By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.” – Confucius.

Upon the lumber, I laid out the measure, the yellow and black tape measuring with granular precision the thirty-second, sixteenth, eight, quarter, half, and inch, all of them coalescing into a measure of eight feet. In a dimensional world of height, width, depth, weight, and distance, scaled against the forward and backward movement in time, I place my scratch at the seventy-five-inch mark. Measure twice, cut once the carpenter teaches, and so I shall.

To query the measure, to ponder the inch, to appreciate the scale knowing that just a sixteenth is too long or too short portends an environment where experience can be bitter. Looking down at the length of this semester, the board is slightly warped, the grain is not center cut, and there is a knot in the lumber. However, every woodworker knows the value of scrap, and I have a growing pile.

Laying on the workbench, the orthographic drawings with cut lists and dimensions convey an image and guide the construction of the final project. The lesson to be learned is patience and tenacity, for there is no mention of the years required on the blueprint, no mention of the cost of lumber, and no mention of how many knuckles get busted. The pieces do not fit. The joint was weak. Tool by tool, screw by screw, cut by cut, the object takes shape. The chisel was dull, and the saw dangerous. The nights were cold and the days long, but slowly, month by month, year by year, from nothing…something.

To proclaim oneself a master artisan, to hang the shingle on the shop door, to delude oneself into presuming that constructing one small side table is all it takes evokes a chuckle and a smile. I am an academic apprentice, and the time I have endeavored to move through the ranks of academia to “feel ready” for a dissertation will depend on how well I can cut lumber to the correct measure and how many bandages will be required. Will the dissertation be a jaw-dropping masterwork provoking applause and amazement? That will be the purview of the guild.

If reflection is the noblest method of obtaining wisdom, I will measure the inches cut from the length with no regrets and value the potential left in the scrap. When the cutting, nailing, gluing, sanding, and finishing are done, I will stand as a testament to the skill of the craftsman to be no more or no less than all that I was ever meant to be. I will be the sawdust on the floor, and the credenza in the corner gathering dust. Capricious is my guide, uncertainly my master. The best plan is no plan.

Finishing is an interesting word, for people seem to measure their progression through life with starts and finishes based on a goal line, a completion date, and a pack up and move forward mentality, yet so much is left undone, inadequate, and unfinished. So many “should’a, could’a”, regrets and nagging beliefs. If one had just a little more time, just didn’t quit prematurely and call it done, that one could have done it better. As a painter I learned that a painting is never done, so when you think it is, it is not. Most of life is that way. If I had turned left instead of right. If I had only done that instead of this. The human condition has been described most accurately as the expression of neurotic anxiety of existential free will.

Across the last months, weeks, and days of introspection, the portfolio is still a work in progress. As two remaining courses are yet to be scheduled and completed, I am inclined to borrow the words of the winemaker. For all the grapes, soil, temperature, yeast, and water required to ferment and extract the wine from the lees, there is no substitute for time. One has to be patient, for the combining of the elements takes years to reach maturation. The wine is finished when the last bottle is empty. So, it is with the development of the portfolio.  Certain criteria need to be appropriately assembled, redesigned, coded, and polished to a high gloss.  I suspect by the beginning of fall 2024, I will have all the necessary time to not only present the portfolio but also follow up quickly with the dissertation defense.  It has also been brought to my attention that Knezek and Lee will not be on contract this summer and unavailable to sign off on the portfolio or dissertation proposal. Dissertation, oh dissertation! Where art thou dissertation? Plans do go awry, so sayth Burns. But, hope springs eternal, so sayth Pope, so I will be shooting for Spring 2025. Of course, due to the political climate and noting over the years that mankind cannot achieve understanding and peace with each other, and being somewhat perceptive and a good guesser, I expect civil disobedience to prevail across the land. Be it civil war, or terrorism on a grander scale, regardless of who is elected, conflict will occur and a new chapter of American history will be written. The best sailors brave the torrents of great waves and howling winds, longing for a safe harbor. Regardless of the stormy days ahead, I will tie myself to the mast, and hold the rudder true to course.

The person who steps in quicksand does not realize that the ground is not solid. When I was a child in the first grade, I was walking home on a grey, cool, and misty afternoon from school. As children are often playful and glad that school was finished for the day, I cut across a field on a corner lot. In the middle of the field rose a large pile of dirt, and childhood compulsion rather than adult reason or experience drove me to run up to the top. About halfway up the incline, I began to sink into the pile. Quickly, I found myself trapped in the mud up to my waist. Hours seemed to pass, and I could not escape. As the evening sun was getting ready to set, lights were seen flickering in the distance. I screamed for help, and Wilbur and his dog, the man who lived down the street with a basement full of model trains, came and rescued me. Apparently, a worried and terrified mother had called for reinforcement when I did not return home. Wet, cold, covered with mud and dirt from head to toe, I was whisked into the bathroom with a hail of condemnations and scrubbed, then beaten with a wooden spoon ( the learning technology of the day), reprimanded, and sent to my room, but as the reader can surmise, I survived my childhood. Whether I can survive my adulthood is yet to be determined, for the mud is still in my ears.

            I tell this tale because one asks if I feel my methods are constructed solidly. I learned a lesson as a child: to never foolishly run up dirt piles and never to presume. The methods draft that I have presented is solid on the surface but is fluid underneath. The construction, like the pile of dirt, is material to be used, but not in its final form, and its fluidity is a property of the material as ice is to water. It is a moldable, changing, morphing substance that will eventually be sculptured into a form to dry and become solid when the composition suits my satisfaction. Currently, it is not complete, nor should it be, for it is a work in progress. The plan has been visualized, and the structure has been outlined. Academic clay has been placed on the armature and is being sculpted.

            Unfortunately, the slides that were made as directed were never seen by my peers for review. The discussion undertaken did not provide feedback that would improve my method development. I was left where I started, as it should be, working as the creator of a created thing. At the end of the journey, the dissertation will not be a team project but a single signature of my work alone. Nary a Monet can be found signed, “Monet et équipe.”

            A person in the darkness only needs a point of light to have hope. I see the light and am heading toward it. I may trip on unseen obstacles or wander and fall into unknown crevasses, but I will continue forward regardless. I crawl, rest, anticipate danger, and run up dirt mounds cautiously, all with the belief that Wilbur and his dog will come and rescue me when I get stuck.

“The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won’t.”  — Henry Ward Beecher

When I was a child, the city library was within walking distance, located down the street, across the golf course, and around the city pool and grounds of Meadowbrook Park. It was an old white two-story building constructed in 1923 and located on the west end of the park. It was perched on the high bank of Johnston Creek beside the tennis courts. As a child, walking and exploring was a normal activity, and my parents never asked where we were going or where we had been, but more often than not, I was in the library. I loved the library, for everything I wanted to know was somewhere to be found on the shelf, and when I found a book, I would spend hours in the alcove in the back where it was quiet, and I was unseen and read for hours, turning page upon page, and absorbing. Often, I was escorted out when it closed at four in the afternoon, usually carrying out three or four books to be returned the next day. The library was closed when the city built a newer and modern building, and the structure was given to the Arlington Women’s Club in 1962. It burned down in 1998.  

 High school was not too different, nor college for that matter, for I grew to love the smell of old books and the catacombs of dark, scary pathways looking for a volume. Today, the smell and dankness of the library are gone, and now the writings and questions of curiosity are answered with a mundane, sterile disinterest to this reader. When you stand in the halls of a great library, you know that what is contained therein is more than you will ever get to know and experience. That is its sadness. One such book I had checked out had an “ex libris” bookplate picturing a candle in a candle holder burning and sending its light into the darkness, with the book dimly lit upon a desk. The inscription read, “A thousand candles have burned themselves out, but still I read on.”

Thus, it is today, still reading, still buying candles. Reviewing the literature required for this type of research is an endless task, for every paper reviewed has a bibliography of endless reference works, each of which has another endless list of referenced works. As a mathematics expression, one paper could be seen as an geometrically exponential equaling tens upon thousands of potential documents worthy of review. Thus, being daunted by the mountain of literature, one resigns oneself to prudence over valor and builds an understanding from the bits and pieces of an abstract and conclusion, molded to form a narrative that, over time, is presented as a literature review. Nevertheless, the sin and the lie of it is knowing that one has barely reviewed anything comprising the body of literature available.  

In so far as expressing an opinion of one’s peer review, I would call it a worthless activity, where the wisp of a moment and lack of caring by the reviewer generally turns into false but satisfactory praise and warm fuzzies. My experience and the comments suggested are worthless on most occasions.  

Portfolio, oh portfolio. Where art thou portfolio? The state of the portfolio is similar to the state of the Union or the annual Board of Directors meeting; the general outline of such presentations proclaims that progress is being made and that much needs to be done, but with hard work and dedication, given enough time and money, success will be forthcoming. The portfolio is a work in progress. It is not complete but started. When it is complete and scheduled, it will be news to me when it is news to the department. I have bones and some components, but I am waiting to flesh out the carcass.  

“If wishes were horses, all men would ride.” “If wishes were a method section, all doc students would write.” Currently, and for the most part it is a mental activity, developing and forming within the cerebral cortex and frontal lobe of my brain. It has not yet reached my fingers, nor do I expect it to until I have fully processed the depth and scope of a cogent expression of my ultimate research design blueprint. I do know that participants will be required; how many and of what demographics are undecided. I do know that it will be based on an instrument used to collect data from said subjects; however, I have not fully designed or tested the instrument. I am absorbing literature and evaluating the scope and depth required to answer my research questions and the development of a hypothesis. That is where I stand and how I feel about my methods section. Now, and still. When it is time to write, I will write.

Reflect, genuflect, same question, same answer, same day, different day, repeat. Is today Groundhog Day? “It is what drives men mad, being methodical,” G. K. Chesterton said, or was that yesterday? The noted physicist to whom this quote is attributed conveys the observation that “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”   If these gentlemen are correct, I can presume myself to be mad, for apparently, what drives men mad is doing the same thing over and over again . . . methodically. “In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule,” so says Friedrich Nietzsche. I want to add universities to his list. It is of note that Nietzsche spent the last ten years of his life in an asylum after seeing a man beat his horse. If there is a thin line between genius and insanity, then I believe I am either the flogged horse or crossing the thin line. The question lies in which direction to travel. Does one go from right to left or from left to right? Perhaps it is up and down, or backward or forward? There must be a method in this madness.

What more can be written that has not already been expressed? The morning sun is rising once again, and the coffee cup is now dry. The method of today’s madness exists in the routine of another day. With effort, I shall work to break free of repetitiveness and find different results. I shall move with the work: up, down, left, right, forward, and back. I shall ask the man to quit flogging me, or I shall ask for the number of the asylum.  Amen.

Reflect, genuflect, same question, same answer, same day, different day, repeat. Is today Groundhog Day? “It is what drives men mad, being methodical,” G. K. Chesterton said, or was that yesterday? The noted physicist to whom this quote is attributed conveys the observation that “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”   If these gentlemen are correct, I can presume myself to be mad, for apparently, what drives men mad is doing the same thing over and over again . . . methodically. “In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule,” so says Friedrich Nietzsche. I want to add universities to his list. It is of note that Nietzsche spent the last ten years of his life in an asylum after seeing a man beat his horse. If there is a thin line between genius and insanity, then I believe I am either the flogged horse or crossing the thin line. The question lies in which direction to travel. Does one go from right to left or from left to right? Perhaps it is up and down, or backward or forward? There must be a method in this madness.

What more can be written that has not already been expressed? The morning sun is rising once again, and the coffee cup is now dry. The method of today’s madness exists in the routine of another day. With effort, I shall work to break free of repetitiveness and find different results. I shall move with the work: up, down, left, right, forward, and back. I shall ask the man to quit flogging me, or I shall ask for the number of the asylum.  Amen.

“As understanding deepens, the further removed it becomes from knowledge.”
― C.G. Jung, The Essential Jung: Selected Writings

The circle. The line. The square. The triangle. The potential. The form. The opportunities. The passions. The times. The ambition. The expectations. The need. The interest. The concern. The importance. The adventure. The hope. The promise. The truth. The lies. The smiles. The frowns. The laughter. The tears. The screams. The panic. “Mirror, mirror on the wall.”

 The journey. The path. The sights. The sounds. The smells. The excitement. The beauty. The ugly. The mundane. The large. The small. The trivial. The interesting. The uninteresting. The anticipation. The letdown. The slow walk. The fast run. The calculation. The stumble. The jump. The fall. The moment. The realization. The goal. The obstacles. The challenge. The failing. The retry. The setback. The moment. The reflection. The horror. The sadness. The reality. The question. The insecurity. The challenge. The advice. The misdirection. “Mirror, mirror on the wall.”

The travel. The distance. The aggravations. The packing. The unpacking. The danger. The confusion. The disappointment. The response. The cost. The value. The loss. The gain. The profit. The payments. The finances. The debt. The large. The small. The wealth. The poverty. The fat. The skinny. “Mirror, mirror on the wall.”

The Universe, the solar system. The Sun. The Moon. The planets. The stars. The Spring. The Summer. The Fall. The Winter. The past. The future. The present. The calendar. The semesters. The years. The weeks. The clock. The tick. The days. The hours. The minutes. The seconds. The instant. The moment. The loss. The life. The death. The forgotten. “Mirror, mirror on the wall.”

 The heartbeat. The breath. The anxiety. The elation. The confusion. The sanity. The madness. The illness. The health. The pills. The vitamins. The sleep. The coffee. The assignments. The thoughts. The words. The writing. The reading. The search. The idea. The opinions. The review. The grade. The calculation. The personalities. The loneliness. The comradery. The expectations. The fear. The nights. The days. The performance. The exhaustion. The contribution. The humor. The sarcasm. The pain. The hurt. The failure. The rejection. The success. “Mirror, mirror on the wall.”

The feeling. The feeling, professor, asks. How well do you feel your research study will contribute to learning technologies? Be reasonable. Inquiring minds want to know. I wonder. I ponder. A year from today, February 2025, will I be finished, or will I begin?” Will the next roll of the dice be 7, 11 or 4 or 10? Probabilities divided by prayer, hopes, and dreams multiplied by potential and squared by the sum of the Means equals a good guess. “Will the work to be done contribute? Mirror, mirror, what is the answer?” I ask. “Who’s to know.” replies the mirror on the wall. “For a mirror knows nothing; I’m just a reflection, after all.”

Regarding my dissertation topic, I have come to find that I have turned small after drinking the academic Kool-Aid, and unwittingly followed a rabbit down a hole to find myself conversing with a grinning Cheshire Cat. “Academia,” he says, “is capricious.” Apparently, my study, according to Tweedle Dee and Tweddle Dum, is nowhere and unworthy, yet everywhere and worthy. “Quel dommage!”   

 Reflecting on the research and theory literature PDf’s involved in preparation for the undertaking, it appears to have been unnecessary and irrelevant. In general terms, it was a waste of time. But, despite the setback, I shall prevail, all the while grinning as the cat taught me, “for we’re all mad here, you see!”  

In the coming weeks, I will seek to acquire a new direction and develop a suitable and approved topic in need of study.  It will be a study deemed worthy and blessed by those who control the gate. I will rebuild my library of books and papers and continue tenaciously to conquer every challenge placed before me along the journey’s path. I will find the mushroom that makes me larger and eat it, even if it is bitter or tastes like dirt. Only death will deprive me of success.

This reflection is intentionally short and prudently written, particularly since there are thoughts roiling about what would become an endless tirade of anger, disappointment, betrayal, and insults. However, as I reflect on the moment and the circumstances I find myself in , a clarity has emerged, which has led me to see the reality hidden behind an illusion perpetrated by academia. An epiphany! This is not a dream. I am in Wonderland.  

Part 1.

Oscar Wilde observed, “An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.” The implementation and evaluation plan developed into a series of dangerous ideas, but to deem those ideas worthy after copious hours of writing is of question. Upon well-intentioned wings ready to soar, the leap from the heights began with the exhilaration of a purposeful flight. Unfortunately, like Icarus, my wings were feather and wax, and at the midpoint, the implementation evolved into a subjective fantasy worthy of a novelist, not a systems designer. Due to the grandiose scope of the implementation, the evaluation plans would require an extensive development process, even more extensive than the implementation itself.   

If failing and making mistakes have value in learning, then the road to wisdom lies before me,  for it seems to be the only path I know. Self-depreciation is easy to embrace when failing to achieve a masterpiece, but the years have taught that a masterpiece is an illusion. As an exercise and an assignment, practicing writing, generating thoughts, placing thoughts on paper, and producing a product was satisfying. Piled in my storage unit, hidden in the back of multiple closets, hidden under the bed, and hanging throughout the house, paintings in the hundreds are waiting for a day that will never come to be considered a masterpiece. The hard drive on the computer contains terabytes of words written that will never be read, poems composed that will never be mused, and song lyrics and melodies never to be played. The digital images of projects and ideas rendered will never again be seen but erased with a single formatting. Over the years, few creations have fostered a word of encouragement, only subjective criticism of what was wrong, why they did not care for the work, and suggestions of what could be done better. However, being arrogant, self-centered, and absorbed in my artistic futility, I would say all went well.

Part 2.

Each of the three areas of analysis, implementation, and evaluation affords opportunities to develop research. However, the evaluative process demonstrated a marked weakness as the assessment instruments used for data collection and analysis to determine implementation success or failure were inadequate. If the truth of the data collected lies in the question, then the development of the instrument becomes the key. One’s research direction currently leans toward instrument creation, analysis, and validation. If the world runs on data, then the question is everything.

Will I try to do this kind of research in the future? Yes, I will try, and no, for a leaf only knows that Autumn will come and that the ground below is a destination, but where it lands is a matter of random chance. To answer the why and why not is more complicated. In Tennyson’s terms, “Theirs not to make reply / Theirs not to reason why / Theirs but to do and die” seems adequate to describe the status and place of a doctoral student. Alternatively, to return to and conclude with the wit and wisdom of my pal Oscar Wilde, “Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.”