Contentment.

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As promised. And this one made me think…about a lot of things.

1. My entire existence has been slowly eaten away by these comp exams coming up in April. I have realized that this particular scenario is largely choice-driven, to wit: I am allowing it to happen. Actually, I’m making it happen. So I’m choosing now to stop it. If I can’t design a quantitative study to BU’s specifications in two hours, writing by hand in a Bluebook, well then I’ll take my lumps, fail the exam, and try harder next time. I’ve got to stop thinking that if I fail the first time, I’ve failed completely. I do have three chances. And as Mother used to say, “Worrying changes nothing.” In fact, she and Dad also said that worrying is actually a sin; it’s the belief that God is not in control and He might screw stuff up. Yikes. (Latent guilt, anyone?)

~
2. No matter what my students may think (I can be difficult in rehearsals, I know that), they’re pretty OK in my book. I count myself fortunate.

3. Even though I’m growing to hate 2-hour delays, I am grateful and content, sitting here drinking my coffee and writing to you.

4. The two girls doing that tap feature in Dinner Theatre are going to be très cute. That makes me happy.

5. Even though the present article I’m reading in the Journal of Research in Music Education makes absolutely zero sense to me, I am determined to figure it out, which gives me a much-needed feeling of resolve, and just a little confidence. I will, this day, discover what “…the majority of loadings exceed .40 and only one cross-loading exceeded .40…sampling adequacy was established using the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure…assumption of sphericity was also met as evidenced in the Bartlett Test of Sphericity” means.

6. And when it all shakes out, as I’ve said before, it’s your family who count. They are your “now” and your legacy. I remind myself of this, and I am content.

Fink out (for more coffee).

Dread.

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You know, it’s a brand-new year, and I should be looking forward to all the great things 2009 will bring. But right now, one feeling threatens to override the others: dread.

Now of course, I will follow up this post with things that I’m really looking forward to, but that will be later, when I’m in a better mood and the sun is out. For now, here’s what I’m dreading:

  1. The thought of a Super Bowl where both teams are from Pennsylvania. The Eagles I can stand, but the St*****s…God hates me. And shut up, Kody.
  2. Buying a new dryer today. My 12-year-old Kenmore died last night.
  3. Up at 5 a.m., school, rehearsal, home by 8 p.m., study until midnight, sleep, repeat.
  4. The knowledge that my knees probably won’t take too many more years of tap dancing.
  5. April.
  6. Waiting until July for the 3rd season of Mad Men.
  7. The drive to school this morning in the freezing cold. (Must start the Mighty Ford Ranger extra-early.)

Commiseration, anyone?

Fink out. (At least there’s yummy coffee in the kitchen.)

PS — I guess I can’t really be *completely* depressed. Mad Men won again.

:-)

They’d better hurry

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Interesting reading over coffee this morning…

The RomanovsThe story of Russian emperor Nicholas II and his family is too long to recount in a blog post. But it is a fascinating tale, threaded with intrigue, murder, rebellion, bizarre liaisons, and mysteries only just recently solved. Wikipedia has a nice account, from the Czar’s rise to power to the day in 1917 when Bolshevik rebels shot him in the head as his family and staff watched. (They all met the same fate moments later.)

~

Nicholas saw the revolution coming, and before he and his family were captured, it is said that they, and other extended family members, took their impressive collections of jewels — sapphires, diamonds, pearls and rubies — and buried them.

In 2001, a treasure hunter with money to burn (and an apparent ax to grind) wanted to dig beneath the Russian Museum of Political History because he was certain some Romanov booty was hidden there. I don’t know if he was ever allowed to start the dig…likely not.

Then there’s this story, which I stumbled upon this morning. A rich lady living in L.A. knows where the jewels are?? That is interesting indeed. Now if only she knew where that silly map got off to…

All I can say is, if they’re going to use this gal to find the treasure, they’d better hurry. She looks a little delicate.

Hey, here’s the view from my back porch as of yesterday morning. Nice, eh? (Sorry about the camera tilt on that first one — I wasn’t going to actually step out *onto* the porch, don’t you know, so I just stuck my hand outside the door.)

Have a nice Sunday, fiends. And how about those Arizona Cardinals? That was actually cool. Underdogs win again.

Fink out.

Photo credit: Getty Images

Statistically speaking

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I’m not a fan of statistics as a field of study. Not only because of the math (actually, math is only a part of the stats picture), but because I struggle to find the key elements that combine to point a researcher to the desired statistical method for collecting and analyzing his or her data.

Was that ambiguous? Poorly stated? Yeah, I know. Let’s try this:

On my comprehensive exams coming up in April, I will be given two educational scenarios or problems, and two hours. My job is then to design a complete research proposal on each one. I will need to know what kind of research “lens” to use, and which of a dozen different tests will most accurately measure the data and facilitate the interpretation of my findings. This is all apparently an effort to test my synthesis abilities when it comes to the two basic divisions of research (qualitative and quantitative).

I know: this is boring, get to the point. Right.

The quantitative stuff is pretty scary to me, so I bought a book at the suggestion of some classmates. I started it last night, and I’m on chapter 3. It’s actually not too bad.

For instance, why didn’t my prof say in his lecture months ago that, simply, measures of central tendency are also called “averages,” and that they come in 3 flavors: mean, median and mode? How simple is that? But noooo…we’re doctoral students so we had to take the long way around and avoid such elementary statements that I would have understood immediately. Maybe that’s a bad example, but you get where I’m going with this.

When I read the reviews for Salkind’s book (“It really is easy to understand,” “This is the book that will finally open up statistics for you”), I thought, Yeah, yeah, right. But they haven’t met me.

Well, surprise surprise: actually, I do get it so far. So there is hope for the mathematically — and in some cases, logical-thinking — challenged. If you’re taking a stats class now, or you plan to in the future, I highly recommend the book.

In fact, I will save it for you and you can buy it from me. Such a deal.

Now, back to X bar equals sigma X over N. Cuz, you know, that’s how I roll.

Fink, waitin’ for the blizzard to get here (it’s started already…photos tomorrow for the Florida, Texas, or otherwise snowless people).

PS — Aw. I just read that the other Hager twin died. I didn’t even know the first one passed away. :-(

What next?

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Friends, hit me with a two-by-four, beam me up and call me James Traficant.

Hollyweird’s all abuzz. Stars and starlets are seriously going to be more conservative in their appearance on red carpets this year. It’s going to make an important statement. Let’s honor those odd little people called Them What Barely Make Ends Meet, and wear the $6,000 Lagerfeld gown instead of the $60,000 Van Cleef & Arpels choker. Don’t do loose hair or puffy lips, and go easy on the Botox. **heavy sigh** It’s going to be tough, but we can do it. Let’s set an example. Cuz, you know, we have to cut corners; times are hard and we don’t want to appear overly ostentatious. I mean really…who’s going to wear “$500 false eyelashes when some people can’t make their mortgage payments?”

I know, gosh. I hope they’re going to be OK out there.

Goats are making drugs. I am not making this up.

Again with the smoking. Remove smoking from the movies! OK, I get it. Smoking=bad. Do a Google search on remove smoking movies television and you’ll get a metric ton of hits dedicated to pulling the cancer sticks out of the cinema. Now do another search, but replace the word “smoking” with “drinking.” Feh. We’re just so incredibly picky with our poisons.

Yeesh, I am snarky this morning, aren’t I? And I have used the word “snarky” in two successive posts. I think I’m OK…**feeling face**…do I look all right? I don’t even have a 2-hour delay, so what’s wrong with me? I must be unwell.

Back later. Start without me.

Fink, in a funk