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Somehow in my life, nothing ever quite happens exactly as I expect or plan it. My admission to a doctoral degree program is no different. I was originally anticipating enrolling in a doctoral program in Fall 2019 after spending a full year evaluating my options. Now I am admitted to the PhD in Educational Research, Measurement and Evaluation (ERME) for Spring 2019.

There are several layers of background that contribute to how I have arrived at this current situation. I had a lot of trouble figuring out where I fit in academically. I have interests in a lot of different disciplines, ranging from philosophy to technology and a variety of social and artistic stops between. I looked at programs like Public Policy and Organizational Science, I found them to be empty and cold. I had previously had 2 courses in the department of Educational Leadership, a survey design class and a course about the basics of instructional design. I enjoyed both courses, so I took a chance on another class, Applied Research Methods. Through that class I became familiar with the graduate director for the Educational Research, Measurement and Evaluation program. Through that class I became more interested in the parallels between educational research and social research. One of the most interesting things was that educational research spans all sorts of systems for analysis. Single case research like is found in psychology, phenomenological research as is found in philosophy and institutional/societal research as is found in sociology. For a lack of a better way of phrasing it – academically, I was home.

The further complication for me was that the department offers 3 doctoral programs of interest to me – EDD Educational Leadership in Higher Education, EDD Educaitonal Leadership in Learning, Design and Technology and the PhD in ERME. In addition, each of those degrees could be paired with one or more certificates. There are a lot of possibilities to design an overall curriculum in the area. With all of these possibilities, why did I select educational research? While both of the EDD programs hold an interest for me, each is much more narrowly designed than I feel I would be happy with. I do not seek to be purely a “leader” nor do I want to be purely an instructional designer. The PhD is 12 hours more and a lot more research intensive than the either of the EDD programs, but the curriculum is more flexible so I can design it to be what I need. There is also a bit of challenge to the PhD curriculum for me. I mentioned that it is more research intensive, well, in terms of analysis methodologies, that has always been a zone of weakness for me. I struggled with quantitative analysis in the Sociology MA, barely grasping the concepts. I feel as though I have matured quite a bit intellectually since that course and am excited to take on the new challenge of learning more advanced analysis skills. The educational leadership department generally is methodologically open, so I would not have to go with a quantitative approach for my dissertation, in fact I could do a mixed methods dissertation if I preferred.

So, how did Fall 2019 become Spring 2019? An odd bit of e-mail exchanges and both myself and the graduate director being eager. Last Monday (December 17th) I sent a series of questions about the application. Upon reviewing those questions (and my DegreeWorks profile) the director noticed that I had enrolled for courses that count in the program for spring. Initially I was taking one of the courses, Program Evaluation, because it applies to my job. The other course I was taking mostly for fun, but it also could apply to the program. After confirming my intentions the graduate director asked me to turn in my application as soon as possible. That was last Tuesday (December 18th). By Wednesday (December 19th) my application was submitted. On Thursday (December 20th) morning I was invited to interview with the admissions committee at 10am. It was a brief 30 minute interview, which took only about 39 minutes. On Friday morning (December 21st) I woke up to an email from the graduate director informing me of the committee’s decision to recommend me for admission. By the afternoon I had received communication from the graduate school asking me to confirm my intention to enroll. I responded almost immediately.

So, a week ago I had not submitted an application to the PhD program, but now, less than a week after submitting the application, I am an admitted doctoral student. My first classes officially in the program will begin on January 9th. It has been quite an adventurous week of unexpected events, but somehow, based on my academic history, really doesn’t come as a surprise to me that I was admitted in such a way.

In an effort to consolidate my web presence to a small number of domain names this blog is moving from icurtis.me to cmkularski.net.

For myself and many other students the invention of e-readers, specifically Amazon’s Kindle, has lifted a burden of carrying numerous physical volumes and has given us quick access to new resources that we may have otherwise not obtained had we been restricted to physical volumes. The problem is: citation styles do not keep up.

I am in the middle (or maybe about 1/4 of the way through) my Gender Theory paper. One of the texts I am using (Butler’s Gender Trouble, if it matters), has both “Real Page Numbers” as well as the traditional Kindle location numbers. My dilemma is perhaps a quirky one. I do like having access to the page numbers of a real volume as it allows me to keep up with discussions in class with others that have physical volumes, but I fundamentally disagree with using page numbers from Kindle for the purpose of citing quotes and other uses in academic papers.

My primary issue is that those page numbers are not as “real” as Amazon would have you to think that they are. The page numbers are from whichever edition of the text that Amazon decided to match the Kindle edition to. Also, not all Kindle books have “Real Page Numbers” and as such the unit of conversion is quite misleading. Finally, I love that Kindle location numbers are more specific than page numbers. If I am quoting from a page I can touch and hold the page at the start of the quote and it will give me a location that is specific to the Kindle line number that the quote appears on, making it easier to retrieve, validate or re-read the specific area of text in question.

The logical problem is that since Kindle books are not physical books, the concept of using location numbers as page numbers is misleading. Also because some books have both locations and pages, it can be vague to cite a location number that is particularly low (say under 500). As such I find myself having to modify the existing citation styles to accommodate my needs. At present I am working inside the confines of MLA. Instead of using the basic format (Butler 25), I am using a somewhat modified style (Butler loc286) to decrease the misleading/vague aspects of the citation. It is my hope that in a future version of the Modern Language Association (ha! just remembered the “M” stands for “modern”, ironic isn’t it?) protocol there is some official guidance or methodology for addressing this specific issue or some general guidance for how to handle special cases. I do feel somewhat encouraged by the fact that generally the resources regarding MLA style do indicate that where a protocol is not specified that the author has free judgment in how to comply with the standard. 

I haven’t posted a lot in the past month, I suppose I’ve been trying to relax and enjoy my weeks off before returning to academics in January. I also believe I may be lacking in anything profound to post for now. That in itself may be a major change for me in 2012. I am less interested in frivolous posts and deeply personal posts. I’m not closing the walls to my emotions or anything, but I now have surrounded myself with people who I feel I can discuss those things with personally and not necessarily need a public venue for them. This is still a personal venue for me, I’m not making it professional, that’s going to be CMKULARSKI.NET, if I ever get myself to a position where I feel I have a handle on what that website it supposed to be.

This year has in some ways been a very productive year for me and in other ways has simply been a continuance of the status quo.

In January there was a bit of activity regarding my graduate student status. I found out that I was eliminated early in the review process for the M.A. in Counseling degree, but I completed by application for the MA-SOCY degree. By March I was notified that I had been waitlisted for the MA-SOCY degree and I therefore took that as a sign that my chances of admission had dropped and as such I would need to continue my education through an alternative route. I designed a plan to work toward a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies utilizing a program of my own construction. It would have been quite interesting I thought, but later in April I was formally accepted to the MA-SOCY program and things began to line up for me. I must admit, I do have some regrets over withdrawing my application and cancelling my plans for the MALS degree because it would have been a very interesting and unique experience. The sociology program has given me several new perspectives on the social world though. It is less through the academics so far, but more through the interactions with the people in my department. Each of my fellow graduate students and each member of the faculty has some different background they bring to sociology and as far as I can tell each of them sees sociology differently, in some ways it gives me hope of finding my own niche in the field. Things have turned out quite differently this year than I originally had planned or what I had hoped for, but I have very few regrets about the way that things have turned out.

Outside of academics I feel like not much has changed for me, except for an attempt to re-enter some of my artistic hobbies such as photography and ceramics. I have done only enough ceramics to ensure that my skill has not dulled, but my photographic interests continue to expand. I am finding the film medium to be more appealing to me now that ever before. As I find myself immersed in a technological way of doing most things and beginning a time of deeper social exploration in a society that seems to be in a rush to dispose of traditional ways of doing things I feel that sticking to film is important for me. It is ironic really that I do everything in very technical and efficient ways except for my artistic expression which uses two mediums that are often seen as “old”. This is the year in which I find myself understanding the importance of distancing oneself from a subject through the use of a less realistic medium for the purpose of drawing more attention to the subject and allowing the medium to fall away.

Most of 2012 has been spent on academic pursuits. I am deeply involved in the academy and in my life as a graduate student.

I have given my Cognitive Science paper a little thought and come up with a few options for places to start my paper from:

• Is the human brain or an artificial intelligence a more effective decision-making system? — This topic is very basic, and very subjective. I think I can write an effective paper on the topic by approaching the question theoretically and establishing what has to be considered to even know what an effective decision-making system is. Once I have established my own position based on available published work on the topic of decision making systems I can begin to form an argument for one system or the other. Each has clear advantages, but which one is overall more effective?
• Artificial Neural Networks as an approach to Artificial Intelligence — This one is simplistic. Essentially looking at the micro-level implementation of independent systems that form a larger system for addressing large tasks. Mechanically, this approach duplicates the human brain. Is this a good approach? It works for biological organisms, but biological organisms in themselves are designed to function that way, electronic systems are not. Are neural networks the wrong approach for artificial intelligence and artificial cognition?
• What is intelligence? — This topic is completely philosophical in nature. It has been approached by every major philosopher and theorist that has ever conceived of knowledge or knowing. I don’t know that I could handle it in the 10 pages I’m given, nor do I feel comfortable with the level of understanding I presently have of intelligence. If I did this now, as an introductory cognitive science student it would be perhaps the most ballsy thing I could do, and would ultimately result in me considering the question in every course in the Cognitive Science program, most likely ending with me completing a thesis on the topic as my final course. It would be a big step, but I’m not sure I want to go there.
• Can artificial intelligence be considered a true intelligence? — This one is also philosophical, but it is a somewhat less covered topic, and one in a little narrower scope than taking on the whole field of epistemology.  I would have to tangentially address “what is intelligence?”, but in a much lighter form. For this paper I would take on the opinions and positions of theorists before me and address the concept of artificial intelligence really being intelligence from one or more pre-existing theories. The idea behind this paper from my perspective is addressing if any artificial system can ever truly be considered intelligent. Artificial intelligence is based on many complex calculations based on available data, but every decision is based upon programmed instructions that have been written to handle a wide variety of situations and provide adaptations for unexpected occurrences.
• Is free-will important to intelligence? — This topic is moving from philosophical to very philosophical. It is similar to the question of if artificial intelligence can be considered a true intelligence in that it considers if a programmed entity can ever have free will. This topic also questions the limitations of what an artificial intelligence can do.  When do we consider an artificial intelligence as having free will? When it refuses to follow an instruction? When a personal assistant AI decides it wants to play guitar instead? This topic really isn’t all that well formed yet, but I think it may have some potential.

Sometimes talking to me or reading my posts and statuses can seem a bit like reading a course catalog, or a really bad game of memory. Unfortunately I did not figure out how to resolve that issue until now (1 week before the end of the semester for Fall 2011). However, I have now developed a system that I’m happy with….

Fall 2011

• PHIL = WGST 5050/Transnational Feminism (Cross list as PHIL 3990)
• SOCY = SOCY 6895/Tutorial in Sociology: Sociology of Masculinity
• WGST = WGST 6601/Theoretical Approaches to Sexuality
• LGBT = WGST 2050/Lesbian and Gay Studies

Spring 2012

• Cog Sci = PSYC/ITCS 6216/Introduction to Cognitive Science
• HCI = ITIS6400/Human-Computer Interaction
• QT (or WGST) = WGST5050/Queer Theory
• SOCY = SOCY 6895/Sociology of the Internet (pending)

I think I finally got a full list written of topics I want to hit with my articles from this semester in sociology of masculinity.

I was filling out this survey for the Graduate School at UNC-Charlotte and came to the demographic questions and was stunned to see that we have more than 2 options for gender. Way to go UNCC Graduate School for recognizing that there are more than 2 ways to think about gender.