This is the first in what I hope to be a series about my experiences and challenges as a doctoral student. Enough intro, let’s go!

So here I am 6 weeks in and how are things? Let me just say this, it’s difficult to even find time to take a $#!*. At this point, I’m reading more than a book a week and writing an abstract for each book. We’re not talking about the leisurely books you find from Borders (I wish). Think more like 200-300 pages of social ontology, political theory, and seminal classics…each week. That’s just one class. For my other class I have roughly 3-4 chapters of quantitative and research methods, not to mention chapters on statistical analysis including: ANOVA, regression, multiple regression, least squares, etc. I’ve already written probably 30 pages and we’re not quite half way through the semester yet.

Despite the reading load, the material for the most part pretty interesting, I am overall pretty happy. The program is good and the professors actually seem interested in my ideas and research areas. The other students in my cohort are all very nice as well. Very intelligent. Of course we all know how anti-social I am so I’m not exactly making lasting friendships yet, but it’s still early.

With working full-time and a baby due almost any day now, I feel like I’m in a very precarious place. Now that badminton coaching is over, I feel like I have bit more sanity but with a baby…ohh my. I think as long as I can get through the majority of my readings I should be fine. I’ve had to pick up (very quickly I might add) new methods of reading all this material but I think I’m getting used to it now.

Anyway, that’s about it for now.

Tags: journal, PhD, public administration