I work a 12 hour shift at the school (my practicum site) Sunday, so Monday has become my day to hang around in PJs all morning, catching up on the Sunday political shows and doing lots of research. The extent of online databases has advanced exponentially even since I was in undergrad 5 years ago, and save for my policy paper which was mostly historical and broad in scope, trips to the library and reading of actual books has been rare this year.
Things are coming to a head, not only with only two weeks of class before finals week, but with summer and the KMC soon following. Will I have the fitness to ride 200 miles? That is the question…
Training isn’t just a complex balancing act, it’s a matter of will. The fitness I had at Camp Lynda, and then did not have at the Rim Ride, has convinced me that with the depth of my base fitness, intensity can do marvelous things. Great for the time constraints, bad for the connective tissue. After the concussion ride a week ago (which was a good hard 3+ hour effort before my trip to the ER), and a particularly tough indoor interval session on Thursday, my ever latent IT band tightness has flared up in a big way. Not what I need right now. I let that, tons of work, and less than ideal weather keep me inside Friday and Saturday, before facing the music and digging out the elastic bands today. Standing around-the-clock leg rows confirmed that the usual hamstring weakness has crept back over the winter. Hilly hiking is a good fix for it, evidently skiing is not.
So, time to jump on that and build things back up, all the while doing enough riding to keep fitness on an upward curve, but not enough to retard progress back to full function. I decided to not ride today, and instead did a hard two hour off trail hike with 25 pounds of water, books, and fleece jackets in the new pack. I moved a load lifter subtly a few days ago, and now the fit is dialed. Very pleased with it. It was also the maiden voyage of the DIY trekking poles, and they were also wonderful. Light is right, and the Gossamer Gear grips are simply the best out there. Lots of hand positions, and a bit fat top for palm pressure when descending steep stuff (the #1 benefit of poles in my book).
Aside from a very few little things (and teaching class tomorrow for the undergrads!), I have four bit projects to do to round out the semester, one in each class. What follows is a brief outline and status report for each. Feel free to skip, as the summary exercise is more for my benefit than demonstrating my proclivities towards verbosity and bloviation.
Policy analysis paper: circa 7000 words. Written, edited, and turned in.
-A broad historical grounding of the social dimension of American education policy, with discussions of colonial New England, George Washington, Jacksonianism and the market revolution, the 1880’s immigration wave, and the NDEA (1957) and ESEA (1965). Thesis being that the enduring American myth of the infinite potential of the hard-working individual has been inculcated in publics schools since the 1600s, and the resultant emphasis on the rights of government to help the individual over the needs of family and the community has been perhaps the major theoretical driver of social and especially class control in the history of the United States. George Washington is a particularly good illustration of this, both in his life and the role he has taken in the hagiographic tradition since his death.
DSM IV-TR diagnostic research paper: circa 3000 words. 90% written.
-A survey of work on Gender Identity Disorder done in the last 15 years, with a focus on the epistemic assumptions behind the relevant trends. Thesis being that virtually all of it assumes on one level that sex is a binary and essential piece of genetic coding, rather than a nuanced and multi-faceted continuum which can only be seen through the haze of (often mid-childhood) acculturation. I use contemporary, Nietzsche and Foucault influenced gender theory to crack the whip and advocate for the removal of the whole diagnostic category on the ground that it’s heteronormative and perniciously hegemonic.
Human Behavior II final project: participatory, qualitative research in progress, research ~90% done. Should be fairly shortish.
-I’m in the midst of collecting responses from a group of fellow students on the ways in which they conceptualize and have experienced worker-“client” boundaries. It’s an open-ended, short survey which I’ll combine with my own experience and a bit of literature on the subject to discuss the nuanced and ambiguous nature of these boundaries, and the shortcomings for which the field of social work has been guilty. In brief, the social justice orientation of social work, which is enjoying a resurgence as of late, demands that in working with populations in need social workers must seek to break down the hierarchies which have typically served to marginalize undesired populations. And yet so much of social service policy on the agency level has concerned itself with rigid rules, and put forth the illusion that we’re not drawn to the field to satisfy personal needs. I’ve got some good literature to show that this liability driven model is not only theoretically unsound, but too often results in less efficacious care for a variety of reasons. The initial rounds of responses seem to lean this direction, too.
Practice with Groups and Communities change essay: research ~70% done. Will be looong.
-This one has been ruminating the longest, as it’s the one I’m most intimidated by. (No accident I left it til last here.) In my head it’s still an ungainly beast, but will boil down to two sections: a program evaluation of the Positive Peer Culture, as written in the Vorath and Brendtro book of the same name, and in the places I’ve worked which have used it in one form or another (including the present one); and a section evaluating the effectiveness of residential treatment as such for teenagers. It will a challenge to be complete in these two areas, yet focused. I’m beginning to develop serious doubts the residential treatment centers are anywhere near as effective as they claim to be, which is a problem which likely has roots deep in our criminal justice system. Hopefully I can be cogent on the subject while still acknowledging that this is a piece of post-doctoral breadth and complexity.
It’s all really good stuff I’m proud to hang my hat on, but at this point in the game I’m sitting in the sand at the Gold Bar intersection. All the pieces are in place for a strong finish, but the threat of commitment is high, the potential for failure on the mental level very real indeed.
I thank the fates and all of those with whom I’ve ridden big and long in the last two plus years that I’m an endurance racer. The mental training transmits to work in everything else so well, both as a metaphor and in the details (eat well and often, drink water, sleep the night before, tune your machine before it breaks). Of course, when I tell my friends and classmates that this is the best part, the part that really makes it a race to be proud of, and start using cycling metaphors (its mile 110 on the KTR Kelly!) they all think I’m an arrogant bastard all too fond of pontificating on past glories. Which is true, but largely besides the point.
Embrace the pain, which mostly doubt anyway.
Bedrock & Paradox 
Leave a reply to Enel Cancel reply