The month of August just flew by between preparation for and the beginning of the first semester. My students are getting ready to give their first presentation next week, and I am starting to get into the swing of a routine. I enjoyed labor day weekend, and managed to make some significant progress around settling into the new residence, so that has done a lot for my peace of mind.
Projects
I have been making a lot of moves on several different research projects at once. It feels at once exciting and overwhelming. I am glad to be moving so many projects forward, but I also am aware that these projects will be a temptation that could distract me from my main focus on my dissertation project over the course of this academic year. I’m moving forward on grant-funded research that utilizes the C-SPAN archives, which is a fantastic resource. I am a huge fan of it’s persistent linking abilities that allow you to link not only to a program, but to a clipped out portion of that program. It is a fantastic opportunity for much of the Conversation Analytic (CA) focused work that I do. Not all of my work is CA focused but, for the work that is, being able to share links that point specifically to examples of each of the phenomena that I am detailing is a fantastic feature for research in that tradition.
I am also continuing in my support of the Transdisciplinary Studies in Technology educational research program in Purdue’s Polytechnic program, which has involved a lot of NVIVO work over the last few weeks.
Reading Focus this Week
This week I have been reading over a piece from Communication Monographs (Kramer, 1993) which details uncertainty processes in organizations. I’ll be tracking down and locating a good article or chapter on managing uncertainty during times of organizational change for my next set of readings.