Parent education day

Today is parent education day at my daughter's Sunday school class. Hmmm. There are so many things about which I could be educated.

Have been so busy actually working on my dissertation that I kind of forgot I had a blog about the whole thing. It is definitely a daunting process, this year-long paper. I have still not even handed in my proposal and I have over 50 pages written. But I need the first 3 chapters done to hand in the proposal, and I'm getting there, so I have hope. It's kind of cool, actually: the first 3 chapters sets up the whole thing. Chapter one is your idea and why you think it's a good one. Chap 2 is a literature review of all that has been done on the topic already. For me that means a review of existing treatments for binge eating disorder and a review of how yoga has been used as a treatment for mental illness.

Chapter three is methods-- how you plan to get your data. This is the part on which I have done the least work so far. I have to get a yoga teacher who is willing to work with me for little to no money. I have to find a studio that will let me use their place. I need to come up with the assessment instruments I will give my subjects before and after the intervention (yes, these cost money as well). I need to figure out how I will crunch the numbers once I've gotten all of my data. Unfortunately (more for him than me), the guy at my school who helps students out with all of this just had a heart attack. Which doesn't make me feel any better about all this number crunching stuff.

Once you've gotten all that finished you submit to the IRB (institutional review board), and then, once you get approved, off you go on actual data collection and the real fun starts. For me this means:
1.recruiting subjects, probably through newspaper ads.
2. Praying people respond and I get subjects.
3. assessing potential subjects to see whether they have binge eating disorder.
4. administering a small battery of assessments to subjects
5. Overseeing a 10 week yoga class and running a cognitive behavioral group after yoga with half of the participants.
6. readministering assessments.
7. Crunching numbers.
8. Writing up my results
9. Making any changes my committee recommends.
10. Defending.

THere you have it. A doctoral dissertation in 10 easy steps.


Found out that I had low estrogen so now I am on birth control pills to regulate my hormones. Pros: hormones are regulated. Cons: Gained weight. Pros: Gained weight in boobs. Cons: gained weight everywhere else, too. Pros: haven't made myself puke in a while, although I'm not sure how much this has to do with my estrogen level.

So I read in the newspaper that laptops are not made for the heavy use they get as home computers and can overheat. The author suggested putting a cake cooling rack under your laptop to help keep heat from building up. I had a cooling rack downstairs in the kitchen so I am giving it a try. Makes typing kind of bouncy.



Then I found out I need to submit applications for my internship which will start next August by Thursday, so that put the dissertation on hold for a while.