FSoS Cohort 04-05 Blog

Fall Updates

This semester is a change of pace for me. I'm only taking one class (Qual. with Paul) and I'm taking 10 of my Masters Thesis credits. Naturally that's taking up the bulk of my time. I'm studying how sexual behavior influences attitudes about marriage and cohabitation in college students. As far as assistantships I'm 25% TA for 1101 which has been extremely fun but a lot of work and 25% RA for Bill on the Healthy Marriage Resource Center. I've also continued my ties with Project READY out of BYU. I've been trying desperately to start getting some publications out the door and I've got two that I'm working on drafts for. One is with Jodi here on how desire to marry it related to risk behaviors in college students and another is a conceptual piece with Jason Carroll from BYU on looking at emerging adulthood through the conceptual lens of marriage (we're hoping this will be the first of a series of 3 or 4 articles using the Project READY data). I've also got two posters awaiting acceptance for a conference next Spring. If I ever find time I�m trying to put a fellowship application in to NIH and get a proposal together for teaching next summer.....oh yeah and my wife is having a baby any day now.

HELP, HELP, HELP!

Welcome back everyone! I'm starting us out with a request (no, not really ... more like a pleading) for help. If you are my friend or even sort of casually like me, read on . . .

]]> I opened my big mouth last year and offered to do a FSoS 8200 seminar. It's set for 9/21 from 10:40 - 11:30 (before the obligatory colloquium.

The topic is Integrating Family and Personal Life with Graduate School. I've heard from my secret grapevine that this is a particularly anxious and pressured cohort, where many of them are returning students with current jobs they will be working while pursuing their degrees.

I'm planning a panel discussion with a question time. I've begun to approach certain people who have characteristics that I think would be good for the panel (i.e., single parent, employed during program, spouse, etc.). But what I need from ALL OF YOU is your learned wisdom about surviving the first year.

Respond back with 1-3 hints on survival, balancing your life, or even flourishing in the FSoS graduate environment. Keep them short and sweet. I will compile them for a handout for the 2005-06 cohort. And if I get REALLY creative, I might do it on slick paper with your photo, so it is more personal (Please let me know when you write if you want to be anonymous -- I'll assume that if you don't say anything, it's okay to identify you).

Thanks so much, and let's get a party going soon.

What a party!

Sorry for the previously HUGE version of this picture! Anyway, I can post other pictures from our latest party if you send me your pix...

Connections to 2005 Grad Student Cohort

Would you choose one person whom you would like to be connected with? Please create a comment and write the person's name. There are 12 people on Dr. Bauer's list (excluding 2 deferred), so one of us may choose two.

Here are the prospective students' names.
1. Andrews, Margaret
2. Kramer, Karen
3. Olsen, Laurelle
4. Peterson, Trenton
5. Plowman, Elizabeth
6. Roberts, Memory
7. Skinner, Brooke
8. Son, Seo Hee: Jaerim
9. Wilde, Jason Lee
10. Williams, Charlotte: Holli
11. Woodward-Kreitz, Mary
12. Zaloudek, Julie

I will start. I am willing to be an e-mail contact for "Seo Hee Son". Actually, I am already corresponding with her. I am going to help her settle down. I know that, for international students, the first a few months are difficult to survive in the U.S. without help.

Good luck with your final projects, exams, and papers!

CONGRATULATIONS

Congratulations Paul for receiving a prestigious fellowship. If you still read the board, please post what the fellowship is all about and stuff for us. I�m so proud of our cohort!

Advisor & Dissertation decision-making

A colleague who has been in FSoS for awhile blogs here. Check out his latest post (which I perturbed out of him) on Helpful Hints. He lists two great books that give ideas for getting the most out of a doctorate program, how to choose an advisor, and how to prepare for/write a dissertation. He's got it all figured out! (Those dang smart cohorts!)

The Effectiveness of African Ways

Hurray and thanks to Paul!!! I was (again) trying to find a way to grab some time with my frequently absent advisor, the Inimitable Doctor Doherty, while he was in a meeting with Brian. Then Paul suggested I try the traditional African way of rapping loudly on the door and pretending I didn't know anyone else was there (my usual modus operandi was to politely and quietly wait out of ear shot so I would not rudely disturb the conversation, hoping that I could jump in between the guest leaving and the next phone call/meeting/escape to Lori's). So I tried it, and it worked! Not only did it work, but Bill came looking for me upstairs when the meeting was over.

Any other new approaches you'd like to suggest, Paul?

contact info.

hi everyone :) It has come to my attention that it would be helpful to have everyone's contact information in case we need to call someone in our cohort for some reason. I thought I would post this here because a) it is a secure site and b) all the info will be in one place instead of on various pieces of paper that could easily get lost. So I will start...if you need to contact me, the best way is by my cell phone which is 763-350-3690 or my work phone at 952-881-9883.

What are your commitments?

I'm interested in knowing who is doing what academically, besides classwork...What's your assistantship and with whom doing what? What projects are you volunteering for? What research are you either volunteering for or assisting with? Or what other academic thing are you involved in? Are you volunteering somewhere with the hope of an assistantship or research data? What are your plans for the next semester? Are you part of any organizations and serving as officers of some capacity? I'd like to get a better sense of who is doing what. So...I'll start with me...

]]> For me, I'm working a 50% assistantship in Student Services organizing the mentoring program, study/research abroad program and CHE scholarships. I also am mentoring with Dr. Tai Mendenhall. I am planning to apply for one of Hal's assistantships for next year and hoping to TA with Wayne in about a year (after taking PFF). I'm currently waiting to see if one of Bill's projects develops into a possible volunteer opportunity. I'm also joined Collab Fam Healthcare (CFHA) and I'm serving in the leadership team for the MFT Forums. And I'm creating blogs by the handfull...

What about you???

How do you manage your time?

Since having a baby, I seem to have no time on my hands. Elbows deep in diapers, singing silly songs, and promoting sleep sessions (both his and mine) seems to leave me without studying time. I'm sure I'm not alone. Even if you don't have kids, I want to know how everybody manages to squeeze studying/research into their schedules. Do you plan out chunks of study time? Do you commit to stay at the school or library for a set amount of time? Do you shut the door at home and call a daily 3 hour timeout? OR WHAT????
What's your secret to managing your school commitment?

Classes for Spring

Hey everybody! I was wondering who is taking what in the spring...it is always helpful to know who will be in your classes (it lessens my anxiety!) I hope you are all having a fabulous (and much deserved) winter break. Miss you!
Holli

Happy Happy New Year!!!

Hi, everyone!

Hope you are having a wonderful winter break. My husband was here for nine days and flew back to Korea yesterday. I am going to visit Vancouver to see my parents next week.

I have been so glad I am part of our cohort and thankful to all of you. I wish you a new year that holds in store everything you are wishing for. See you in spring semester.

Take care,

Jaerim

Happy New Year, Everyone!

I'm writing this from Seattle: May everyone have a wonderful Nw Year, and I send out nothing but the best wishes for all of us in this cohort. May we find our research voices, our passions, our committee members (!), and may we all have 100% funding!

With love,

Mary

Expanded Research Interests

I know we've all heard each other's 5 second overview on research interests about 100 times since orientation but I realized that I don�t really have a good idea on what everyone's really interested in. I know this will cross over a little bit with discussion about advisors but I thought I'd open up an entry to talk more in depth about what we each want to research (or multiple things we want to research or what we might want to research, etc). That way if we have overlap we can collaborate and brainstorm and possibly pull some grants together.

]]> Basically I'm interesting in one very broad thing (marriage stability) in a very specific way. I'm in the works with Jason Carroll from BYU and a few other scholars to put out there a different view on marriage stability and formation. We base a lot of our work on Blaine Fower's book The Myth of Marital Happiness which basically outlines how important it is that married couples develop an "other-centered" perspective in their relationship as opposed to being focused on their own individual happiness. Drawing off that, Jason and I along with other scholars are proposing a shift away from the view that to make marriages better we need to improve skills (i.e. better communication, conflict resolution, etc) to one in which other-centered "virtues" such as empathy, friendship, generosity, and others are what will have a more lastly impact on creating a healthy marriage. We�re basically reacting to the notion that you can teach a couple a set of skills and they can have a happy marriage. We�re proposing that happy marriage runs deeper and is part of a more long-lasting developmental process. Specifically, Jason and I are planning an in depth investigation into the emerging adulthood population to see if the current climate and development of their relationships is preventing these virtues from developing and in turn leading to poor marriage outcomes.
I have a couple projects in the process of collecting data now that will yield two major datasets with these ideas. One is a national sample of couples that was meant to validate a questionnaire that evaluates individuals on the virtues I mentioned before but also has depression, anxiety, conflict resolution, satisfaction, and parenting style scales built in. I�ll also have a data set that had information on college-aged students and their parents and how they view what it means to be an adult and marriage readiness. Both should be ready to analyze soon and there a ton of data so if anyone wants so maybe team up on a potential research question let me know.

Advisors/Committees

I thought it might be helpful to have dialogue on who we're thinking about for advisors and committee members and bounce ideas off each other. (I think it will be especially helpful to network for possible outside members.)

Very, very brief research track�.something along the lines of tying links between marriage satisfaction and education via a virtue or �we-centered� approach and emerging adulthood development and behavior.

I already have an agreement with Bill Doherty that he'll be my advisor after this year (my intake advisor was Martha) and I'm debating for my next spot (only need one more person for my Master's committee) between Martha (quantitative/stats background), Hal (developmental background), or Jodi (college-aged behavior background) and then some mix of them for my doctoral committee. I have absolutely no idea who I'm going to have as outside people on my committee.

Anyway, hopefully this will open up some brainstorming.