You Call Her "Doctor" Riddle, Doll!!! Part 2

Or so I thought.

I started my Comps in January 2010. And that was okay. I had four questions I had to answer. By March, I was finished with that, and passed with flying colors. Then I spent the summer starting the first of my research classes, (in the middle of recovering from surgery to straighten out a deviated septum), and was well on my way to getting this whole business accomplished in a timely manner. I continued to work on my Concept Paper (CP), because it had not been officially approved. This was EXTREMELY frustrating, as I watched these reviewers hemhaw over a period here or a parenthesis there. 

That summer we started watching Bones on Netflix, from Season One on. I saw all these characters with all these higher degrees and I thought, "Hey, you know, maybe I could get another doctorate."

And I told Poppa Don that he had permission to punch me full in the mouth if I ever said that again.

The CP was finally approved in October 2011, right after we moved into the Plantation, so I scrambled to turn it into my Dissertation Proposal, get it approved, and get it all done by December. Well, no such luck.

Christmas 2011, as the work semester ended for me, my proposal was finished. I submitted it to my illustrious chair, Dr. Jamillah Grant, and it was still getting bumped by the Office of Academic Research (as it was called at the time). The whole situation sucked. It was in the back of my mind all through the traditional holiday trip to New Orleans. It was during that trip (I think) that I got to meet Jamillah, who has a home in Kenner. We had lunch one day at a place called Zea's on St. Charles Avenue, where I discovered I really love shrimp creole. (It's not there anymore.) Even after we came back from that trip, I set up my laptop in the dining room and did yet another edit. 

"Change the word "ten" to the numeral "10". Oh, no, wait. Change the numeral "10" to the word "ten." Oops, wait. Change the word "ten"....

Seriously. I'm not making this up.

Finally, I had enough. I wrote some scathing e-mails and told Dr. Grant to send it as is. I wasn't doing anymore.

Then it passed. Go figure.

So...I started data collection in April 2012, while still attending physical therapy sessions to recover from shoulder surgery in January. (The band was still playing, too, but with a new bass player.) Ten interviews, transcriptions, write ups. By May, I was ready to submit to the Graduate School, the Entity Formally Known as The Office of Academic Research. 

It went once: I had to fix one thing in the last chapter. It went twice: All it needed was a change in the Table of Contents and some APA stuff in a couple of places. Then suddenly I get a message from my second advisor that she was leaving to go to another job. NO!!! I liked Nancy Bennett. She was so nice, especially at Christmas when everything was so screwy. Anyway, I was re-assigned to Amy Welch. More about her later.

We went to Killeen after the Fourth of July to Lisa Mendoza's birthday party. I got a message from Jamillah that there were "lines" on my table. Huh? There are no "lines" on my table. (It's a Word setting that shows lines for formatting but once printed, they're gone. This means some people still don't really understand Word. Hello!!!!) Anyway, dropped everything to fix that sitting in a Baymont Inn & Suites in Killeen. Sent it back again.

(Oh, and we were dealing with a stalker that entire year. Just throwing that out there.)

Future Dalai Lama

Then, in July, we went on the Epic Vacation of All Time, with the future Dalai Lama (Trey) in tow. We went to the Petrified Forest, the Grand Canyon, Great Basin, Craters of the Moon, Glacier National Park, and then....

I'm standing beside a swimming pool at the KOA Kampground in Dillon, Montana when I get this message that I have an all-out new dissertation chair.

WHAT THE %*#*)*^!!!!!

I had just got off the phone with our housesitter telling me a bunch of our fish had died and now this. That conversation took up most of the roaming minutes on my phone, so right in the middle of the conversation with Jamillah about how they made her take her leave of absence early instead of waiting until the end of July and had cut off her access to all of her students' files, the phone just went, "BLIP!" (MetroPCS, how I hated thee that day.)

Needless to say, the rest of my evening went to shit.

So....for the better part of our three days in the Grand Tetons, I'm messaging this new guy who I thought was supposed to be my new chair, the chair of the School of Education, the secretary of the Graduate School, and my new advisor who ended up being the most worthless individual ever employed by a major university. I was finally able to get a callback from her on the day we had to fix not one but TWO flats on the car. It was like speaking to a recording because she sounded like she was reading from a script: "I'm so glad you made it this far in your program. I'm so sorry you're having difficulty."

This, on the wall at the Tire Store in Jackson, Wyoming.

Ugh. More about that in a bit.

Anyway, I was forced to take ANOTHER DISSERTATION COURSE. Great. Thanks loads, NCU. (I was however able to get financial aid. God bless you, Sue Ellen Buhrman!!) I was powerless to do anything until the new course began: August 1, 2012, the day we rolled into Devil's Tower National Monument. My correspondence with the "new" chair and the grad school had yielded some success in working out the bugs, but when I logged into the new class, on the slowest wireless Internet connection I'd had on the entire trip and in the shadow of one of the creepiest National Monuments ever (cue Close Encounters theme!!!), the name of the instructor was NOT the guy I'd been talking to for the past week. 

Who the hell is THIS guy????

Okay. More emails back and forth. I re-submitted my manuscript. Again. And I didn't hear from this guy for almost a month.

I filed a grievance with the Graduate School.

We returned to Texarkana. Ted (the Cat) and I went back to the Hut. (Anakin and Bug disappeared after an MLK long weekend in 2010. Only Ted came back.) Fall semester 2012 started. Finally I got a message: "Oh, sorry it took me so long to get back to you. I've been very ill and haven't been able to work."

"Well, I'm sorry about that. Hope you're feeling better, and that we can get the ball moving again."

Well...nope. This did, however, settle the FIRST grievance. 

Dr. Willis and the worthless new advisor received scathing reviews on the student discussion forums. Nobody could ever get a response from said instructor and What's-Her-Name was referred to as a Stepford Wife. It was sad, really. Eventually she was fired. Dr. Willis resigned, being a brittle diabetic and too ill to continue working for NCU.

NOW WHAT???

I got an email from a new advisor named Brian Rubin. From the first phone call, I could tell he'd been called in to clean up whatever mess the other advisors had made. I was certain that day that we'd get along swimmingly.

My new chair was Dr. Patrick McNamara. I kept wanting to call him Peter, even up until I sent him my PowerPoint presentation for my defense. He was very nice, and very understanding. Even featured in the NCU newsletter as the big newcomer. He looked over my manuscript, I suppose thinking I was still at the proposal stage (NOOO!!!!). Then I get a message saying, "Oh, I didn't realize you were this far along."

Duh. He sent it to the Grad School. Granted, we're now in the month of OCTOBER...

I'm in the middle of a breakout session on the new features of Blackboard at the (then) AATYC Conference (my first year to attend) in Hot Springs, when I get a message. Manuscript has been bumped. AGAIN!!! And why????

"Take the "retrieved from dates" out of the bibilography."

HUH???

One of those APA 6th edition changes that wasn't caught back in 2010 when the new manual came out. Seriously??

So after meeting online with the Spanish class at 12:30, skipping lunch and I think calling Sherri Hodges about the APA changes, I took the "retrieval dates" out of the bibliography and went to give my off-the-cuff speech as a candidate for the faculty position on the AATYC Board, then off to the elections. I was starving by the time the banquet rolled around at 6...and I won the election. By a coin toss, no less. Sheer dumb luck.

I ate, hung out with some of my fellow co-workers, enjoyed (a lot) of free vodka and Sprite in the Arkansas Broadcasters Association Hospitality Room right next door to my hotel room at the Austin, and crashed.

I went back to The Hut the next day. Took one last glance at the dissertation and sent it on its merry and final way, praying it would get approved by the next course end date.

Which didn't happen. It took ONE extra day.

My grade posted. CRAP!!! You have to be ENROLLED for approval. No, no, NO!!! I had another grievance letter ready to go. I was on the phone all morning leaving messages to the appropriate people again. Then I get this direct email, not from the NCU message system, but from Sherri Jaramillo:

DM: Approved.

I nearly fell out of my office chair. I emailed Sunni. "Is this right?"

Yes. Yes, that's right.

Hallelujah!!! Holy $%**!!!!!

Brian Rubin and I played phone tag. Dr. McNamara and I played phone tag, but conversations did happen. Now it was all paperwork and formalities.

My oral presentation was scheduled for November 19, the Monday before Thanksgiving. 9:30 Eastern Time, 8:30 Central Time. Ugh. Way too early. But first we had to do a run-through with a guy from the Grad School. We did a conference call in my "new" office on the Ashdown campus one afternoon. I was told my dissertation was "interesting" and well-written. Not as dry and dull as most academic stuff. Well, that was good to know. At one point Dr. McNamara wanted to do a second run-through and I said, Nope, I'm good. Let's go with it. 

(I ran off and left my purse in my office that day. Way to go. Then I did the same thing before Winter Break this year. Must be a "thing.")

I left for the Hut on Sunday, November 18, so I could rest and relax the night before. I got up the next day, put on my good black suit, made my coffee, and went to my DeQueen office. I set up the video camera. Don showed up around 8. Sunni came down to be my proctor.

I called in at about 8:35 as instructed. Jamillah was there, too!! Yay!! As well as Dr. McNamara and Dr. Graham, my last remaining committee member after they switched to the new setup with two people instead of three. Dr. Graham was my mentor from my Ed tech class, I believe.

I don't know who else was listening in - I'd given the number out to those who were interested. (Memaw listened in, of course.) My advisor did, too.

Anyway, I actually got nervous and said, "uh," about 80 times in the first two minutes. Sad, really. But once I got into the part I really knew, like my actual results, I think I did better. I answered some questions, and that was that. I was put on hold while they hem-hawed, then they came back on.

Congratulations, Doctor!

Then it was all over. And I nearly fell to pieces, but managed to keep it together to get through the rest of the day. In Fall 2012, we still had classes on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of Thanksgiving Week, so at 12:30 that day, I taught my first class as Doctor Riddle. I told the kids I wouldn't be too militant about the title until next semester. HA!!! A student brought chicken mole to Spanish class as her culture project so at least I was able to eat that day. And I was able to enjoy Thanksgiving, with a houseful of family!

I officially moved out of The Hut at the end of November. I hated to leave my landlady, who was so good to me for three years, without a rent payment for December but it was time to go. I'd already turned off DISH Network a year before, and even though I had wi-fi there and could use all my gadgets...I was bored senseless. Even with Renegade Ted around to keep me company. It wasn't worth the time and money to live away from home anymore. I made arrangements with work to move my permanent office to the Ashdown campus and that worked out well. I even got a new office, then a "newer", bigger one in Fall 2014. I finally managed to get ALL of my stuff from DeQueen to Ashdown and must have had more stuff in that office than I did at The Hut. All my classes are AV or online, and Spanish in-class hasn't made since Fall 2013.

Everything started to wind down after that. I didn't get my ProQuest information email until mid-December. Here's where you can read it, if you so choose:

 http://search.proquest.com/docview/1313569752

We left for our annual Christmas trip to NOLA. I didn't even take the laptop. I barely checked email. I didn't even check Facebook. I didn't have to worry about due dates. Or Financial Aid. Or anything.

Wow.

I mailed publishing paperwork after we got back. And waited. Finally I got a call from Brian saying everything was good to go and a week later I got an email saying my degree was officially conferred and I was an official NCU graduate. Diploma would arrive at the end of the month, meaning February. On Monday, March 4, Don walked into my new office in Ashdown with a rather large package. And there it was:

It was done. It was really, really done. So...now what?

I'd had so much I wanted to do for so long that I didn't even know where to start. I was so overwhelmed by the "free time", and being at home EVERY day. I spent a lot of time just starting into space thinking, "Isn't there something I'm supposed to be doing?"

I did decide to present my dissertation at NISOD in 2013. I figured I needed to to do it as soon as possible while it was still current and didn't become outdated. Anything related to technology pretty much has to be done quickly because nowadays it's obsolete before you even have it out of the gate. So I sent in my proposal and it was accepted.

I was still at the point where I was zoning out but interestingly enough, one day in April, I got an email congratulating me on being nominated for Dissertation of the Year.

What?? Did I read that right??

Yes, I read that right. I had to send in my abstract and this hokey thing for the Grad School poster session Commencement in June. I used the stuff from my PowerPoint presentation and sent that off. Then later I got an email saying I didn't make the poster session, so that probably meant I didn't get the big prize but it was pretty cool to be nominated, out of all the graduate students. There were 25 nominated. It was also pretty cool to announce that to the Little River Leadership Class I was in at the time. We were on a school bus, touring the county.

I happened upon a Tweet that had all of the nominees listed, from NCU's Facebook page that I was pretty sure I followed, but obviously didn't at the time. I hooked into all their social media. I think I posted that I was presenting at NISOD, and I presented at AATYC that following fall. 

(And was TOTALLY slammed in the session reviews. The only session mentioned by name in the feedback reports, saying it was just an excuse to present my research. Isn't that what we're supposed to do??? I wondered who had it in for me that day. But special thanks to Molly Sirigiri. I wouldn't have made it through that day without her!!)

I never did send out press releases, though I wrote some up. I suppose three years after the fact is slightly old news?? I think I stalled because I was waiting to see about the Dissertation of the Year thing.

I didn't win. If I had, I would definitely have gone to graduation in June 2013, but I was hanging out at Lum & Abner Days that weekend instead. I didn't have my regalia anyway....didn't order that until LAST Spring, 2015. As expensive as THAT was, I should wear it once a week! 

And I did get a raise, most of which goes to student loan payments...so, yeah.

But that's the story. I have that title I'd never even considered until that graduation ceremony in 1988. Am I smarter? Well, I know a lot more "stuff", and I learned to jump through some major hoops I never expected to jump through. There are drawbacks to being "over-educated," but that was my decision, and if I can encourage my students to achieve that same dream, that's a major plus. I wear my "costume" and read names at our commencement festivities, watching their faces light up when they get their degrees for hard work and dedication.

(No matter how much I know they HATED my music class....)

I still get email digests from the NCU student group and see the struggle unfold for others, and all I can think is....

GLAD IT'S YOU AND NOT ME!!!!! :)