The Breathing Tree and Other Exam Tales

Today was a much better day as far as work is concerned.  I finished the first complete draft of question 3 by noon and was able to work more on my AERA proposals and contract work with my professor.  Tomorrow, I will spend the day revising and, if there’s time, doing some extra reading.  But in the mean time, I feel like I have time to take a moment and really blog.

Yay!

I’ve been dying to share a picture of my new porch set-up that I got this weekend at Ikea in Cincinnati.  It’s been oh so lovely to eat breakfast and read out here in the morning.  In fact, I’m sitting here writing my blog this evening too.  And since my other porch chairs (and Zoe!) were stolen, I’ve been bringing them in at night, so don’t worry.

Speaking of sitting on my porch every morning and taking a moment to relax and enjoy the early morning hours, I swear I’ve been hearing what can only be described as a breathing tree.  I live on a pretty busy street, one that leads to a highway entrance ramp just a third of a mile or so down the road, which means that traffic is pretty busy our here around 7:30am, when I usually end up eating breakfast.  But, there’s also a traffic light just a little way down the road the other direction, so during the red lights, while the cars are waiting to make a break for the interstate, there’s a few minutes of peace.  In those few minutes of peace, I hear this whooshing sound that’s very soft and rhythmic.  It has the rhythm of someone breathing or ocean waves hitting the shore, but the exhale sounds like wind blowing through a tree.  At first I thought that’s what it was, just a light wind, but I’ve heard it every morning now and it has a tempo to it.  I’ve even gotten up to look up into the tree that’s just in front of my porch, but even when it’s still, I can hear the sound.  The same goes for the tree across the street in front of the Catholic school.  Then, I thought maybe it it was some contraption on the top of the school, but it just sounds too natural (?).  I don’t know, it’s a mystery for now, but either way, I kind of like it.

After listening to the breathing tree for a while this morning, I got to work at my desk.  I was very productive and finished 6 pages by noon, putting me at 21 pages and feeling really good.  As I took some time to think through what I was writing today, I also started to think how lucky I am that this is my work right now.  I’m being paid (sort of) to think, to read, to analyze, to try to make sense of a certain type of knowledge in a field I consider to be very important, education.  I felt like I was reveling in it, pausing to sift through some difficult concept, fancying myself a thinker, elbow on my knee, index finger on my chin, like Plato or Socrates (if Plato and Socrates studied learning in virtual environments ).  That is until I hit a tough spot, where I realized how little I know.  This is when I start to panic and then try to remember that it’s not about the finish line.  There is no finish line.  Enjoy the journey, I try to tell myself, think and read and write and sooner or later, something relatively coherent does come together and things work out.  There’s no rush.  This is against my adult nature (my kid nature was much more into joie de vivre), but I’m slowly getting the hang of it, of being able to do it and enjoy it.

I think this is part of why I’m having trouble writing journal articles right now.  I have gathered so much data and read so much literature and theory and it just hasn’t melded into something coherent yet, at least not as coherent as I would like.  It still feels like a jumble in my mind.  I have glimpses of coherence and I try to grab them and nail them down as fast as I can, but they are fleeting and often when I go back to reread them, I don’t think they are coherent anymore.  And so I walk away for a bit, return and struggle, and walk away again.  I just read a paper that Dr. Nespor wrote suggesting that keeping a research journal would help.  Of course, my head went straight to a blog, so I think I may start one, or start posting more of my thoughts here.  We’ll see.

I read a lot this afternoon, still searching the literature for question 3, trying to be sure that I’m covering all aspects of the topic thoroughly (enough).  In this one edited volume I was perusing, each chapter started with a pertinent quote.  They weren’t by famous academics or anything, just quotes that were relevant to the chapter from someone in that field.  And I really started wondering if someday someone would take a little snippet of what I had written and find it juicy enough to put at the beginning of their chapter.  Wouldn’t that be exciting?  A few lines of my own words, centered on the page and sounding oh so poignant, followed by my name in italics.  Sounds lovely.  Now, if I can just get something published…