The PhD Journey

I spent a week on the Colorado State University campus, both in Ft. Collins and Pingree Park.  The people I met and will be working with are fantastic.  By the end of the week (which I will admit was difficult), we created a great support system for each other.

We spent time hiking (a Colorado outdoor enthusiast's definition of a "light" hike is quite different from this Wyoming outdoor UN-enthusiast's - 5+ miles in steep terrain, humidity, and pouring rain).  We also spent time talking about the PhD journey, more specifically, our dissertations.  I love gender and generation studies.  I was planning to research gender and corporate America, but during the hike (when I was forced to look inward for strength and keep my mind of the brutality of the mountains), I changed my focus.  I want my career to be slightly different than human resource management.  My PhD work will focus more on training, development, and performance, and I have the opportunity to better shape my job if I concentrate my research on these topics.  I haven't quite narrowed it down yet, but my Literature Review class this fall will help me find a need.  I want to explore maybe technology in corporate training, even more specifically, training without Powerpoint, which has become a safety net for trainers, a lazy way out.  I do hate training, I might add.  I hate the glossy look of people thinking - what the hell does she know - but I love designing training.  It's my N vs. S on the Myers-Briggs - my intuitive self (as opposed to sensing) loves design and invention and big picture, high energy goals and ideals.  But when it comes to implementing, ehhh leave that to someone else.  I don't want to actually go through with the training - I just want to design it!