These two pix were done using Photobooth for Mac. I did minimal editing through iPhoto to try to emphasize the expressions. My idea was to depict 'happy' (the top) and 'sad' (the bottom). Sad was a lot harder using the high contrast thermal effect I chose. It is actually sort of hard to make a recognizable 'sad' face.
I received good news regarding the submission of a research report yesterday. Today I had an invitation to present at what I consider a prestigious conference (unfortunately the timing may prevent me from taking advantage of this opportunity). Not unexpectedly, I experienced a great deal of satisfaction as a result of these two ego strokes.
0 Comments
I attended a spin cycle class this morning and our instructor played one hip hop song. We actually get a very eclectic mix from this instructor: Elton John's "Saturday night's alright for fighting" and Adele's "Rolling in the deep" were also include in today's mix tape.
When the hip hop song began, i recognized the opening chords...but as another song. Now I need to say that I never figured out what song the music was sampled from (and hopefully paid for), nor do I have any idea of the name or artist of the hip hop version, since I am more of a classic rock/metal/international/folk/indie music fan (the closest I get to hip hop is old Chili Peppers), but I started to think about creating music/poetry over the top of someone else's creation and I was reminded of secondary data analysis. I am doing a class project right now that is sort of a secondary data analysis using interviews done by someone else (for some other reason) so I can see a parallel between my 're-reading' of these interviews and 're-arranging' or 're-composing' music written and recorded by someone else. There is even frequently a fracturing process that goes on when music is sampled; same as for qualitative analysis. It seems like I am in a phase of writing about time-related things right now. I recently was criticized for using some works in the review of literature part of a paper because of the age of the works (what I considered 'seminal' someone else considered 'dated'). I have also noticed increasingly that it is difficult to access older articles directly via the online library resources I have access to (from two universities). Anything written before the late 90s tends to require an interlibrary loan request. I also know other students who deliberately limit their searches to the last 20 or even last 10 years - why? Because someone told them to only look at things after 1990 or 2000.
Below is a picture of the "Hot Tub time machine," by the way. One of the interesting things about being a nontraditional student (I think of myself right now as 52 although I am actually not quite 51 1/2) is that I encounter information that tells me what things were like when I was younger. When I read this information, I do not always know much about the writer, but when it is provided in a class or a presentation, at times, the instructor/presenter is too young to have had any personal experience during the time period in question. So, sometimes, people are telling me what my life was like, or what the world was like 'back in the day' even though they weren't there at the time.This is nothing new - all history instruction is like this. (And who said: "history is written by the victors?") I know that even my actual experience and memories of the same are highly subjective. But I think there are always differences in historical facts and the reality of the experience. What tends to get written up and pass along are the names and dates although the reality is lost. This leads me to one of the real strengths of a qualitative approach - what people described when talking about their individual, subjective experiences may differ greatly from the official history. I suppose some people would argue that subjective interpretation/description is bias and not worth bothering with; on the other hand, in social science, I think it would be argued that subjective experiences are all that matter. By the way, the picture is one of the '1960s hippie check' designs from checkadvantage.com. I chose this because the whole idea of "the 60s" sort of exemplifies what I am taking about. As I mentioned in earlier posts, I am essentially discarding my entire dissertation proposal. This monster with the big brain is the 'writing' monster. I am having some difficulty rewriting the proposal, mostly due, I think, to the fact that I am tired of writing proposals. (I wrote another over the summer for a class.) I do have some other projects going on that may turn out to be interesting including a (gasp!) grounded theory analysis. |
AuthorI am Sheryl L. Chatfield, Ph.D, C.T.R.S. I am a member of the faculty in the College of Public Health at Kent State University. I also Co-coordinate the Graduate Certificate in Qualitative Research and I am a member of the Design Innovation Team at Kent State. Archives
February 2024
Categories
|