The Calm Before the MEd Storm

It’s official; I’m in! In September I  start the final year of my Masters degree at Simon Fraser University. I received my letter last week and already I can feel the upcoming change. I swing between feeling extremely excited to feeling absolute panic! I’m aware that the daily rhythm of my life, which has Storm lightfinally achieved balance and is almost relaxed, will change  dramatically for the year of study. Life is fairly calm right now, but I had a sneaking suspicion that it was just the calm before the storm. I was right; the MEd storm lays directly in my path!

I’m looking forward to the opportunity to record learning, with all the accompanying struggles and successes, on this blog. During TLITE, I kept an electronic journal using Microsoft Word. That was a stretch for me as I’ve always kept a journal, but it was always with pen and paper. Six months after TLITE ended, I started this blog in hopes of maintaining professional momentum. It has served a variety of purposes since November 2008 and soon will serve as one way to record and extend my  learning the MEd year.

One thing that I found with my electronic journal was that I would lapse into personal writing at times. I haven’t done that as much in my blog because I try to stay aware of the audience that comes with writing in a public space and the digital footprint that I’m leaving with every keystroke or click of the mouse. It will be good for my brain to be forced to shuffle through and clarify the professional from the personal this fall.

Not surprisingly, even though I don’t start until September, my mind has Cotton Cloudsalready begun. Thursday morning I woke up with enough ideas to complete two years of coursework, let alone one. But that’s another post. I think I’ll let my brain enjoy the calm seas of contemplation a little longer before I share my ideas with the world…

Images from Flickr: Cotton Clouds by rob_surreal, Storm light by jekrub

6 thoughts on “The Calm Before the MEd Storm

  1. Congratulations Errin! This is great news for your PLN too as I suspect you’ll be blogging about your experience–so we’ll get to learn along with you too 😉
    Enjoy the relative calm
    Claire

    • Thanks Claire! Yes, I’m sure I’ll write all about it. From others that I’ve talked to, there is a good dose of reflection as part of the program so I’m guessing I’ll be posting more often! Thanks, as always for taking the time to read and comment!

    • Thanks Starleigh! I did the high pitched squeal (along with some bad dancing and jumping around) a few times on Monday night after I received the letter!

  2. Pingback: MEd Musings… | Just a Thought...

  3. I found it! http://www.economica.ca/ew09_3p1.htm

    (please note that the results of this study are only applicable in situations where the government foolishly refuses to fully fund post secondary education leading to stupid amounts of debt for many students, and that the results could be different if post secondary education was free and student’s living expenses were subsidized during their education)

    “Our results confirm earlier researchers’ findings that, in the prediction of the child’s educational attainment, virtually the only factor that is of importance is the education of the parents. Most importantly, the children of parents with less than high school education are much less likely to proceed beyond high school than are the children of parents at other educational levels. And the children of parents with university degrees are much more likely to complete university themselves than are the children of parents with lesser education.

    Nevertheless, we also found that the education levels of the child’s parents were only indicative of a child’s educational attainment. The only situation in which 50 percent of the children of a set of parents had the same educational level as their parents (when both parents had the same education) was that in which both parents had university degrees. In every other case, it was rare for the probability that children would share their parents’ educational attainment to exceed 33 percent. This strongly suggests that, in the prediction of a child’s educational success, experts should generally present at least two (and, more often, three) alternative scenarios.”

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