There, there...

Okay... I think the panic storm has blown over.

Apparently, everything has been resolved, and I'll be paying a few hundred dollars to fix it. Still worth it, though. I mean, if this guy wasn't coming to the conference, it wouldn't be nearly the event it's shaping up to be with him on the roster. Let me explain.

I thought this conference up last year, and I told a couple of people about my thoughts, namely my frined Miraj and Dr. Wertz, my qualitative advisor. Both of them thought it was a great idea, but I don't think either of them thought I was going to do anything tangible about it. Anyway, the next thing that came about was the QM (Qualitative Milieu), a reading group that a few of us decided we really needed in order to stay sharp in the realm of existential-phenomenoogical psychology. Three of us... Miraj, Azizi, and I... wanted to keep our heads in the game, having had more than our share of this sort of thing already but not finding any more of it in our other coursework (let's jut say that Fordham isn't so big on qualitative psychology). There were others who were just getting acquainted with this stuff, so they wanted more. Then there were the faculty members who were interested in these readings and how it affects psychological method, both in clinical practice and research, so they wanted in. Basically, there was enough interest, so I decided to organize the group, and we've been meeting for almost a year now. Once the group was established, I felt like I finally had a good basis for putting together a conference, and I could get the folks in the group to help out.

Sure enough, everyone wanted the thing to happen. I set out to distribute jobs here and there so I wouldn't have to deal with it on my own, and folks were happy to pitch in. Granted, there may be a moment now and then when someone drops the ball, but at least there's more of us to pick up the pieces when that happens. Anyway, I sent out a call for abstracts, having no idea whatsoever who would bite. I also reserved a few rooms at the Lincoln Center campus for one day in April... I figured this would be small, so a one-day conference would be appropriate. Dr. Wertz thought we should bring Fordham to the forefront with this conference, so we invited as many Fordham students as we could to present. For all I knew, Fordham students were probably the only people who were going to be there. So we sent out the call, and we waited. Sure enough, a good few Fordham students responded. Suprisingly, though, a few others from elsewhere seem to have had some interest. People from Tenessee, Texas, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Connecticut, California, Massachisets, New Jersey, as well as other schools in NYC... and others, too. And not only were there students who wished to present, but also faculty members from around the country... about six of them, actually. So okay, this thing got a little big a little fast. Suddenly, squeezing everyone into one day was looking like a bit of a challenge. I mean, who knew? It turns out that there really isn't a conference out there that deals with qualitative research in the human sciences. At the momnet, I'm working on promotional materials for the big day, which is April 13th (incidentally, I built a website for the conference at www.qrhsconference.com), and I've been in touch with presenters to let them know they've been accepted. Now I need to send another email to all of them to discuss specifics on each of their presentations... that's going to take a while, and I have this weekend to do it.

The reason I'm going on this way about the conference, besides the fact that I'm a little blown away by the response, is that I still have the rest of my other work to attend to. I need a break. Spring Break has been kind of a joke... I can't think of a single day during this week that I haven't been working on multiple things. The manual for CASA has been given to me for formating and editing (along with the edits for my own section), I've had reading for my classes, the conference has been relentless, and I've tried everything I could to stay afloat with my thesis follow-up (I refuse to call it a second thesis... I have some dignity left over the whole thing, after all... granted, it's getting harder to find, but it's still there). If I could just work on the conference and the CASA stuff, I think I'd be okay. But the school work on top of it is just ridiculous. I'll be honest... there are a couple of classes I'm taking that I'm truly glad I'm not having to pay for. The work we have to do in these courses is stressfull at best, and I can't say that I'm learning much of anything from them. I'm getting more out of my reading group than I am from my required courses. I'm going through the motions, checking off the list of requirements for the degree program as I go. Still, I'm not at all happy about it. Worst of all, I don't think anyone on my ADP faculty could care less about what I'm doing. All they seem to care about is this damn quantitative portion of my research (if they even care about that), and the rest is just fluff. My ADP advisor can't seem to remember that I'm doing this work with CASA or the conference... he also seems to have no recollection of the fact that he told me to bring in my University of Dallas transcript so I could arrange to have some of my masters credits transfered. When the transcript came in, he didn't know why it was there, only that I should be working on my thesis.

I have no words.

Okay, maybe a few. I choose to reserve those words, though, for another time. I'll be patient, I'll do what I must (and then some), and I'll get by in the program. At the end of all this, maybe they'll notice.