I'll Decide on a Title Later

The ideas and language in this post belong to Matt Cogswell. They reflect work he did within some of his doctoral classes and operate as talking points for later development and collaboration.  Due Credit Productions: A Job Search and Interview Skills Development Program   Purpose Statement:             Due Credit Productions provides opportunities for job-seekers to receive necessary skills, work simulation, and related training to succeed in work opportunities. Mission Statement:             Due Credit Productions believes that financial and educational barriers can limit the potential of individuals to receive equitable work opportunities. As such, the program offers free educational and training services for our collaborators. We draw upon each other’s strengths to help one another grow as community members. Human Organization:    ...

  Unit 2 Seen below was the first product, what I have come to call artifacts, connected to my idea for the overall project for CRTV 502. I typically have worked in video collages for the creativity classes, but I decided I wanted to be more hands-on for this project. Because I found it challenging to connect Thinkertoys to my current job, I decided to try connecting the tools to my ongoing health journey. I want to take extra time with this introduction because there are deeper forces at play here. My mother, who was crafty in different ways, left behind boxes of scrapbook material that have been sitting in my apartment for nearly four years since her death. I decided to use some of that material for this project. Most of the applied material comes from that collection.  In terms of the False Faces ideas I applied as reversals to the assumption that I must only go to the gym to maintain progress, I must confess that here in Week 5 of the quarter, I have only tried Tai Chi ...

 Today is technically the last day of "Week 9" for this quarter. I have not yet written my weekly reflection for my leadership class, and I'm not quite sure if I will have anything brilliant to write. Next week is "off" due to the holiday week, but I still have a lot of work to do, with assignments due Week 10 and Exam Week. I am "caught up" with work assignments except for a couple submissions not due until December; I have not made those my priority.  A peer taught me a new trick that I enacted this morning. I put all my old course content for Drexel into my Drexel One Drive. That way I can access it as needed, but it does not stay on my desktop. My computer was yelling at me for having low memory, so maybe this mass deletion will improve my computer's performance.  This week I learned that my health insurance payments for 2025 will increase dramatically because I had a good 2024 in terms of classes taught. As of right now I have two online class...

I've started to think of these weekly blog posts as an encore in a concert. They are not always that mega hit you've been waiting for all night, but sometimes that one additional song you remember came from them. I use that as my excuse for these being a bit flimsy to comparison to the writing I do all week. My usual week involves writing to students, both in response to their emails and when I reach out to those falling behind, which is not a practice everyone does, I've come to learn. I usually write a reminder announcement to at least a few of my five classes about the workload and to remind them that I support their work even while my workload is heavy. Believe me, I feel the struggle. I had two major assignments due this week. One was the Results, Conclusions, and Recommendations sections, among other sections, for my pilot study. This took me significant chunks of time to write. I also conducted a conversation with a thought leader. From that I created a 9-minute vide...

I had figured I would reflect on the election results for this week's reflection. But, now that my time to reach this personal goal has come, I do not want to focus on that. What I have to say is futile. Although I do not like the results, I can see why it happened. It connects to ideas I have been studying for the past year. But, it feels too raw to explore that now. I have gone on social media since the results, but I have tried limiting my time. I'm seeing a lot of pain, but I'm also seeing a lot of futile acts that have no impact on what happened or will happen. I wrote a response on my Facebook page, but I understand and appreciate that I have a limited audience there. I couldn't handle a larger audience, nor could I speak to one intelligently. That is not my interest.  I do personal journaling on a mostly daily routine. That is for me and for my eyes only at the moment. It helps me get through my week by exploring what happened and what is coming up on the horizon...

 This academic week started off quite roughly, so I was happy yesterday when I was finally "caught up" for the week. I keep "caught up" in quotation marks because I never truly feel like I'm caught up until the quarter (doctorate) or semester (job) is over. Earlier in the week I was procrastinating more than I have since starting my program. I was just finding everything too overwhelming, and I was escaping into junk food and movies. To be fair, I did all the work that was set out for me and attended three Zoom meetings - two for school and one for work - during the week. I even registered for the winter quarter and bought the books listed for one of my upcoming creativity classes. I stayed busy while finding ways to stay sane. I had posted on Facebook how overwhelmed I felt. I knew it would solicit the sympathy I didn't want to hear. I like to vent and share, but I don't like pity or even support, when that's not why I'm posting. I post to remin...

My EdD classes run in quarters that officially run for ten weeks with an exams' week before a short break. The weeks run Monday to Sunday, so today is the last day of Week 5, so just about halfway through, with much to do in the remaining time. I made it a goal this quarter to attempt a Blogger post when I am "caught up" with that week's activities. Journaling is embedded into both classes this quarter; this is a frequent practice. I don't feel like I always have brilliant contributions to the journals, but I do my best to put in writing what I took from the learning process.  For my qualitative research course, we did Cycle I coding, and I have this next week to Cycle II coding and write out and organize the data into another template. I had a meeting with one of the two professors who lead the class. They have connections to my research, so it was validating to discuss the content. They and I started a conversation about my emerging ideas for a dissertation. It ...