I have enjoyed teaching since I went to China in the mid-90s with an English as a Second Language program, and I was grateful for the chance to return to the classroom last semester and teach a state government class through our local community college. This semester, I’m teaching federal government, and I’m pleased to report that I learned all 23 students’ names (first names, that is) in the second week. 🙂

Things have really seemed to click this fall, and I think the students are enjoying the class. Because I realize that telling the students that we’re going to spend a week and a half discussing the U.S. Constitution could make their eyes glaze over, I’ve been trying to think of ways to keep the material fresh and relevant. Since day one, I’ve tried to convey to the students that this subject matter is important because it influences every aspect of our lives, and if they pay attention to the world around them, then they’ll begin to recognize ways in which order and liberty are in balance (or in contrast).

So, I began class on Tuesday with a little heavy metal. 😉

I played “The Pride” by Five Finger Death Punch as I passed out last week’s quizzes, and then we talked about some of the issues raised by the song. We considered lines like: “I’m not selling out; I’m buying in,” and the tongue-in-cheek jab at greed in a capitalistic system, then looked at the FBI Piracy Warning on the CD case and discussed the ways that certain government regulation can actually protect the free market. We talked about the line: “I am what you fear most …” regarding the no-holds-barred chaos of anarchy and what it might look like if we really could do whatever we wanted.

Then, we looked at the seven articles of the Constitution and talked about why the founders agreed on a bi-cameral legislature (which was a compromise on how to represent the people), why the executive branch is kept in check by the other houses (and vice versa), and why the states retained so much power (because many feared a too-strong national government but also didn’t want the masses to rise up in defiance, either).

Tomorrow, we’ll wrap things up and talk about the Bill of Rights and other amendments.

This morning, I received this lovely monograph in my office mail. It’s not just any ol’ book, though … it contains my very first peer-reviewed, scholarly article! 😀

We’ve been working on the article since last summer, and I found out a few months ago that it would be published, but I didn’t realize that I would receive my own copy of the journal. I’m just a co-author, but it is still very, very exciting to me. When I used to write for newspapers, it never failed to amaze me to see my name in print. It could have been a dull report about a City Council meeting; it didn’t matter. There’s just something immensely gratifying about seeing something you wrote become published.

Someday (hopefully sooner than later), I would like to be the lead author on a scholarly article. I think I’ll get there; it just takes time.

Speaking of writing, I submitted a rough draft of Ch. 1 of my dissertation (the intro, basically), and I’m waiting for the green light from my committee chair to move on to Ch. 2. I doubt I’ll hear anything before mid-August, since the fall term doesn’t begin until then. (I jumped the gun and wanted to start early, but now I’m playing hurry-up-and-wait.)

The boys asked me the other day how long a dissertation is, and I told them that they vary, but typically at least 100 pages. They got wide-eyed and asked how many more pages I need to write. I laughed and said, “About 95.” It’s a long process, but I’m still hoping to finish next spring!

I would like to have a weekend to recuperate from my weekend, but that’s not gonna happen, so I’m heading to bed in the next hour to get some extra shut-eye before work tomorrow. Four of my kids left for camp on Thursday and will return tomorrow, which meant that my eldest and I had a few days to ourselves! Not to mention, he spent Friday night and tonight at his dad’s house, so I’ve had several waking hours all to myself. I have to admit: it has been eerily quiet at times. But, all in all, it has been nice to get a lot of work accomplished without interference.

I rediscovered the floor in the living room & study (dining room-turned-study), purged & organized bags full of recyclables (ie, school papers that didn’t go in the “keep” folder for the year), trash and claim-it-or-lose it items for the kids to retrieve when they return from camp. It feels good to have a relatively clean house … at least in the common areas. Bedrooms and the garage are still huge undertakings for another day.

My big goal was to finish my final paper for my Health Policy class by Saturday. It was the last project for my last normal class EVER. Technically, it was due today, but I got to a stopping point on Friday night and hit a wall where I simply couldn’t look at the paper any more. I felt like I’d said everything I could think to say, and I just didn’t want to write another word. I remembered that my prof said she would review drafts, so I emailed it to her to solicit her input. She emailed me back on Saturday and offered an A- for the paper, as-is. (I made some dumb mistakes with citations that I should have caught, but she said that overall, it was well written.) With my earlier semester grades being all As, that meant that I would still make an A in the class. The perfectionist nerd in me said to go back and make the necessary edits, but the pooped-out part of me said, “Heck yeah! I’ll take it!!” So, I finished my semester a few days earlier than anticipated … woohoo!!

With that VERY LAST ASSIGNMENT behind me, that means I can now officially begin my dissertation! Several folks have asked how things will progress from here, so in case you’re curious, here’s a tentative run-down:

1. My first order of business is finishing Chapters 1-3 (intro, literature review & methodology), one at a time, sending each chapter to my committee chair for approval. I can begin this step right now.
2. After Ch. 3, I can defend my dissertation proposal (in essence, the clearly mapped out project that I want to research). This should be mid-fall.
3. Once I defend the proposal, then I’m officially ABD (all but dissertation, or “all but done” 🙂 )
4. At that point, I move ahead with my research and Chapters 4-5 (results/findings and implications/applications). Hopefully, this will be mostly finished by the holiday break or shortly thereafter, if I’m really disciplined. Because I’m not conducting an extensive human subjects research project, hopefully I can wrap up sooner than later.
5. In the spring, if all goes well, then I will go back to Georgia to defend my dissertation (the whole kit & caboodle) in person, in front of my committee and anyone who wishes to attend.
6. Once I defend my full dissertation and it is accepted/approved/given a thumbs-up, then I will officially be “Dr.” and finished with school!
7. Some people choose not to participate in graduation, but I’ve worked so hard for so long, and the kids have been looking forward to it for years, so I’ll figure out a way to get all of us back to Georgia in early May for graduation. I think it will be special for them to see me be “hooded” with my cap & gown and witness the ceremony. Plus, I want them to meet some of my friends & professors who have heard so much about them for the past 3-4 years!

Clear as mud? I’m so excited to finally be at this phase of my studies! It still feels a bit surreal, but I think after I go to campus next month and visit with my committee and see my cohort peers, then it will sink in that THIS IS HAPPENING. Someone pinch me!

There have been scant occasions in my life when I felt very confident about what next steps I should take, and only once or twice when I felt absolutely certain. I am a fan of C. S. Lewis’ notion of common sense, and I generally follow the rule of thumb that if I’m seeking God, then he’ll direct me where I need to go, even if it isn’t clear ahead of time. It can be maddening, though, because I like to dream and brainstorm and plan.

Before I left for Brazil, I submitted the final version of my portfolio, which is the culmination of my academic, professional and civic accomplishments and involvement since I began the doctoral program. Putting the extensive document together was a feat that took months; in reality, I’ve been working on it for two years. The most difficult part of the process was completing the goals section, because my department chair expected me to be specific about my career objectives. Putting on paper what I want to do in my career was harder than I expected. (In the end, I made up a position that doesn’t currently exist, but it sounded like a good fit for me, if it did.) It’s not that I am a poor planner or lack goals, but I feel like I am at a crossroads, and I have felt this way for a couple of years now.

Don’t get me wrong: I am utterly grateful for my job, and I enjoy what I do and the people I get to work alongside every day. But, do I want to spend ~20 more years in this position? People keep asking what I plan to do when I finish my degree, and I simply don’t know. I’m not just sitting on my haunches waiting for something to fall into my lap; I’m trying to learn and grow in my job, and I’m ambitious in other ways. I’ve applied for research opportunities, sought out venues to publish my work, and I plan to teach part-time again in the fall.

Now that I’m just a few weeks away from being ABD (all but dissertation … or, tongue-in-cheek: all but done!), I could probably apply for teaching &/or research positions at other colleges and universities, but there are so very many strings attached here. I suppose other places also offer tuition remission for dependents, but that is certainly a HUGE factor keeping me here. There’s also the fact that my folks are nearby, and as independent (read: stubborn) as I am, I readily admit that I need and appreciate their help. Add the single-again factor into the mix, and relocating across the country or around the world by myself with five kids sounds like a positively loony idea.

So, when people ask what I want to do, I’m guarded in my response, because my answer is hedged in by all the reasons that I need to stay put. I would absolutely love to do research and write, but those opportunities are few and far between [here] for an interdisciplinary, applied-research degree like mine. There’s a possibility that a full-time teaching position might open up at the community college within the next year, which wouldn’t involve relocating, but it would mean walking away from a more comprehensive tuition benefit for the kids where I currently work.

I’ve been thinking a lot about James 1:2-4 (MSG), a reminder that I need to hear again and again: “Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.”

I had hoped that by getting out of the ordinary (and away from the pressure) for several days, I might glean some insight from God while I was in Brazil, but he worked on me in other areas — like my pride (ouch), which I’ll share more about on Sunday. I’m still feeling clueless about so many things, so until I sense God saying otherwise, I’ll just keep on keeping on.

Q: What do the 422nd Quidditch World Cup, Game of Thrones and my research have in common?

 

 

A: The island of Ireland … or, the country of Northern Ireland, to be exact, though that kinda knocks out the Harry Potter reference.

For quite a while, I have wanted to apply as a Fulbright Scholar to do teaching/research, and I recently found a program that meshes with my timetable and research interests! I decided to pursue the first step, which was to write one of the participating institutions and request an invitation. Today, I received a letter of invitation from the host university in Northern Ireland, which gives me the green light to proceed with the formal application!

I’m so giddy, I can barely stand it. What an amazing experience it would be to live and work there for a few months! In addition to Italy and Germany, which I would love to revisit someday (and actually remember the trip this time, seeing as I was a toddler/preschooler when I was in Europe before!), Ireland is very high on my wish list of dreamy travel destinations. I’ve never been to the UK, and my passport has plenty of empty pages for new stamps! 🙂

I am applying for the Scholar program, rather than the Student program, and I realize that the rest of the application process will still be competitive, but just receiving a welcome from the university is extremely validating to my geeky ego.

What I’m *hoping* is that most people will apply to the usual big-name schools in the UK’s big cities, but by tailoring my application to a university in a smaller region that has a research institute that jives with my own studies, it might give me an edge. All I can do is try! 🙂

The kids had Spring Break last week, and so did the colleges where I work and teach. (Staff don’t get Spring Break off, but I did get the week off from teaching.)

Everything was back to the normal routine today, with one small exception: now, it’s my Spring Break! Sure, I have a research paper and a budget analysis that I should could be working on, but I decided to enjoy a couple of nights of doing absolutely nothing for school.

So, we all said bedtime prayers and I tucked the little three in bed, then I told the older two (who immediately went back to playing a video game and were pretending to listen to me) that I was going to take a bubble bath and not to bother me unless they were bleeding or broken. They mumbled something incoherent in agreement, and I let them be.

I took an open bottle of Malbec and a wine glass from the kitchen, locked myself in the bathroom and pretended to be in my own, little world for a while, until the hot water started making my skin feel pruney and the bubbles were dissolving. It was glorious.

If you’ve been following my posts about my tentative dissertation topic (and if you have followed it very closely, then I’ll be in prayer for your insomnia! LOL) , then you know that I’m interested in tax policy. Specifically, I want to explore tax policy as it relates to virtual economies, not only with regard to commerce, but also philanthropy. All that is to say … anytime I can focus an assignment on a topic that might help me in my dissertation research down the road, then I consider that a win-win!

In one of my current classes on Governmental Budgeting & Finance, we had to write a concept paper about a budgetary issue, and I chose the Value Added Tax, or VAT. I learned a few new things as I researched the topic, and I thought I’d pass along some blurbs to you. I took the easy way out and copied & pasted a few pieces from my paper, but then I elaborated on it a bit. (Feel free to smile & nod and pretend to be interested.) 🙂

The VAT is one of several types of consumption taxes. In the U.S., we pay a Retail Sales Tax (RST) at the time of purchase for taxable goods. The average sales tax rate in the U.S. was 9.6 percent in 2012. (It happens to be 8.25% where I live, but some places are a little less, while others are up in the mid-teens.) Among members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the U.S. remains the only country still to prefer the RST over the VAT.

The VAT is hugely popular in Europe; in fact, it’s a prerequisite for membership in the European Union, and more than 150 countries worldwide make use of this tax model. On paper, the VAT is a fair, neutral mode of taxation, in that it is not based on one’s income at all, just on consumption/purchases. It is collected incrementally, from primary producer to manufacturer to wholesaler to retailer. For example, instead of charging a one-time sales tax at the time of purchase, the primary producer would have already paid a fraction of the tax rate when the material was sold to the manufacturer. Likewise, the manufacturer would pay a portion when selling to the wholesaler, and the wholesaler would follow suit when the retailer bought the finished product.

Like the Retail Sales Tax, the end consumer still bears the brunt of the tax, but because the VAT is collected in stages along the production process, proponents say that the VAT helps to close evasive corporate loopholes and retain more revenue for the government. If the tax rate is the same, then consumers would pay no more or less under the VAT than they would with the RST. Therein lies the problem, however! The rates are far from being apples-to-apples, at least in comparison with the U.S. and most European nations.

In 2012, the unweighted average VAT hovered at 18.7 percent among OECD member countries. If you recall, that’s nearly double the average RST in the U.S. Because of this disparity, the VAT may be interpreted as promoting higher tax rates – a notion that is historically unpopular in the U.S. What is unclear to me, however, is if this reluctance is really about the VAT structure, or if it’s more about not wanting to pay European-level taxes. I don’t know of anyone who willingly wants to pay higher taxes, so systems that are in place in other highly taxed regions of the world are often viewed negatively, whether warranted or not.

I’m not a VAT expert now, but researching the issue did open my eyes to some preconceived notions that I had about the idea. The issue has come up in my research on virtual economies, so I will be delving into it further, as time goes on.

P.S. I removed the citations for this blog post, but if you really care about the sources, I’ll be happy to pass the details along.