It's been a little over two years since I completed my doctorate. I've been a bit nostalgic over it lately, as I recently had dinner with several friends from my cohort, when we met up for a reunion with one of our professors who has moved out of state and was here visiting. We reminisced about the work we did together, discussed ways we might change the program now that we look back, and laughed. A lot. Since we walked the stage, two of the group moved away, one got married, and another got married
and had a baby. We had a wonderful time and I drove home in deep reflection about how far I've come in my life and how strange it is to feel so accomplished with so much of my career still ahead of me. My professor, Dr. M, told me it's about time to stop calling her doctor. First names now.
I also have several friends who are preparing to take their comps this fall, and who are trying to make the important decision about what topic to choose for dissertation. I have been fielding questions, providing support, and offering to read papers. I know they are highly stressed during this time, as I was once there, but I also enjoy reliving it with them and helping in any way I can. I want them to know they can do it. I want them to know this is the best part of the journey toward the doctorate degree. Asking questions, applying what you've learned and becoming part of the research community is quite rewarding. Working on and completing
my dissertation* completely changed my life, and not just because people started calling me Doctor afterwards.
I am a writer. I can say that now. It is as though I was preparing for this journey all my life, and the path of
qualitative research was the launching pad. I learned to ask questions- not just about my work, but about my life. About everything. I recently uncovered a short
autoethnography. I wrote for my qualitative research class. At the time, our university was not offering this class**. As the first doctoral cohort in the College of Education, we were to take one mixed methods course, and one quantitative research course. Qualitative research was not even in the catalogue. I had just come off the transformative experience of the Invitational Summer Institute of the
National Writing Project, and I had spent my whole summer writing, reflecting, and honing my teaching craft with respect to writing. It was one of those moments in time when several aspects of my life and work would converge and create this feeling of connectedness. I knew I wanted to conduct qualitative research. I knew I wanted to give voice to people's experiences. I knew I wanted to write, not examine statistics.
One of my classmates felt the same and we were given permission to take qualitative research at another university. In this course, we spent week after week learning about the various methods of qualitative research, those accepted in the research community and some still striving to be taken seriously. We wrote mini versions of each of them, experimenting with the phrasing of questions and the methods of data collection best matched to the methodology and the research question. One of the methods was
autoethnography.
My autoethnography encapsulates the feelings I experienced during my initiation into the research community. It was the beginning of a transformation for me, and one which is relevant to my friends preparing for dissertation, and to my friends who have been watching and sharing my growth as a writer. The professor required us to turn in hard copies of all our work. She truly lifted the words off the page and lived them with us, providing explicit feedback in writing directly on the pages- something few college instructors still do. No rubric, no list of requirements, just a brief explanation of what we were to write, and supportive and meaningful feedback to help us improve. She would not grade it until we wrote the best papers we could. Sometimes I hit the mark right on, and others I used her feedback and wrote again. I grew so much as a writer. On the cover of my autoethnography, my professor wrote, "Publishable- work on it again." I did work on it again, and when I was finished, she wrote again, "Publishable." But this time, it was followed by "Excellent."
I share this slightly edited version today, not out of arrogance, but to share the feelings I had and the transformation I have experienced and continue to experience in my writing and my interaction with the research community. I only hope my friends facing the two diverging roads in front of them, will choose the one to Ed.D and not the one to ABD. It is true what they say, select a topic/question you love, because you'll be married to it. But you should choose the method you want to learn more about too. It's equally as important. At least in my humble opinion. Though I did not use autoethnography as the methodology for my dissertation, writing this led me where I needed to go, ultimately leading me to
phenomenology.
September 2011
Anderson (2006) described analytic autoethnography specifically as having five key features: complete member researcher status; analytic reflexivity; narrative visibility; narrative visibility of the researcher's self; dialog with informants beyond the self, and commitment to theoretical analysis. However, Ellis and Bochner (2000) disagreed with Anderson's attempt to make the autoenthnography more acceptable to the scientific community. Ellis and Bochner (2000) challenged Anderson's attempt to "tame the format, by taking "autoethnography, which as a mode of inquiry, was designed to be unruly, dangerous, vulnerable, rebellious, and creative, and bring it under the control of reason, logic, and analysis. We want to put culture or society in motion; he wants to stop it, freeze the frame, change the context" (p.433). It is with Ellis and Bochner's creatively organized chaos, I present this autoethnography.
Journal entries and excerpts from reflective papers reveal as an Educational Specialist student, I was unsure of myself. It seems, I sought assurance from those around me. I needed to know I was worthy of being among them. I held insecurities about my acceptance into the group, both by faculty and my cohort. I was admitted and enrolled late, and began my studies with three additional latecomers, one semester after the majority of the students in my cohort. My first year was powered mostly by adrenaline. I was honored to have been accepted and I was eager to prove I belonged there. Sleepless nights, weekends closed away from my family, and countless hours in front of the computer were all in the name of my future. By the time I was enrolled in the mixed-methods research course, the excitement had begun to wear off and the pressures of my personal life started to weigh me down. Some feelings of self-doubt and a death in the family changed my focus, though only temporarily. I wrote a journal entry about beginning the current semester a week behind because of the death of my single mother's last living family member:
"I never stopped to consider how leaving my life for a week would impact my schoolwork (or me at all). My mom really needed me so I left everything and went to her. I have absolutely no regrets, but that set the pace for the semester. Entering the game a week behind, I am already under water and I wonder if I can make it back to the surface."
The volume of assigned reading and outside research consumed me as a giant wave can swallow even the most experienced and confident surfer. It was not only time that haunted me that semester, it was my intellect as well. For the first time in my life, I wondered if I had "what it takes."
"I am starting to feel a little panicked... I've had a few sleepless nights here and there trying to keep up or button up projects and papers, but I have never felt panic. That all changed last night when I realized there were not enough hours in my day (with acute mind and body), to complete the reading that I need to have finished in time to write a discussion post by the night of the tenth (tonight)."
On a fast tracked career, I accomplished quite a lot at a very young age. By the time I was thirty, I had my master's degree and I was the principal of a private school. I had various experiences in the field of education in the ten years since I earned my master's degree, and I usually felt confident and knowledgeable in a circle of colleagues. In addition, I had always been one of the most highly educated in my social circle, including both men and women. This however, was not the case in a cohort of advanced graduate students.
"I can't speak for everyone, but at times this program has been quite humbling for me. It has been testing my personal limits, not only in intellect, but in organizational skills, ability to manage time and workload, and commitment to both my own education and the field of education."
As I dug up, read, and reread this overwhelming body of research, I wondered if I would ever be a contributing member of the research community. It seemed a goal so farfetched and so out of reach. Sometimes I even felt like a fraud.
A few weeks into the semester, we began to look briefly at some of the qualitative methods of research. I sat in class discussions where it seemed the tapestry of our cohort was unraveling, and yet I felt a sense of calm.
"I'm not sure why everyone is freaking out," I wrote in my journal one night after the mixed-methods class.
"For me, everything is starting to make more sense; my ideas are starting to come together." I finally saw where and how I might be able to cross over the line from one who collects and reads research, to one who writes and contributes to the research community. Qualitative methods, by namesake, focus on the qualitative aspects of the world. Like the child who is not satisfied without asking why, I needed more. I needed to know why people experience what they do, and how we can capture it in order to try to make meaning of it. I had been reading a lot of
Dewey and his philosophy on experience resonated with me.
From the moment I applied to the program, I decided I was there for the experience. Sure, like some of the others, I was smitten with the idea of being called Doctor, but pursuing the degree was never about a job, a promotion, or a raise for me. Now I was beginning to understand it was about the experiences, it was about being a part of something bigger. I wanted (and still want) to contribute to the understanding of people. This made me feel weird, different from many of the others in the cohort. For me this program was as much about the journey as it was the finish line. I began to feel in my very being, I was going to be a qualitative contributor to the research. Maybe it was my love of writing, maybe it was a desire to capture experience, but while some contentment care over me, I suddenly felt unsure again. As I completed my Ed.S and officially became a doctoral student, we were told by the Director of Advanced Graduate Programs, we would all have to register for an advanced quantitative research course in the fall. This was extremely frustrating to me. I already completed a doctoral level statistics course, and a mixed methods course, and I finally realized where I fit in. No one else seemed concerned, no one pushed back against the status quo. Now, I found myself feeling like an outlier and wondered if my doctoral program was going to conform to me, or if I would have to conform to it.
I decided the program had to work for me. Graduate education credits are not cheap, and if thousands of dollars of student loans were to be worth it in the end, I was going to make the program conform to my needs and wants. I inquired with the director of the program about whether or not there would be a qualitative research course offered. He replied there were no current plans for one. Thankfully, he allowed one of my cohort members and me to submit letters of special request to take a course elsewhere. In the letter, my desire to use qualitative research to explore the professional development experiences of teachers was clear:
"I enjoy the richness of the qualitative protocol, attempting to capture the spirit and essence of what impacts and changes teacher behavior. I expect my dissertation is going to move along this path."
Upon enrolling at the other university, I was delighted to jump right back in where I had left off. The adrenaline rush of my first year of postgraduate studies was back in full force. It had to be, because I would have a two and a half hour drive to class once a week following a full workday. I felt energized by a course in which we would delve into the intricacies of each of these methodologies, and experiment with each of them. It sounds cliche, even corny, but I know this is where I belong. I am not turned off by the drive, by the tired mornings the day after class and a late night drive. I know I am a qualitative researcher, and I know I have something to say; questions to ask, questions to explore. Here I can look at the world and all its phenomena, histories, and stories in a qualitative way. I can ask why? and how? instead of how many? how much? I will be a qualitative researcher.
*My dissertation was qualitative method of phenomenology.
**The current students in this program are being offered both quantitive and qualitative research courses as part of their program plans.
References
Anderson, l. (2006). Analytic autoethnogroahy. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35(4), 375-395.
Ellis, C. & Bochner, A. P. (2000). "Autoethnography, personal narrative, reflexivity: Researcher as subject," in N. Denzin and
Y. Lincoln (eds.) The Handbook of Qualitative Research (2ND EDITION). Thousand Oaks, Ca.: Sage, pp. 733-768
