Ayn's Multiple World

Umm, this one is ok to read ... don't read post before this one!

Hi! We’re taking a break. We’ve studied through for about six hours and just took off this last 20 minutes to talk to our Grandmother. I had thought right, these last couple of days she’d been in the hospital. She had help lowering her blood pressure, because her blood level was low, so it was making the heart work too hard. She went in on Thursday afternoon and she got back today about noon. My mother and her husband had come down and they helped her to be taking care, but they were just leaving about 5 when I called. They used that opportunity to slip out the door. It is still about 3 ½ hours back to their place.

We didn’t talk too long, because she had food out from what was brought to her and I knew she wanted to get the watermelon, strawberries, and cantaloupe into the fridge. She’s so organized that she will cut up the watermelon, strain it and get it into individualized containers, so it stays fresher longer. God only help me that when I get to 47, I will be able to do what my grandmother does at over twice my age. Standards are changing … she raises the bar.

We talked mostly about what she had experienced over the last couple of days. She says she feel stronger than before, but still not up to par. Her numbers are supposed to be at 16, she was down to 9 and now back to 11. I couldn’t be more specific exactly what the numbers are measuring. Just know their relationship. She said the last time she had been in they had given her twice as much blood, but this time they wanted to see if she could build it up herself. That worked us into a general discussion of doing things on your own. I can tell when people start pressuring her to do stuff she doesn’t want to do. People are worried about her, so my uncle wants her to come up to their WI cabin on the lake for awhile. But, my Grandmother is pretty determined to stay close to home. She is much more comfortable knowing someone here can be taking care of her if need be and while at her apartment … she treasures being able to take care of her as need be. She says after you’ve been on your own for so long, you know how you like it to be. We know exactly what that’s like. As much as I love my friend, he’d sure interfere in my life if he was here all the time. We’d have to start building new rules from square #1. If he suddenly dropped into my life that way, we’re pretty sure we’d bother each other to pieces. He’s a moving around person, and I’m very much not!

Hehehe we’d have to do as now … yes dear … Go fishing … great idea … see you later!

My Grandma and us, as they say, see eye to eye.  I think we might give her another call tomorrow night … see how that goes. Hehehe … we will want to tell her we’re finally up to the last paper … She’ll probably tell me what a good idea it is to get things taken care of. She’s like that.

Hmm, this is a pretty long time away from the paper … I’m kinda thinking that my fingers might feel better if I held some ice for a while. Feeling kinda sore today. Hmm 5:45 … guess that means I should eat and take medicine. No V. to tell me what to do. HMPF! He’s off on a special treat with his son though … so we won’t spoil that thought. Maybe he’ll even tell people about it … its kinda cool!

One more thing we did which kinda through us off track. We uploaded a paper and sent it to our oldest son with a brief note. My guess is that he’s going to think we’re nutty thinking he is going to read a “official” paper … especially when he notes its about 20 pages long. BUT, it was a very good paper. It talked about children his kids ages and discipline and teaching. I think everyone should read up where kids are concerned.

Hmm … ok … what to eat. Not really in the mood for a frozen dinner. Maybe something lighter. Too much red licorice today. Ugh. Hmm, we have cantelope in there … maybe I’ll try that and then make a slushie later on. Sweetie pie surprised us with both! Well, at least the lemonade and orange juice to go with the ice. Ahhh … such a dear heart! Probably a good idea to stop sipping on coffee too. Ok, so we’ve got a plan … Now. Should we take seriously the challenge to ice down our hands? Haven’t had to do something like that before. BUT, I still want to be using them. Hmm, we’ll do the rest first and see if the medicine helps the ache go away. I take a couple of things for arthritis and I think that might help our hands. Ok, brb.

Ahh that’s better … ok 6 pm … half an hour til the pain stuff kicks in … 

I’ve gone all day without air, but I think I’m going to fix that too. We get the late day sun in here. Oh man shoot shoot … D#()&%$# … I forgot to do TWO things. Today was the center’s family picnic AND I didn’t get those last books in the mail. Oh shoot, where’s my mind?? Lordy, I suppose cantaloupe will do that to a person … must kick back into the memory center. I’m going to hear about it for a year that I missed two family picnics! Hmm, last year we we’re studying too. I told clients though that I would be there today. Shoot. I know the one that will hit me at the door complaining, “Where were you, we missed you.” Then that will get repeated over and over again. Shoot, shoot, shoot. I knew it was an iffy proposition as to whether we’d go, but we figured we’d be more committed to it if we let people know we were PROBABLY going to come. Went as far as asked the clients where and when. You know where I probably did my most veering was in writing that on one of the surveys one of the parents stated her daughter did not like picnics because of the bugs or weather. I have to admit … I strongly agree with her! Please don’t ever tell my old girl scout leader. She’d say, ANNNNNN and give me one of those imploring looks. Nope, maybe it worked as a kid … we were a lot more tolerant then … But, like my Grandma … I’d just as soon stay home where I’m comfortable. I pretty much ignore the weather and eating too many things with bugs. Ok, ok … shhhh, it’s ok girls, let it go… let it go… HMPF that’s probably why we forgot … have a team in their working against us going! I guess there’s a limit to just how nice Ms Ann really is … *sigh* Shhh, shhh … be nice.

Umm, we got something else to talk about, but just a little ok … my guilt is now going to eat me up. We ummm, did something unschool like yesterday … we ummm registered at iFriends. Ok, that is something just a little bad, k? Dr. M. says that things aren’t always black and white, so things aren’t always JUST either or good and bad. And, our friend would say if we were thinking “bad” then we might have regressed a little. Umm, I think that just happened. Oh dear … now what do I do?? I know, I know for one I gotta finish the cantaloupe … just its not my favorite food. Shhhh, I know, I know…

New paragraph. Well, I’m not saying anything more about iFriends, cuz I don’t want to spoil it. BUT, if I were going to say anything, it would probably be like it’s ok to relax some at the end of a night. V’s not so sure we need to do school after 6 pm. But, he might be thinking it’s a good idea. He surely won’t like the other idea. But, we can do what we like to do, right? Hmm, both Deb and T are on-line … Better not bother either of them yet … still too early. T’s better in the morning to talk to and Deb about 8:30 pm. Hehehehe, at least by then theres a smallllllllllll chance she’s eaten! Never did see such a late eatererer … she’s even later than V and we think HE waits a long time for dinner. Eating, eating … mumble, mumble.

Ok, there … about cleared the theoretical table … Hmm, what are we going to tell V. beside at least one of us has a big mouth! SHHHHH be nice! I think we need to appreciate this situation from an artistic point of view. Yes, that’s our story and we’re sticking to it!

I think the important part is that we follow THE plan … This paper HAS to get written in 2 weeks time. We need to budget the tasks. We know from studying that the really good thinkers plan out what they are going to do, and then they self evaluate. That’s what we’re doing right now. Ok, we’re about a quarter of the way through with our present task. This maybe taking longer than we’d hoped. Hmm, that’s not good … It is taking us about 51 minutes to review what we’re reviewing. Problem is that while we’re reviewing we’re reading into each of the articles. We hadn’t originally planned to do all that. Hmm, pro’s and con’s … time is passing by. Con. Pro … we are getting insights as to what’s in front of us. Con … we’re still not being able to hold together all the information we are reading. Pro … We ARE understanding what is getting read and each thing makes sense. The task of the paper is to break it down ANALYZE, then build it back up through synthesis toward the end. If we’re going to go fully with Bloom here … Knowledge was when we went out and gathered all the resources. We narrowed it down to 26. Now we are in the comprehension phase. We are trying to figure out the significance of each … how it ties together. It’s a little tricky because everyone approaches self-regulation and problem-solving a little different. But, we’re finding out that the structure of our outline is working well. I’m a little frustrated knowing that we’re not going to be able to read through complete articles. That would be a waste of our time right now. That kind of understanding will have to wait until our masters or doctorate paper.

See V. we’re trying!

The plan we’ve been following today is to first transfer files from PDF to Word … that takes about 5 minutes. The next thing is to note the author and title one at a time, and then list the conclusion of the studies from the last part of the abstract. This works most the time, but sometimes the authors are not good psychologists and hide the final conclusion. We ran into one dumb person today that didn’t even bother to pull her study together. She basically said umm, look at the chart 2nd column and you’ll see what I mean. D_(*Q%$ if I had the time to figure out charts, I would be writing my Doctorate! The article written about the doctor interns was the best. They said, clearly … Three things can be concluded from this study. They are … 1) …. 2) …. 3) … The end. Pswhoo clean! At this first stage, we divide the material into one of six categories. We lump it either in 1) self-regulation, 2) problem-solving, 3) thinking (metacognition), 4) affective (feelings), 5) behavior (social), and 6) physiological. We figure this to be more of the theory building portion of the paper.

The next step is to list by areas of subjects being tested the abstract and who and a little of what is going to be tested. This is broken down into sub-categories of pretty much age … like pre-schoolers, elementary, middle school, all the way up to doctorate. And, we through in a few more categories of special needs (developmentally disabled), women and workers. HA! Sure like that grouping … Kind of like all the “important people!” Next is to conclude the results of the test … here we usually go to the results or discussion area and try to find a paragraph or two that best sums things up. This is the area of the report were calling “programs.” And it is divided into education, business, and health. This is because the studies vary in the application. The good majority of articles we’ve chosen are toward education, but we find a certain appreciation that if you haven’t learn to self-regulate through each of those corresponding years, you might be facing the problems when you are finally educated and are out in the world either working or taking care of yourself.

The tests and measurement section is very brief … I’ve listed here primarily what kind of a study the article represents, such as empirical, case study, modeling, or literature review, etc. AND, during this section, I list out the keywords. I figure this is so towards about three pages from the end of the paper, I can be tying more succinctly how all the apples and oranges fall into place. There are a lot of key categories in this paper such as strategy, goals, motivation, curriculum etc. Not way too many, but there will be a handful by the time we’re up to that point.

The next part is another very short part … it will surmount to maybe ½ to ¾ of a page. During this part … I just to make a note of the different fields that are studying self-regulation. I do this through summarizing the publications where my articles are coming from. So far the ones represented in the first 7 studies are psychology, of course, and then cognition, education, programs, and that’s about it. Pretty narrowed down. When I’m finished, I will be able to note if any few journals stand out in their contributions. Such as one thing we’ll note is that many of my studies so far fall under the publication classification 3530, or “Curriculum & Programs & Teaching Methods.” That serves our purpose just fine.

There is only two sections left and they are not getting any attention right now at all. They are the two sub-categories of my big papers last two pages. One is the Implications of the work on cognitive psychology, and the other is the Implications of the work on me the learner. According to Bloom this would be the last section on evaluation.

Hmm, better check this out …

First 6 categories … knowledge
Traditional Learners (by educational/age level) from abstract … comprehension
Who was involved and the purposes of they study … application
Programs (education, business, self-care) what were the conclusions of the studies … what did they prove … analysis

Using tests and measurements and publications – restructure the findings by tiding up the sum total of what was discovered by the analysis and lead into the next direction of studies, basically … synthesize

And last, the two implication between the field of psychology and myself will be the evaluation portion of the work.

Wooo HOOO we did it. *sigh* have to go over our work now to see if it makes sense all held together. Might make a change or two in our outline format to be more succinct.

First though … I am not going to finish that cantaloupe, please take it away!

I know … I know … SLURPEE!!!!!!! Oh man … it’s happening! The time now 7:18. I think, I would rather continue the paper during the early hours of the morning. Then to worry too much about it here. Better to try and relax now eat slurpees, and perhaps just read a bit. That would make us feel better. Maybe a goal of bed by 9 pm. Hmm, now we’re having a discussion … to major cards out on the table. Either we do as just stated and read for a bit, or we go play in no-man’s land. Hmm. Compromise?? Ahhh, by now you know all the best ideas compromise! Take stock and reevaluate … Hehehhe that’s self-regulation talk happening. How ‘bout we post … read once, then go play 40 minutes and one hour, or one hour and 40 minutes. Deal?? GOOOD GOOOD … Be right over here -------

We’re doing it!

Ohhh one more thing. Because we like to see our work in format … and it helps us to reformulate our thinking, we’re going to post the notes we’ve been working on … this is a long 15 pages that I can be PRETTY DARN sure, you are not going to want to read. SOOOO, please just forget about the post called … “DON’T READ THIS … SUBSEQUENTLY, WHOOPS OUR SLIP IS SHOWING!”

Hehehehe … sorry, sorry … it’s the slurpee talking!

OH MAN OH MAN!!! Did someone neglect to remember the house is now full of party animals?????

Lordy!

posted by Ann Marie @ 6/24/2006 08:02:00 PM Comments: 1