The Forked Road Ahead

I am about to begin the next class, CUR/721 – Curriculum Design, and still must maintain momentum with my literature review and subsequent dissertation proposal. I admit that this last few weeks have seen little in the way of focus on school work.

My schedule has seen a few speaking engagements, with the last one (for a while) coming this weekend. Normally, I don’t sweat speeches but I’ve been trying to talk more about my dissertation topic or closely related topics which forces me to take all that research and contain it to a shortened time frame.  So it is a growing pain, or in team building what we call edgework.

Not to mention that I’ve wanted to take a break from the academic go-go-go routine that consumed my last few months. We took a vacation, I brewed some beer, prepared my garden for this year, and generally worked on some home projects.

All of this is well and good but it does need to stop. The road ahead requires me to work on two academic routines at the same time. The one side of the road is my classwork. The other side of the road is my dissertation. While I am beyond the half way point in my schedule do not think of it as the pinnacle of a mountain. Rather it is a base camp type of half way point.

My road ahead is forked and I need to take both paths in order to be successful. To accomplish this I am setting time aside each morning to blog/journal and work on my literature review revisions. My classwork time is reserved for lunches and evenings. Leaving night times for family and recreation. This schedule should help keep the road ahead smooth.

A related note, I pushed my next class out a few weeks to allow for a trip north this Summer. I will use that time to get ahead on my proposal and hopefully be ready to submit that just after residency this October.

Image Source: evilmightyacorn

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