Writing meaningful blog posts has been the most challenging aspect of this course for me. Partly because of my professional background and partly because I’m just sort of a reserved person, I’m not very comfortable expressing strong personal opinions or sharing deeply personal insights, especially in writing. I am thinking back, in particular, to the class session in which we discussed the impostor phenomenon. I’m sure my post would have been far more compelling had I written about my own experiences in relation to the topic. I don’t think this needed to be a confessional space, by any means, but I think I could have offered more.

I am used to attributing knowledge and information to someone else. If I am going to create knowledge, I need to be more confident in asserting a position.

I did not anticipate how selfish I would feel sometimes for coming to class each week. I have two small daughters, and it feels bad to pick them up from day care on Wednesday evenings, hand them off to babysitter, and leave a lousy dinner in the fridge.

At the same time, though, I’m glad I’m here. I am following threads I started pulling years ago as a rookie education reporter, and I think it’s a strength to be driven by such a long-simmering interest.

For me, one of the most valuable aspects of this course has been taking big, sometimes amorphous concepts and propositions and breaking them down into smaller, more manageable parts.

I mean this about assignments like the literature review and this week’s dissertation discussion, in which we’ve examined the parts of a whole and how they fit together, block by block.

But I also mean it about things like the “Research Interests” paper. I thought I knew what I was interested in researching, and I thought I could articulate that interest. But prior to the assignment, I never had to. The exercise of writing my interests down — sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph — was really clarifying. I didn’t expect to have trouble with the one-page limit. I didn’t expect to write as many drafts as I did.

One of my favorite subjects. I’m so intrigued by the symbols, rituals, myths, and artifacts of different professions and communities — by the elaborate ways we organize ourselves and make sense of the world. Learning about the rites of passage assistant principals face, and listening to classmates talk about their own professional transitions really deepened my understanding of the work of professional educators.

I’m sure graduate students are socialized as well, but so much of my attention right now is focused on the work itself that I’m not really sensitive to the overarching process.

Though I don’t have much more than a solid introduction written, it was good to talk some more about our literature reviews. I have really enjoyed reading for this assignment. Distinct themes have emerged in the research I have compiled, and I feel good about the gap I’ve identified. But while the pieces of my outline all relate well to each other, I have been struggling with a through line. I think the problem is that I don’t have a strong enough purpose statement.Right now, there isn’t a very compelling argument or question to drive the review and help it cohere.