2013 Goals

It's that time of year where we all sit down and make goals for the new year.  I've struggled with goals, like everyone, but I've done pretty well with resolutions in the past so I'm definitely going to make a few this year.  I'm sure I will struggle with my goals this year as well, but I also think I'll do okay.  I might not make every single goal, but I will work on them and will accomplish most of them, especially now that I'm posting them publicly.  2013 is a big year for me.  I'm turning 30 in May and I want to start my 3rd decade of life feeling healthy and strong!  As I like to tell myself when running, "it's amazing what you can accomplish when you tell yourself you can."

As you know, I've taken a liking to running so I'll start with my running goals:
1. Run a 5k with no walk breaks and in 30 minutes or less
2. Become a member of Half Fanatics by doing 6 halfs in 6 months.
3. I also hope to PR at each half marathon (my one and only was like 3:20) and eventually work toward a 10-minute pace.
4. Run at least 3 times a week (something I never did consistently), work up to 4 times a week and toss in speed work once a week.
5. Run a 10k with no walk breaks too and eventually in 60 minutes or less.
6. Become a member of Marathon Maniacs by doing 2 marathons within 16 days (Chicago and Marine Corps Marathons are planned.  I just have to get into them both for that to be a reality)

To help me accomplish my running goals, I committed to running at least 1,000 miles this year with the Moon Joggers.  I'm also going to be logging miles with my online running club.  The accountability piece of having to log miles will help a lot, I hope!  To run 1,000 miles this year, that is 83.3 miles/ month and 19.2/week.  I won't be running every day, but if I were it would be 2.7 miles/day.  I'll be splitting my miles between 3-4 days a week, with a long Saturday run.  Next year I want to run 2,014 miles, but I'm not ready to do that this year.  I need to build a strong base and be running 38 miles/week for that challenge so this year will serve as the building block for that challenge next year.

Another goal I have is to blog more regularly.  I'd like to get to weekly postings and publicly post about my trainings weekly, as well as my PhD work (not nearly as exciting).  To kick start that goal and get in the habit I've joined the Janathon challenge. The point of that challenge is to do a workout everyday and then blog about it. I'll be doing running some days, hot yoga other days and maybe just a random home workout whatever days I don't feel like going to yoga or running.  Luckily I have a few at home workout videos and kinect games so I have the resources. It'll definitely be a challenge to post everyday, but I'm up for it.

Professionally, I have goals as well.  Being a teacher, it's a impossible to ask for a raise.  Other professions can ask for a percentage increase based on performance, but not us.  We get what we get and everyone gets an increase or no one does.  Judging by the current county budget situation I'm guessing I won't be getting any increases this year.  I'll probably lose money because our out of pocket expenses for insurance and retirement are increasing.  So, salary-wise I'm stuck.  However, I do have goals.  I'm applying to transfer to a high school teaching position and would love the chance to work with older students. I'm not too excited about the idea of starting at a new school with new people and policies, and also building all new lessons, but I really want to work with older students.  Middle school students, especially 6th graders are too needy for my liking.  It wouldn't end my world to stay where I'm at in 6th grade, but I'm dying to try a new school so I'm really hoping for a change.  It could be just what I need.  I think eventually I'd like to try a new career all together, but for now I'll start slow and just try high school.  Plus, I have a dissertation to write and it'll be a lot easier to do research in my county if I'm still teaching there so logically it doesn't make sense to leave just yet.

Finally, I have a dissertation to write!  I took off far too long for a mental break and need to get back on track.  As of today, it doesn't look like I'll be ready for the proposal class this spring, which really sucks, but I only have myself to blame.  I procrastinated too much and don't think I'll be able to pull it all off in the next week.  Stranger things have happened, but I'm not banking on it.  However, I have a plan.  If it doesn't happen for me I will be taking a graduate writing course this spring, which will meet each week and at the end I'll be where I want to be.  I think the structure and accountability of a class will be just what I need.  I'd rather not pay for the class, but if I don't take it, I fear the next 4 months will come and go with little progress so it'll be worth the expense if I have to go that route.  My goal is to get my portfolio and proposal done and defended by May (if I get into the class this spring, if not then defended by August) and start my dissertation research by September.  I would love to have my data collected by December and then I'll be left to write it all and graduate by May 2014.  My original goal with my program was to be finished by the time I turned 30, but it's a lot of work and the extra time has been good for me.  I'll keep you posted on this goal.  It's going to be a challenge, but I didn't start a PhD program thinking it would be easy!

I wish you all a happy and safe new year and good luck with your goals as well :)

A New Type of Travel

If you ever check my blog then you'll see that I have been a little M.I.A. lately. Life sometimes gets in the way of blogging, and life really got in the way of mine. Also, I haven't done any international traveling the last 2 years so there wasn't anything interesting to write about, or so I thought...

A conversation with a friend made me realize that even though I'm not physically traveling to another country, that doesn't mean I can't write about my travels through a doctoral program (maybe people want to know what that's like) or my journey to become a runner. So, I suppose that is what I'll turn my blog into now. And, of course, if I do travel I'll be sure to post about that too. I've done a lot of domestic travels since my South American 2010 trip and perhaps as time goes on I'll throw in an old post or two.

To start off today I'll give a simple update on my life. My life consists of three compartments, life as a teacher, a PhD student and a wannabe runner. I currently teach 6th grade U.S. History in Northern Virginia. I've been teaching for 5 years (although in schools for 8) and have been in 6th grade for 3 years. Middle schoolers are rough at times, but this year has been pretty good. I feel like I've hit my stride as a teacher and if I had students like I do this year every year I would say I love teaching, however that's not the case. Ever since my first year teaching I've wanted out. There's so many factors and reasons for it that I won't get into, but as a result, I ended up back in grad school (I got a masters in order to become a teacher, so thankfully that was done). Instead of getting a 2nd masters degree I figured I might as well go all the way! I'm in a weird place with teaching this year though.  I have great students this year and the summer schedule is pretty awesome (8 weeks vacation!) I'm having a hard time thinking about other jobs that would give me that time off (there are none). I'm sure once I get a bad group of kids again I'll be all over that job search!

My first year teaching was in 2008. I quickly realized this was not something I could see myself doing for 30 years so I researched doctoral programs at schools in the DC area and found one at GMU that I really liked. I was accepted into the PhD program in Education Policy and started in 2009. I took a full time course load while working full time (absolute craziness) for 4 years! Life kind of took a back seat to work, classes and homework. I still managed to get out there and have a good time (and travel a lot), but I was always so busy. Right now, I'm done with all my coursework and decided to take a semester off so I could focus on research and get ready for my dissertation. However, there's been a slight problem with that. Now I don't want to do it...yikes! I've lost my motivation and I've been struggling with that. I'll get back in the game here soon. I have to because the deadline for my work is approaching and I've worked too hard and spent too much money to give up now. I'll do a separate post just for that soon enough, but that's where I am in the program.

Finally, the last phase of my life at the moment is running. I will be posting later this week about what running means to me and why I'm into it, but for now here's a little blurb. I started running in March/April 2011 (I'm not sure exactly), with my friend Zoey. We would meet once a week and run on a treadmill. I sometimes would get out there and run on my own, but not much.  We decided we should train for a local 10k race in our area. When we looked it up we found out it was not that far away, May 28th!

May 28th also happens to be my birthday :) I felt like that was so soon, but I also remembered that I've ALWAYS admired people who run races and wanted to be like them and since I keep getting older if I didn't start then, when was I going to do it? We took the plunge and signed up for the race. We trained as best we could, but I know it wasn't the best plan.  My first race, I was almost last and I could care less.  It was awesome!  Not only was it my birthday (I turned 28 on May 28th), but after I crossed that line I had the best feeling ever. It was by far the best birthday I've ever had. I was hooked and knew there would be many more races to come. There is way more to this story, and like I said, another post is in order for that, but this is the 3rd compartment of my life. I've run several races since then and somehow managed to complete a Marathon this past October. The picture above is me at mile 20 of the Marine Corps Marathon. I was so happy I cried (what's with all the tears!) a little at the finish line! I still can't believe I was able to do that and I so look forward to the many races and accomplishments ahead of me. I've also found the most amazing support group (RFRC in the house) that has really helped me make some small, yet huge personal victories and I know that there will be plenty more where that came from.

Oh yes, I guess I should post a little about the love life since I am "The Single Girl." The picture to the left is of my special friend. I like it because it's mysterious and you can't quite get a good look at him. He's good to me and we have a good time.   He does cook some amazing food and I love that because I'm not a cook. I'll just leave it at that :)   For now, I have to say that life is pretty good.

"How do you eat an elephant?"

"One bite at a time!" My professor told us that at the beginning of the semester. I just finished taking EDUC 871: Advanced Policy Issues and turned in my 34-page paper (43 with references and appendix) right before class and gave my presentation to the rest of the class. It was a great feeling to walk out of there and feel like I accomplished something.

Being a doctoral student, I'm no stranger to papers. On average, each of my doctoral course papers are a minimum of 15 pages, but I've written several that are beyond that and depending on the class, sometimes the professor requires more than one paper. However, there is always a hefty paper at teh end of each of your courses, you can count on that! Thankfully, I'm pretty good at writing, but one thing I always do is wait until the last minute. I'll usually start gathering resources and start working on it a couple days before the paper is due. I always manage to get it done, but it's way too stressful. I've been trying to work on that work habit because I know that the quality of work I'm putting out is good, but it isn't great.


At the beginning of the semester for the policy class I just finished, the course assignment was daunting. I'm an education policy major and took the intro to policy course that I needed for this class, but the assignments were very different. The course I completed had us look much deeper into a policy and gave us a real snapshot into the type of policy work and analysis we'd be doing in our future careers. I loved it, but it was challenging.

In order to produce top quality papers, our professor had us turn in chunks of it along the way, 5 to be exact and every week we met we had to be prepared to discuss with our classmates our updates. There were only 6 students so we were able to always share what we've been working on and not have to rush through it. It was awesome and I was able to get great feedback the from my professor and my classmates. The best part was we didn't meet every week. We had about 4 weeks off here and there to give us time to do our research.

I always waited until a night or two to update my drafts, but by the time we approached the due date there was only a little left to do. I really liked that method because I honestly feel like it's the best work I've ever done! I know it isn't perfect, and I'm sure I could've worked on it harder, but I feel very happy with what I produced. And, thank goodness my teacher set it up that way because even though I had over 20 pages completed on Monday, I still had a lot of work to touch up on and ended up adding 14 pages between Monday and Wednesday. Also, thank goodness I have a student teacher working with me because I was able to devote the entire work day on Tuesday and Wednesday to complete it. I had no idea it would take that long just to tie the loose ends. Now, I just have to wait and find out my grade...and that is always nerve-racking! Even though my professor has given a lot of feedback along the way and I think I'll get an A, you never know!! Anyway, that's just a tiny snapshot of life as a doc student.