Orientation week: pre survey

Bil has been so great in supporting my research. Today, orientation day 2, he managed to ask participants to fill out the pre survey as today's orientation activity. Clever.

As I was filling out the survey, I found it funny that I actually had never taken an online class before. Hmm... so this will be my first. How about that! This might also explain why I keep wanting to find more functions on the class website. I guess I am used to be the administrator of a course site than a student. The way the site is setup, there is not much I can do. Okay, be fine with it.

A couple more people have uploaded pictures. I took a quick peek at the survey. I guess I am the only Buddhism novice in this group. That makes me a little bit nervous. Okay, be fine with it.

Invited Bil and Dr. Long to participate in my research. Will have to think about how to approach the students. Do not want to make this a "big deal" for them and to stir up any confusions

Be content!

Orientation week: "Learning Together"

So orientation started today.. I followed a link in the email and arrived at the course website.. Take a look at what I saw when I first arrived.

First impression: As I "walked into the classroom" sort to speak, I thought to myself, clean and very "Buddhism" like :-)

My Facebook profile picture finds another place to reside. I uploaded my picture, added a couple of my interests - for a moment, I thought I am the most boring person in the world - what do I like to do during my spare time.. Or a better question is, when will be my spare time.. Well trained through the education system, however, I managed to put up something semi interesting

A quick browse of the participants. Many have also uploaded their pictures and added their interests. First impression: a lot of artists, musicians, writter, philospher "kind of people" Cool...I never got to be in a "flock" with cool people. Thanks to this class, now I am the "in" crowd! That is what I am talking about!!!

One thing I noticed - there is a link on the upper left-hand side of each page that takes us directly back to the home of the certificate program. It reads "Learning Together" - that is a great spirit of community building

One thing I do not personally like is the very strict follow-me-step1-step2 approach. It is too restrict for me as I would prefer a little more flexibility in receiving information and acting on it. However, I can see this also be a great scaffolding approach to ease people into the online environment and the community.

Remember from my Vipassana retreat where I was saying to a college kid - there is only one "first-time experience." I will never have a "first time" when I return. As young as she was, she said something so insightful to me that I still remember to this day, "but there is always the first second-time, and the first third-time" So I am expecting my new "first time" experience on every encounter of this class!

Orientation week: Stars have not yet lined up

It is not easy to start something new. It is not easy to start something new online. It is a lot of work to get all things lined up to kick off an online class. I know.

9:30am Hawaii time, Bil's first email arrived. I am nervous and excited that the certificate program orientation has started. We will receive detail information about how to log on to the class website. They changed the textbook as the one they picked is out of print. Now there is a new textbook. I will have to go down to the center and see if they have a copy.

12:33pm Hawaii time, Bil's second email arrived. Evidently they have encountered some technical issues so the orientation will start tomorrow instead of today.

I understand as it is a lot of work to get everything lined up. As a pilot program, it implies this is the first go around too. It is always harder to get a new thing started.

I have a lot of patience in this since I know. I hope everyone else shares the same sentiment. However, I do wonder what impressed this delay has made on the students?

Ukulele lesson: feel the space in between the notes, don't rush, rest when seeing the rest notes
Life lesson: feel the space in between things/events/people, don't rush, learn when to let go

a long drawn out process but was done!

okay, I have to admit that I did not appreciate this very long and drawn out process of getting all the parties to agree, all documents to be ready, submitted, approved, and everything in between. Yes, I do remind myself from time to time, just live the moment and do what you should. Pain is inevitable while suffering is optional. yadi yada yadi yada. Let me just say, I am so relieved that this has finally come to an end, for now.

9/21 9am: appointment with IRB. She suggested some verbiage changes and praised my consent was well drafted

9/21 4pm: spent the afternoon making those changes; reminded myself that they need not be perfect, just presentable and passable; submitted the final 2 copies to IRB

9/22 9:30am: received Bil's reply email; requested two clarifications

9/22 9:00pm: came back to my office after a fun Ukulele class and made the changes requested; emailed the file back to Bil; did not want to drag this any longer than necessary

9/23 9:30am: received Bil's reply email again; I was conditionally approved; requested for the consent letters and UH approval; emailed the 3 consent letters right away; will email the approval once received; wish this is over by now

9/24: UH IRB approval email received; (final letter received on 9/30); scanned and emailed to Bil; still waiting for UWest's official memo indicating their approval and support of this project

This process took way more time than I expected. But I suppose this is just like any other thing in life. When things start to take a life of its own, you have to follow the flow and go with it.

Maybe I should remind myself again why I am doing this? I could have just be a student and enjoy the class... Oh, yea, I will enjoy the class. However, if some research can come out of this, both UWest and myself can benefit. Okay, keep that in mind. Tedious in-between, little stuff. Dont' sweat it!

appointment made

I quickly berried myself into the final revision of the IRB package after my weekly Friday morning ocean swim. From the peer feedback yesterday, I know I need to also create a list of proposed interview questions. Searching backup files from back in my doctoral-student time for examples. Not a hard thing to do as qualitative research likes to keep the door open for allowing emerging themes, or as my method advisor would say, when things bubble up to the surface. I cleaned up everything, created three slightly different version of the consent forms, updated the 1-page description, added the interview question. Printed 2 copies, signed. Done.

I called the IRB office and made an appointment with them on Monday morning to walk over my application before final submission. The program is about to start in 2 weeks and I want this to be ready for it. Things are moving along.

I feel the stress in meeting deadline I set for myself. How can we function without man-made deadlines? I was listening to a podcast the other day and the subject was "doing nothing." As an unenlightened being, I will not be able to survive this brutal world if I do nothing.

Or maybe I just did not understand what "do nothing" meant.

peer feedback

I worked hard to finish my memo to UWest. It is really a brief proposal on my research idea. So today during our weekly writing group meeting, I presented the memo, together with the complete IRB package (forms, consent, 1-page description) to my peers.

As usually, my peers gave me extremely valuable feedback on my memo. It is funny that I promote peer critique in my own class but am so pleasantly surprised when I receive insightful feedback from my own peers, as if I wasn't expecting this method to work. There are some writings that need clarifications, and some arguments or assertions need to be re-written to avoid controversial. There were parts that I knew was not quite there and there were some questions that helped me look at my writing from the readers' perspective.

After class tonight, as exhausted as I was, I decided to go ahead and make all the changes suggested to me. I tell myself that this memo does not need to be "perfect"; it only needs to be presentable. With that in mind, I actually finished the revision and sent it off to Bil.

I felt a great sense of accomplishment. I still feel awfully a lot of time has been spent on documentation and the "real" stuff has not yet to begin. But at least tonight I sent the memo out, signaling another landmark made!

Be content with what you can do given the circumstances. Is seeking perfection like chasing after a moving target?

research proposal draft

Met with Kelly to go over my proposal to University of the West. It is amazing how much time it takes to write something less than 3 pages. I teach a masters-level research class that includes literature review and proposal writing. It is a hard subject to teach and a hard thing to actually do. Teaching this class really has helped me in my writing and it is also the case here. I know the general components of a research proposal and I can do it. It just takes longer than I expected…

The biggest feedback from Kelly today - the project is huge based on my proposal – narrow it down if possible. I cannot have agreed more.. I wanted to narrow it but not sure how to narrow a qualitative research. I don’t want to limit myself to the point that I cannot be free to explore any emerging themes. But at the same time, I do not want to make this another dissertation work. I need to work very smart to produce publications quickly and productively.

Is desire always a bad thing?