugh, in this case.
Yesterday I met with my advisors to go over my outline for the first two chapters of my dissertation. I suggested to my Chair that if I wrote them and my methods section over the summer, that I could defend in the Fall, finish up and graduate by December. Her response was "Well, maybe May?" Apparently, I wasn't counting on the amount of time it would take her to turn around my writing with numerous edits. :snerk:
Both my Chair and my second thought I was on the right track. So that felt really good. Now I need to get writing, and also pin down Robert Smith? who has agreed to discuss Structural Equation Modeling with me. I am wondering what I can offer to barter in exchange for ongoing advisement. (Queue sniggering from all the Whovians on my flist).
After my meeting I got together with my friends KS, soulsister101 and tennis_bear for an unearthly amount of food - three kinds of chips/fries, onion rings, fried pickles, burgers (I had a crab cake sandwich) and alcoholic milkshakes. It was the perfect antidote to the listlessness I've been feeling in the past week. (Though the binge eating *really* has to stop now).
Then on the walk home, KS and I talked about sex positive feminism among other things. I lamented earlier on FB that I missed out on seeing Susie Bright speak at the Strand on 3/31. She was such an influence on my young adult formulative years in the early 90s. I definitely want to get her new book.
It was interesting, though, chatting with my Chair about my dissertation. Since she is not at all familiar with my subject area, she is eager to both learn and to be the "novice eye" during the editing process. Chiefly, straddling the line between 101 and advanced scholarship so that my dissertation will translate well to social work publications for those completely unfamiliar with my topic. But it was also interesting spelling out for her the unique ways trans people experience racism and sexism that had not occurred to her. I gave her an example of an African-American guy who experienced "driving while black" for the first time (men of color get stopped on the drive from NYC to Philly quite often while women of color and white men don't, because it's apparently an active drive for drug dealers and men of color are often criminalized). we also talked about the benefits and limitations of the concept of privilege, and how my theory (social citizenship) works very well to frame the issue as one of the State and larger society rather than the individual. My second advisor, who is a clinical and administration person, asked about the feasibility of using a life stages model. I quickly nixed that, and discovered I was actually teaching him something about social policy analysis.
I am struggling to figure out how many individual published life stories and specific legal cases to use in my literature review. Most of what's published falls into this qualitative arena, and so I'm filling a real gap in the literature with a primarily quantitative (though mixed-method) study. Right now, the gold standard for quantitative exploration of employment discrimination is a single national study that was conducted by the NGLTF several years ago and just published this year. So it's exciting to be bringing important work into academia, into my profession, to widen the pool of people fighting for employment rights. It does not escape me that, as academia is wont to do, writing my dissertation will serve to legitimize the voices of people who should be respected in their own right. It is the whole point of why the TLC gave me their data set in the first place.
And now, back to work at my shelter job. Here's hoping LJ hasn't gone down again when I hit the "post" button.
ETA: As a reminder, I have plenty of Dreamwidth codes if anybody wants one.