The D Word

One of the main reasons I want to blog is to show my friends and family what I do.

I'm in the process of hashing out my dissertation idea.  The thought makes my head spin for a few reasons.  I was just talking to one of my cohort buddies about how our days seem impossibly long, yet it's hard to imagine that we are already in our fourth year of doctoral study.  Anyway, to orient you to the major research components of my graduate school life, here's a short summary:

There are two "phases" to a doctoral level degree in school psych:  your time at school, and your time at internship.  And also your time in post-doctoral study, although that is not necessarily required unless you want to get licensed (which I do), so I guess there are three phases.  In the first phase, three major things need to happen research-wise:  thesis, prelims, and dissertation (in that order).  The former and latter must be proposed and defended.  The prelims also have two phases: a national exam and a literature review (aka comps paper).

I wrote my thesis on posttraumatic growth after Hurricane Katrina.  This is the second thesis I wrote - my one from NYU did not count because I just had to write it, not defend it.  Tulane has high standards when it comes to transferring coursework, which I resented at first, but now understand.  I defended my thesis on 10/17/11.  Henry was born ten days later.  How's that for juggling grad school with personal life?

About a year later, I passed the national exam with relative ease.  If I play my cards right, I can roll my comps paper into my dissertation proposal with some tweaking.  I'm working on my comps paper right now.

This article - Executive Functioning Predicts School Readiness and Success: Implications for Assessment and Intervention- is very relevant, albeit broadly, to my dissertation idea (above the fold on the first page, continued on page 20).  It was published in the National Association for School Psychology (NASP) newsletter, Communique´ (pictured above).  More about NASP, my dissertation project, and other research goodness, later.