This is it

This post has nothing to do with Michael Jackson.

I am very happy to have all of my items of business winding down.  Tomorrow is the day I defend my adult person prospectus to my committee.  I feel as prepared as I can, though I still do not feel prepared.  It will be such a thrill to have the meeting over, even if it means my prospectus is rejected.  I love to see things like this just, well, end.

A million thoughts rushed to my head last night about my impending doom with the prospectus.

1. Do I have a projector in the room I'll be presenting in?
2. How can I get the assent form completed for the application to the IRB?
3. Which references do I include in the IRB?
4. What the heck do I wear at a "defense?" I feel like I need a helmet and knee pads or something.
5. Where do the copies of my IRB go?

Getting Vaccinated

Well, this certainly has been a learning experience I will never forget.  In retrospect, I remember the feelings I had back in January of, "How. Will. I. Do. This?"  I felt so afraid about 90% of the time.  Teaching full time (and it's only my second year), while attending graduate classes and this field study prep course, not to mention writing a new literature review, TERRIFIED me.  I remember mapping out in my head how to allocate time for all of my routines and thinking, "Some of my crazy routines will have to die for this new class."  I wasn't prepared to commit to being at BYU every single day after work, and I really didn't want to make the commitment; I felt like I could not make the commitment--that it wasn't humanly possible.  I was seriously planning out time where I would be able to breathe thinking, "Crap, well I guess I can't breathe anymore on Tuesdays."  Okay well I did it.  Here I am, and it's over, and I did it. I know it's only the beginning in some ways, but I'm passed the beginning at least?  That's good. Back in January when I planned out times for me to shower, dress, brush teeth, and eat breakfast within the same 6 minutes, I actually had no idea what was ahead of me.  I grossly underestimated what would be required of me and what I'd be able to accomplish. I know I must attribute my strength, perseverance, and actually just plain miraculous events to "divine intervention," my students, my professors, and my family (thank you, Father & Mother Barnes and Dr. Barnes!).  I'm not as "big" as this final project implies, it's simply just miracles that carried me through this semester.  This sounds sort of like a speech for a big cause or something, or like my dying words, but honestly I thought I was going to die!

Here's the great news: I lived and I have the final product I thought impossible.  That's lucky and wonderful and I'm grateful for all of the support I've had and hope I'm able to produce more work that will benefit the people I love, the people that carry me through each sad and scary time.  I am truly determined to pay it forward, especially to my beautiful students, including the students in Bylakuppe.  I'm thrilled that I'll see them soon and learn from their examples.

I just feel lucky, and perhaps a little too proud.  I'm grateful.

And I hope the defense goes.  I don't even care if it goes well or bad, I just want it to "go."

Proposal Insights

Finally, my proposal is complete...for the most part.  I presented my proposal yesterday to classmates, and it was an informative experience.  It was another good practice run for my prospectus defense (scheduled for Monday!) in terms of knowing how to pace myself and read body language on which topics need clarification without having to ask questions.  It was also a unique experience to practice presenting my project and my specialty, special education, in an interdisciplinary way.  Since class a few weeks ago, I've been quite proactive about making my research more interdisciplinary because I want it to extend to many fields and be readable and interesting to different professionals.  I've come to the conclusion that being interdisciplinary=helping more people.

becoming interdisciplinary

The biggest feedback I received on my proposal presentation was that I need to make it more clear whether or not I will be implementing an intervention with the actual residents at the home.  This answer to this is: I will not.  I will simply be providing a thick description of the current situation at Karuna Home and participant observing to determine capability levels and instruction while volunteering at Karuna.  So this is something I need to adjust in my (a) presentation, (b) prospectus, (c) IRB application, and (d) ISP proposal.  Something I've found rather annoying through this process of being a graduate student with a prospectus and a student in an international study prep course is making sure all changes happen on all documents.  There are so many!

Overall, I'm happy to see the progress being made in my project.  I'm only getting closer to a real product, which is exciting.  I've spent all of my time researching literature and methods, and a little time was reserved for cultural research, but now I really get to dive deeper into the actual location I'm going to in more logistical ways.  Here's a better way of saying that sentence: it's time to pack.  I can picture the trip as something real now, which only adds motivation.  Before it was too overwhelming to seriously expect myself to write a prospectus, proposal, IRB app, fellowship app, and so on in addition to going to a foreign country and actually carrying out my plans.  Now that I've completed a lot of the big steps, I can face the bigger picture with more reasonable anxiety and excitement.
Proposal complete.

Actors, Activities, Location

I felt pretty certain about my actors, activities, and location ever since first selecting my thesis topic.  However, after discussions in class I've been considering more possibilities.  My original and ongoing ideas  go as follows:

• Actors: monks & other staff members
• Activities: special education and other services, daily living, prayers, occupational therapy, speech therapy, etc.
• Location: Karuna Home in Bylakuppe, Karnataka, India

Now the possibilities have expanded to the following:

• Actors: monks & other staff members, community members, family members of people with disabilities, and the residents with disabilities
• Activities: special education and other services, daily living, prayers, occupational therapy, speech therapy, etc.
• If it's community members of family members, the activities could be vastly different.  The interviews could take place while at a dinner with the family, or in their home while sitting and visiting.
• Location: Karuna Home in Bylakuppe, Karnataka, India, homes in the community, public places in the community--anywhere in the community!

I don't know if I should include "possibilities" like this on my IRB protocol, and how much to include them in my proposal & prospectus, but I definitely don't want to limit myself to my original ideas.  Various locations, activities, and actors can enrich my research greatly, and conversations with people outside of Karuna Home have to be inevitable.  Why I didn't consider researching outside of Karuna Home is a mystery...I suppose it caused some anxiety realizing that more locations means more work.  But really less locations means more need for interpretation, and less data. 

Proposing, Prospecting, Scholarship Applying, IRB Submitting

Currently I am in several processes that seem interrelated, but end up being more of a hassle because of the seeming overlaps.  I'm proposing to the ISP office, prospecting to the Counseling Psychology and Special Education Department, applying for scholarships through several offices, and working on the IRB.  The proposal and prospectus have similar components, but then one requires serious detail in an area that the other doesn't, and vice versa.  It's tricky to be sure that I have all required components for both "proposals."  The same applies to the scholarships I've been applying for.  I feel like I'm writing 4-5 different essays at once, but all for the same end...which can be frustrating, confusing, and often times sort of embarrassing.

 Ever since high school I've felt really embarrassed about applying for scholarships and applying for jobs, programs, etc.  The requirements of listing academic and other merit are the part I've always struggled with.  It's not that I'm claiming I have this overwhelming sense of humility as much as it's just this mental thing about writing my merits down.  I understand that I have merits, and I'm glad about them, but writing them down in a fancy way with big graduate school words sort of begging for money makes me feel embarrassed.  It's a small price to pay, of course, in the event I'm awarded money.  But for this month, I feel overwhelmed with the frustration, confusion, and embarrassment mentioned above.  I wish I could just pull from a file called "bragging file" and submit it every time without having to make sure I've fulfilled special requirements for each application.  And in the end it looks like I've officially complained about being embarrassed about applications in writing.  I'm not to happy about that either.  Hopefully the process of applying and proposing will end soon and yield successful results.

WE HAVE ASSUMED CONTROL

We've taken care of everything 
The words you hear, the songs you sing 
The pictures that give pleasure to your eyes 
It's one for all and all for one 
We work together, common sons 
Never need to wonder how or why

In class yesterday we all wrote quotes/ideas on the board from our current readings from Tibet, Tibet.  The topic of duscssion was “vulnerable populations,” and my first thought was the word “control.”  The past few chapters (7-10) have hit heavily on the idea that the Tibetan people are suppressed and their freedom is stripped, and thereafter or maybe beforehand control is assumed by the superior party.  There are subtle and overt ways that the Chinese have taken power from Tibetans: religion was taken, religious buidlings destroyed, propaganda against their beliefs enforced, etc.  The quotes that I chose to write on the board go as follows:

"They control us very closely, and stop us from practising our religion" (p. 82).
"They teach us propaganda against His Holiness the Dalai Lama and then test us on it, to make sure we know the phrases.  We will resolutely oppose the scheming activities of the tiny number of Tibetan pro-independence elements! We will safeguard the four basic principles and oppose bourgeois liberalisation!" (pp. 82-83)
"We have to do what the Democratic Management Committee says, or we risk being expelled" (p. 82).
"I have never taken part in a demonstration.  If you do that, you might die" (p. 81).
"Nuns and monks had been at the vanguard of public protests in Tibet in the late 1980s, and there were many documented cases of their being molested, tortured and killed, or driven to suicide while in prison" (p. 78).
"...with much of eastern Tibet in open mutiny, truth was less important than adherence to the line emanating from the Chairman" (p. 68).
"Anyone who displayed religious faith in Tibet, the Panchen explained, was persecuted as superstitious..." (p. 64).

The word "control" pervaded my thoughts throughout these chapters, and then one of my favorite Rush songs, 2112, joined the word control.  As I mentioned in class, "Big Brother" has always terrified me since I was a kid, and even more so after reading 1984, Animal Farm, and other literature like this.  It frightened me because it was so obviously easy for a group of people to lose total control and freedom to another group.  A quote a once read in my history class in high school by Adolf Hitler said, "What good fortune for the government that the people do not think."

In looking at my diagram on the board I felt a sense of sadness and pain.  It reminded me a lot of my students because they are in a definite position where advantage could be taken of them, and especially even 30 years ago.  The way genocide happens is through a dictator or more powerful person/people taking control or freedom from an inferior counterpart.

Institutional Review Board

Being required to submit a proposal to the IRB has only been a total burden from my perspective until class on Monday.  It seemed like overkill and just another way radical people are taking charge of something, and well, really it was just more paperwork (which is my nemesis).  It reminded me a lot of special education paperwork—all of the boxes we have to check, all the individualized education program phrases we have to use within the truly “valuable” text, all of the signatures, all of the forms, ALL OF THE PAPERS.  On some days I have the perspective of, “This is so useless!” or “What a waste of time.”  My thinking doesn’t even go in a place where I can see the value of ensuring that I use the following phrases when writing present levels of academic achievement and functional performance:

“________ has a disability that adversely affects his/her academic achievement (progress) and functional performance in general education math curriculum and requires specially designed instruction. According to _________ (data source), given ______ (date), ___________ (student) is currently functioning at _______________ (instructional level) and can __________. _____ disability in math affects his/her ability to progress in the general education math curriculum. He/She needs to ___________.”

The stuff that’s highlighted I just don’t understand.  The black print is totally necessary.  Of course we know this person has a disability that affects progress, that’s why they have an IEP!  And of course the disability in the area listed affects progress in the general ed. curriculum…that’s the nature of the situation.  And even though the goals I write in individualized education programs (IEPs) are called “measurable annual goals” and the goal page has a title indicating so, a new requirement this month is for me to write at the beginning of each goal “within one year, ____,” as if we’re not sure how long the goal should be worked on!  It makes the goal harder to read, and detracts from meaning, but I suppose it’s just an additional way to create accountability for the small number of people that might take advantage of a marginalized population, or may neglect them due to no obligation or guideline.

Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments
(http://www.uaff.us/tuskegee_experiments.htm)

Then I remember, there was a time when people with disabilities were not considered people.  There was a time when Nazis performed medical experiments on Jews.  There was a time when human beings with syphilis served as guinea pigs for science and went without medical treatment, many of them dying.   Marginalized populations, vulnerable populations, have been taken advantage as partly a result of lack of regulations, lack of knowledge, and lack of review.  The IRB serves as a protection for these vulnerable populations, and my willingness and adamancy about completing the IRB process has increased monumentally.  I have more commitment, and less complaint, which is such a beautiful product that naturally follows when gaining knowledge, abandoning some more of my ignorance.   I rather comply with strict guidelines that decrease the chances of a study taking advantage of a person or people, than skip through some paperwork for the sake of time.  Overall, the principle on all the paperwork in my life is a good one, and my attitude about the burdens of it has changed.

Nazi Human Experimentation
(http://www.uaff.us/tuskegee_experiments.htm)