Mostly just some thinking ... but what you think of them Bears? Hmm?
Good morning, this is me. I’m sorry I haven’t been writing of late … seems we were behind the 8 ball. I think it’s been officially a week now, so I thought I better write a couple of notes. Lot seems to be happening. The most important thing is that we’ve started back to school … WooHOOO pretty big deal, right? More of this in a little bit … need to shake some cobwebs off first. Sprinkle, sprinkle. There … there … they were frozen cobwebs, because we live in Chicago.
Hmm, seems someone needs to take our medicine too. We had been up for a moment earlier, but had gone back to bed, but our friend caught us by IM snoooozing and woke us up. HMMPF! We were only Zzzzzing a little bit. Can’t quite remember the dream now … that’s the way those kinda things go. Hmm, maybe medicine first. Always the resistance part … why is that? How bout we think coffee? Mmmm hot coffee! That be nice, hmm?? Ok, let’s all smile together … this is the easy part – you go ahead … we’ll wait J
Good girls!
Next would be a shower, but we don’t want to push things maybe soon enough. Our friend said he would come over about 1 or so. Maybe about then. Pshwoo washed up a bit though … ok feeling better. Almost like a new penny. Anything else? Ok, let’s not push that question too much. Let’s just talk a few moments before we go back to school, k?
Well, here’s how all that happened. We had gotten an email from the Academic advisor … another new one, so we figured we should follow up just to make sure all was in order. We emailed back, set up an appointment to talk and then that happened last Monday while we were home. For the record there was a dentist appointment that day and we were staying at home. What he let us know was that the medical leave had run out at the end of last quarter (December) and that we had school money - $3,900 to use for this semester, but that I would have to make a decision within a day or two. He said that we were on probation level one for not finishing that paper on time and each quarter not going to school, we would go down a probation level. If we got to the 4th level we would most likely jeopardize our financial aid package. That sounded like a bad thing to do … and since we’d planned on being out two more quarters we had to rethink that idea. If I went back to school $1700 would be paid for this semester, $700 from last semester would be paid and we would have $1500 left over which is the amount we were told that was going to be do for the denture. We talked to a few important people and nobody said I couldn’t do it, but we were given sufficient warning of what they perceived to be the problems. We knew of what they were talking about and that we were still in the process prior to CARF being completed and the new job had been accepted.
The final decision still rested on us though and we knew the way the cards were stacking up that we’d probably sign on the dotted line. There is a chance that we wouldn’t complete a quarter, but if we were going to lose a probation point, we’d at least like to know that we tried. There was also that same beckoning feeling that we were looking forward to being back at school and we happened to have the books necessary. The first day of school was that same Monday so we didn’t see the point of putting it off further. We said yes. It took until Tuesday for the room to open up to us … there’s been a couple of assignments between then and now and here we are. It is still being a lot of work although we feel it is good for us work. I’d like to say we’ve developed better habits, but truth come to push … although we propped up the book to read during the Bears game … minimal was read. Hey, did you see those Bears??
Teasing …
Well, it was still a good game … not sure I like the quipping about Good Rex/Bad Rex. Hopefully, that will wear off. I think Chicago has found a bit of multiplicity in him, or at worse some Dr. Jeckyl/Mr. Hyde. Ugh. I’m afraid the country is seeing Chicago at its worst. There are other cities I am sure that would have never let their faith in their quarterback waiver. I’m pretty sure Mayor Dailey is behind him … we saw the spread of food he was wagering with the Mayor of Seattle. Pshwoo … had some pretty good Chicago stuff on the line … and you can be pretty damn sure there was a deep dish pizza involved too. Whoops that’s what Freud says … if there is something dishonest … sooner than later the person would let the cat out of the bag. We umm, kinda put in an order and received a deep dish pizza with green pepper, mushroom, and onion. Oooooohhh was it good. Well, actually still is. But, that be a different story. Who though could consider themselves Chicagoan’s without getting one on the day of such a big game? Hmm?? Let’s not tell Sweetie Pie though. K?
Hmm, where are we going to put the box? Shhhh … not now, k?
Ok, what’s next … maybe a little about work? Well I think it was about a normal week … we had in mind though that we needed to get a few programs somewhere in the middle. The first was the most expensive and was something recommended by a doctor who is on our behavioral committee. It is called something with circles. It is a relationship program to teach young people appropriate physical boundaries. It might come in this next week. It has two parts and cost about $1,100. I think it comes in this whole package that I’m going to need figuring out. Sister knew I would need her credit card, so was helpful when that came up. I had earlier in the day also asked for an update to the PaperTiger program. We thought we’d have to pay $400 for 2 licenses of the Network, but it turned out we couldn’t use the Network over the Internet … it was just within the companies at work network. BUT, the lady told us about another program online that allowed you to open a screen from a remote location. There was a free version, but we wanted the pro model, which also exchanged files and did various other activities including back-up. That program is called “Logmein.com.” It was like for an annual subscription $70, for two licenses $60, but for five licenses $200. That obviously was quite the deal. So far we’ve put on our three computers and sisters, we’ve got one more to decide from. Might be the new Q, the old Q, or the secretary. Chances are not our friend’s though. Though we’ve programmed it so our friend and sister have access to both my work computers. That’s a good thing, especially coming up to CARF.
I still haven’t checked it out, but I don’t think that two people can be on the computer at the same time … well they could theoretically, but they’d need to be operating the same screen. The important thing here was that we can now work on either work computer from at home, or we can use our personal computer at work – the new 2007 program without switching it over to 2007. For the time being we’re going to see how that goes. I like the thought that I could have up my personal computer at work to access its Onenote, Word, or Outlook program, and most likely I will be able to use that printer for home stuff. We’ll have to play that one out. Since we have the ability we might want to get a couple of more licenses to get all three computers mentioned above all on line. I would like though to next set up a system where we are working toward similar My doc files so that things can be found when needed. There will be time for master-minding later. AhA! I just checked it out … we could get a total of 7 programs for an additional $80 (add two more). That’s a pretty good price. I think I could sell it to sister. That would mean that … the three secondary people could also have their computers on the system, and they can be allowed some access to the others, but primarily the biggest thing would be they could access their computers from home. This is something that I could turn on or off from the my administrative privileges. I think the only one who would need this is the other older Q. She does work at home, and this could mean no excuses of leaving things there. It would give me for the sake of pulling things together for CARF everything I might ever want to access. It would also give Sister everything with the exception of my personal computer. That would be a good thing. There is still one doubt … and that is if any of the computers went down then it wouldn’t be able to be pulled up by any of the other computers.
Ok, did some more reading of those programs. I’m satisfied with what I got … but I think that if we wanted to back up everything for all 7 computers, it would be another $246 … have to talk it over with our friend and do some more experimenting with file sharing. If we could share for example “my docs” then there would be no reason for other. Not sure anyway if it saves programs along with files. That might be the only consideration. The big deal now is to be able to share accessibility of the PaperTiger program with other administrative users. Think we saw on one of the other programs we were looking at through Log me in that there were upper user programs that allowed sharing of the same computer without both users sharing the same screen. Think that might take some consideration … Better check out what we can do with this system at the time being. Also I’m not sure if we can turn computers on if they are off … that needs to be checked out. I’m thinking the other computer has to be on-line for access to it. Shoot … so many questions to ask and answer. Let’s move on though for the time being. It is already 8:30 am.
Ok, I think way back whenever, I told you that we got the newer version of the PaperTiger program. That seems to be working out very well. We got it in toward the latter part of the week. The program in general is more stable. We have yet to check out all the applications, but I think it is going to be ok. It is a little more difficult to erase whole entries and that was a big deal in thinking that we were going to exchange users. They have a little scroll thing now that opens a new window to read all the keywords or titles so that you can read the contents more easily. It also behaved nicely when printing out so that was good. The keyword search also performed very well, but for the most part it is the same program just spruced up. There are a few more things that I don’t know about it … extra buttons, but that will come soon enough. I think one idea would be to be able to group locations, but I don’t think that sophistication occurred. This is a program that is going to evolve with us over time. The more information we can put into it the more usable it becomes. It would be fantastic to synchronize it with the secretary’s things, though I’m not sure how many permanent documents she has that are important to get into. She has forms and such, but I don’t think she really has policies and procedures or such. I don’t know … I wish her files were better ordered. That is though sister operating from her own view … in that she lets all the staff order according to their own needs.
My whole thing is going to continue being time. There are so many things to do and then there are other times, I don’t want to be doing anything. This is something that definitely need improving. Ok, but for now we’re doing something, right? We’re planning and reviewing. Ok, that got us to at least pull up the Outlook program. That was a good idea right? Ok, for the immediate time being we’ve established a goal to be done with this immediate Blog writing in the next 45 minutes. We are going to need learning to do that at all times … to pull up wherever we are … schedule it and keep working on it until it is always a habit. It seems like the Outlook project was forgotten about this week while we scampered to get school done while we were at work. That has to not happen. Advancement has been made though in getting the logmein.com program to coordinate the big problem we were having with the several computers. I think that we are going to need retrain ourselves that the AOL program gets opened on our home computer, but left open on our big work computer … that’s to be rethink though in that if the new Q is using our work computer, we may want to open the program on the little computer. With the new program though, if she is logged onto the big computer from her desk … hmm not sure if that’s such a good thing, in that the screen is better to use from the big computer, and whichever computer she is on, we’ll most likely not be able to use it. Ok, hold on that thought … it is to be checked out later.
We did make some advancement with the CARF project this week. We had been working with coding so that we could print out sections for the new standards manual per its numbers without having to lose the old reference system. Think this was an important development. After we straighten some more things around, we’ll give sister a copy so that she understands what is happening. Ok, just went over the at-home copy again. It is an older version, before we started switching around some key markers. I wanted it to come up so that the new reference numbers lined up properly, so we were in the process of switching those 300 some codes from the end of the title description to the beginning. Since so many are coded from the same reference we can secondarily align it so that after the section number e.g. 1.A.1.b.2, then the alphabetical title of the document will kick in for the document order. Hopefully over time, this will make sorting out documents easier to do as we become more familiar with what’s in each section. We also started keying in the source question so that it would go toward the top of each group so as to help better frame-in the section … so that 1.A.1.b-.2 would get it to the top of its game. That little dash is a life-saver. We are still thinking too that we need to get in sister’s statements so they come up also with the sections as called. That will integrate her system with ours and serve as a marker set of thoughts in aligning what she is doing with what we are doing. Now time is of the essence, but I am not afraid to go into CARF without things being perfect, because it is a system being developed and is such in progress. We will be where we are at and that’s the final point. Need to though progress much farther than we are now. We’re still messing around with the first book, and although the first book is major, there are many more documents to list out. So, that is how that goes.
Now according to our schedule, we have only about 15 minutes left, before we are going to want to move along. We should note in general that we had our regular staff training meeting this week that went well and we had the belated staff meeting with sister on Friday. Both of those seemed to go pretty well. The staff that I’ve had problem with tried to say that we had not taught her something, but at this time she is just being disgruntled and vindictive. I don’t think it was a major point.
If she is in question of being taught something then she only needs to ask, I can not know without her input, what she has or has not learned. She tried to make it an issue whether we called 911 first in an emergency, or if we looked for Sister first. Sister wanted to say well call yourself, but we reminded her that we didn’t want staff calling at whim without sister knowing what was happening, and of course sister wouldn’t want to give that kind of control away. I asked in general … do you want the DSPs making administrative decisions? Well, not that direct, but we were pretty close. We might want to remind Sr. later that until the staff accepts what has happened that she is acting out at the meeting and that seems to be her top priority. She was upset that sister called out … not using names, but that staff particularly this one had been discussing pay rates. This is what started the battle in the first place, because we informed sister that this was going on.
During the meeting, the DSP made sure to get in a point of saying that you couldn’t trust others with personal information. I still see it as she was undercutting sisters authority and right to privacy in being the only one to know staff wages. We’ll hold onto that … we did make the point too in the staff training meeting. We told them, do not tell us secrets, because if we thought it appropriate as affecting the center, we would tell Sister. It is not a popular position, but the one I will take, in that it is sister, not the DSPs who pay my salary and hold me responsible for our positon.
There was one other issue that came as a pretty big blow. The new Q talked to sister and then later us and basically stated, she had turned down the pay increase, which she considered minor, because it wasn’t enough to justify the responsibility that she didn’t want for a caseload. We asked if she would be leaving and she stated something toward looking for another position (part-time), but she said it in such a way that we knew if she could find a full-time position that paid more, she would take it. Because, she had also let us know that she was interested in being accepted at a University for her master’s work. My understanding that between school loans and credit cards, and whatever else comes with being young, she does not feel she makes sufficient money at the center. We will avoid for the time being our frustration for time having been spent in training with her for this kind of lack of stick-to-itness. She said something toward this being certainly a job that made a difference, but now she can’t be concerned with that and that now she has to work for money. That was the biggest disappointment. We are going to take the position that while she’s been here, she has certainly helped, so in that respect we are ok with time spent, but we are also of the position that although she says she’s going to stay for a while, this could or could not mean that within 2 weeks notice, she would be gone, and I’m not sure at this point whether she would bother with two weeks if it meant securing more money. I think this is something that comes with being young. There is one small question remaining in that … she is scheduled at this time to complete training work at a local provider. This is a 9 week program that sister pays for, but it is just a further abuse if this person sticks around long enough to get it and then bails out after sister has paid thousands of dollars for it. Our center is not in the business of paying and training just so the staff can take their services elsewhere. There has to be some expectation that after you train someone they will stay for at least a year or two minimum. Eh… Don’t want to think of this much more for the time being. For now … we think if she’s going to go … just leave. One way or another we’ll get through our feelings of betrayal.
Also, it affects something else of great concern. We’d worked hard to work our way up to the secondary position of Program Director. Now, we have to consider how this all affects that change. We approached it as Sister told us what had happened. I asked directly how does this affect my change. She stumbled. We laid down a high hand that we didn’t think that this person should affect that we’d earned a better position. We told her that we’d maintain a Q status with the state by attending the required meetings throughout the year, but that we’d gone forward and wouldn’t want to go back. I told her that we’d oversee the responsibilities of the caseload and new Q … and of course the training of another Q., but that we’d do this from the position of a Program Director. She said something about two jobs … and when we questioned that she brought up Q. We restated our position that we saw the position of Program Director and accreditation specialist the same thing, because we would use so much of CARF ideals and framework toward the new position. Sister I’m pretty sure heard the panic in our voice and we knew at the time we were standing in the hall and I wouldn’t be able to continue standing much longer. Sister ended the conversation by stating that we should both pray on it. I know that means that no decision has been made and that we’ll both consider things some more. I told her that it wasn’t a matter of money; I will have to tell her better I think why the position change is so important to us. I’m not sure how much option she is going to feel she has in that point blank … there will be the absence of a Q., especially if the new Q ditches us. Somebody has to have those clients on their caseload and there is no one else to do the work, but us.
The question then becomes can we hold open the door of being in our new position while still being in our old position. I think that one thing might help was that we’d go into it that that Q position was just being held as long as it took to train a new Q and that Q would be looked for right away, particularly before next July when annuals start happening again. The thing would be though to open the door to the new position at the same time so that I can be developing my CARF systems around having access to the full center and not just the people on our given “caseload.” Sister has to know that we are doing the work now anyway of a double caseload. I think one of the things that are bothersome about the new Q’s position is that we had made up requirements of her job that weren’t essential. And, it is these un-essential functions she wants to do. I know that sister told her the kind of money she would want to make paralleled what the other Q and us were getting paid and that would be fair to the old Q’s. I am not saying that any of this at all is fair to pay and responsibilities. But, that is not the main priority even still. The big thing is in gaining the position so that our time and energy can be directed toward whole center improvements. It is not “power” we are looking for, because we know that sister will always maintain that. But, there is a sense of wanting to control more of the direction toward actual learning processes over the random selection of learning styles that are being presently used. I want to learn more about education and incorporate our ideals of self-systems and to do that I want a direct position so that as we learn how to do this openings will be there to implement the work. I want this to be our focus, I do not want to focus on what it takes to keep up with Qnotes and annual meetings. I’m afraid though that our new position is so new that Sister might consider it unessential. And, if that were to be the case, I would be very unhappy. I worked too hard to progress to go backward … I can’t tell you how important it is to be working on something beside just a caseload.
Ok, ok … so now that first set of thoughts is purged from our minds. It’s already 22 minutes past the time … and we are coming up to our magic 10 am marker time. So, with all these changes, it might be a good idea to switch gears back to school which is an ultimate aim. We need to structure the next 2 ½ hours – leaving a half hour for shower. We might decide to leave off completing the reading of this chapter in order to get the paper in order. We will still have to skim the material, but for the most part … at least this chapter has been marked up as read once before. There were a lot of little technical nuisances that might be important, because our memory is slow, but we are not reassured if we sat down and read it straight forward, we would be any better off at remembering or understanding the concepts. We need to focus yet still on outlines and we need to be conscious of Dr. M.’s suggestion that we count how many paragraph’s others are writing in comparison to what we’re doing.
We did cut down from 11 paragraphs to 9, but that is still over and above, I think. I have a problem, because so many papers only had 3-4 paragraphs and we find that totally unacceptable. The teacher this last round only commented on a few peoples that hadn’t answered the full questions asked. That lets us know that she was reading, but over her priority of commenting the first time. We are unsure what she will do the next time, but as to so far, she is consistent with her husband’s style. This means to us, not to expect too much directly from her, especially if our papers are the last to be coming in. Officially, the next paper is due tomorrow at midnight, but we don’t want to take advantage of this time available to us now.
We need to keep in mind that our sweetie has announced that he’ll be visiting this afternoon. We’re pretty sure he will be leaving by about 5 pm. He doesn’t usually plan to stay more than 3-4 hours. For good or bad that has to be recognized for what it is. This means we will have some study time afterward although often after he leaves we’re not in the mood and are sometimes just plain mopey.
Maybe the next thing would be to then take a peek at what our next paper was going to be about. Let’s see what all we need to gear up for … and if this includes a lot of material from the book to go over, or just a little material … Ok, hold on please. Hmm, seems that we are going to need to understand attribution and attribution biases. And, then the other part will be a little easier in calling those concepts toward application in our profession. This is a good confidence builder toward anything toward profession gives us opportunity to think of development of our new position from a framework of the old. Let me check the book next and see how many pages attribution theory covers. That will help us in the development of our outline. Hmm. Mostly, it is the first 20 pages … and that is pretty far sweeping. Perception seems to cover three areas of persons, situations, and behavior and this is about 9 pages. Then Attribution and attribution theory is about 11 pages. Hmm, ok that’s a problem. Perception is actually the whole chapter … so now we’re talking about 35 pages. I guess we are going to need breaking this down. It seems though we’ve done this before … let’s look for a moment … think it was in a OneNote program. Hmm. Think that was before we cleaned out the program … let’s look one more place, hold on. Hmm, didn’t find the outline, but we found our last paper … we better take a moment here to see if it helps us understand the chapter better. It is a condensed six paragraphs, but they are long. Hold on going to read it. We can’t use the same paper, because we know officially that is cheating … and we’re not going to take those kind of chances just to be “done with it.” School means too much to us.
Pshwoo … got into it in a paragraph and decided to stop … we have some recall of it now, but it seems to have been primarily based in the relationship that we had with our Ex. There is certainly no reason we want to go back there. Nope the outline isn’t there in our word doc and it looks like we never made it to the second week’s assignment. Or, if we did it wasn’t saved, AND we know we didn’t finish highlighting its chapter 5. So, we are back to the beginning. How do we best outline the work? I can gain some information from the chapter’s review. We read that over and while not being reminded of all the concepts have an idea of it, thought directly nothing seems to be really sticking. Why don’t we take a look at the study guide.
Ok, good … I went over the study guide … It’s really nice addition to the chapter, particularly this one where so many new concepts and terms needed to be learned toward perception and attribution. It reiterated the chapter’s outline, set up learning objectives – we didn’t use this because it mean going back over the entire chapter and we were looking for a shortcut. The major concepts or big picture was handy and we read that before and after everything else. The Key terms were handy to go over once, but we will still not be able to recall these all. There are 24 new terms and our memory doesn’t allow this much specificity, although after reading each of the explanations I understand the concepts behind each to some degree. I was disappointed the first time and more reassured the second time when we looked over the sections on the multiple-choice and essay questions. Familiarity with this and being able to see the application of some of the theories was very helpful, thought we still might not be able to bring to recall, we were able to remember most of the answers. Pshwoo. Ok, time check. It’s now 11:30 am. We’ve got an hour before the shower, maybe we could set up some kind of an outline now? We could make it a goal to write 6 paragraphs. I would like to narrow things down to 6-7 paragraphs this time and maybe having the paragraphs not be quite as long. I would like to complete that task by the end of the day – that is turning the outline into paragraph-paper form. From the start, I would like to turn the project into a study of bloom’s taxonomy. Let’s see if that is doable according to the assignment’s questions.
Describe the process of perceiving persons
Emphasis attribution
Emphasis attribution biases
State how these concepts help in my profession
Hmm, ok … that’s the assignment. We would need a summary type introduction paragraph – that could be written almost last.
Labels: Clearing our minds
posted by Ann Marie @ 1/16/2007 04:33:00 AM
Comments: 1
