Ruby’s Weblog

Reflections as the 2nd week of residency winds down.

It seemed touch and go for awhile but it looks like we have all survived residency somehow.  This morning when the alarm went off at 6am (after going to bed at 1am – working on my blogs!) my body protested but I managed to get up.  However I don’t know how I managed to get to the showers with my eyes closed.  I must have been on automatic pilot.

We just have the group presentations tomorrow and Friday is really a look forward to what we can expect after residency.

Reflecting back on these two weeks: 

I can honestly say that I have come to appreciate working in groups.  I came to residency with some apprehensions about working in groups as I have not had good experiences with groups back in my undergrad days.  I am sure it is a combination of age and the commitment of the MALAT cohort that has changed my mind.  We are all here because we want to be here and we are all committed to succeeding.  But perhaps it is more than that.

I think I see social learning theory at play here.  I have observed that everyone here is focused and like minded which has encouraged me to want to emulate those behaviours.  I have tried to modify my behaviour by reaching out to others and by sharing my feelings more.  This has resulted in my getting to know and be more comfortable with my classmates.

I also see some constructivism going on here.  I came to this residency with my own ideas of what it would be like.  I came with my negative experiences about group work.  However after having now worked collaboratively with many groups, my reality has changed.  I have learned that working in good groups can produce far superior work than I alone could have produced.

Am I the same person that I was when I first arrived here.  Definately not.  I have expanded my mind, even though it hurt to do that at times.  I have started to look at things differently by trying to ask questions.   And I have met some truely wonderful people.  I appreciate all of you for your uniqueness and abiltiy to work for the greater good. 

I am looking forward to the next 2 years with you all!!!

Myers-Briggs Test

Today (Tuesday) we were given the Myers-Briggs test in class.  First let me say that I felt that the facilitator, Hilary Leighton was excellent.  We had a lot of fun and at the same time we learned more about our preference type and the prefernce types of others.

My preferences, characteristics and tendencies fell into the ISFP type.  When I looked at the characteristics frequently associated with this type I would have to say that I pretty much agree.  I lean towards introversion, sensing, feeling and perceiving. 

However I do have some reservations about the reliability and validity of this test and others like it.  At lunch today I was speaking with a couple of my classmates (Sue and Paul) and all three of us were grappling with that thought.

These type of tests are frequently used by HR departments to determine who they should hire, by counselors to help in career choices and even by parole boards to determine if a prisoner should be released.  These types of decisions can have life altering effects on people’s lives.

So how valid and reliable are these tests.  Would you always get the same results each time you take the test.  I have found research that shows that 47% of people change their types when they retake these types of tests. 

I think that there are too many factors that can change the test results, such as:

• mood
• tramatic event
• happy event 
• picking what you want to be and not what you are
• time of day
• age
• test anxiety
• gender
• health

While I believe that doing the Myers-Briggs test as a part of team-building is a good idea as I can see the benefits of you seeing and talking about the preferences of others and yourself.  However I also feel that this could lead to stereotyping.  In fact this came out today when another one of my classmates made the comment to me that “You (I) would never want to be the leader” based on my preference type.  My response was that “I had no problem being the leader if the situation warrented it but I had no pressing need to always be the leader.”

My point here is that we must be careful not to fully embrace these types of tests without giving careful consideration about the possible consequences.

We were given the Myers-Briggs Serenity Prayers (for each type) and I would like to share mine with you.

“Lord, help me to stand up for my rights (if you don’t mind my asking)”

BIG FISH – who knew a fish could be so deep

Yesterday (Monday) we watched the movie Big Fish in class.  I had already seen it but I did not realize that until we were about 10 minutes into the movie.  When I first saw the movie, it was just a movie and I did not really think too deeply about it.  For those of you who would like to see a trailer of the movie along with Daniel Wallace, the author talking about the film adaptation of his book and also talk about the art of storytelling and lots of other previews and clips then go to Sony Pictures main page for the movie Big Fish at  http://www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/bigfish/index.html.  It is neat to see and hear the author talk about his book and the movie.

Being in this program (and Bill’s gentle focusing of our thoughts) certainly made me watch this movie with a much more critical eye.  What is the nature of truth? What is truth? What is real? Is there more than one reality?

In the movie the son, was very much the deductive thinker and the father was very much the inductive thinker.  The son wanted just the facts and the figures while the father was not interested in the facts or the figures, he was interested in all the different layers (flavours).  The son was interested in the destination and the father was interested in the journey.

As the movie progresses you find that the son goes through a metamorphosis.  You see how he sees things differently at different times in his life.  You see that when he was a young boy he believed his father’s stories and then as he became a man he no longer believed his father and in fact was openly disdainful of his father.  Then at the end of his father’s life the son finally starts to understand who his father was and discovers that he is more like his father than he realized.  He finally understands that his father spoke his narratives while he, the son, wrote his narratives (he was a journalist) – they were the same.

To me this movie is very much like what our journey through this master’s program will be.  We are coming into this program with our own realities and this program is going to challenge those realities.  All of us at times will be going through some dark and twisting paths and at other times we will be going along a straight path.  We will be challenged/pushed/dragged to question our beliefs.  And not just our beliefs but we will be asked to challenge the beliefs of others.

The movie made reference to the more difficult something is to get through, the more rewarding it will be at the end.  If that is the case then I am sure that all of us when we finish this master’s program, will be blessed with infinite rewards. 

Qualitative vs Quantitative Research

I have been thinking about what kind of research that I would like to do; qualitative or quantitative for my major project next year.  Turns out that this is a harder question than I had first thought. 

I don’t know if any of you remember but there used to be a show on tv called Faces of Culture.  I used to watch it religiously as I was always fascinated to learn about other people’s culture and I was very disappointed when it went off the air.  Also I was always attracted to taking cultural type courses at university.  

However I am also very interested in the facts and figures.  I feel that you can learn quite a lot of valuable information by doing a statistical analysis. 

Am I an inductive (qualitative) or deductive (quantitative) kind of person? Do I want to be an aloof observer (quantitative) or do I want to interact with the participants of my research (qualitative). 

As I learned from the article critique that my team did on the research done by Tamsin Haggis, quantitative research can sometimes give limited choices forcing us to put research subjects into categories that may not really fit or tell the whole story.  I think our group’s dramatization using ice cream clearly brought that point out.

However qualitatative research also has it’s shortcomings as was also demonstrated in the research done by Haggis.  She delved so deeply into the participants “stories” that she had gathered a multitude of data but what did that data really tell her.  She was not able to make any real correlations or connections from the data.

Maybe the solution would be to do a combination of qualitative and quantitative research as it seems that there are some types of information gathering that lend itself better to quantitative research and some types of information gathering that lend itself better to qualitative research.

Should I even be thinking about the kind of research method I want to use? Should I let that drive what my major project will be or should I figure out what I want to do my major research project on first and then let that drive what my research methodology will be.  Other factors like funding/budget, time and available resources will also play a part in deciding on what research method I will be able to use. 

I think this is something that I will have to think through very carefully and I am sure that I will change my mind many times over the course of the next 2 years.

Reflections on 1st week of residency at Royal Roads

The first week is finally done and I can’t remember feeling this tired in a long time.  I don’t mean just physically tired, I mean mentally tired.  So much information in such little time.

We have had lectures, information sessions and community building exercises.  On top of that we had to prepare an article critique and do a presentation after many team meetings.  Oh and lest we forget, the beloved APA Manual (don’t leave home without it).  No one told us that there would be no time for sleep!!!

I do not have an education background so I came with no knowledge about different learning theories.  I am still having trouble with figuring out what is a theory and what is a style and what is a methodology.  Hopefully at the end of 2 years I will have figured some of it out.

Thoughts on our pre-residency assignment:

When we were asked to write a short paper on what was our learnng epistemology (philosophical orientation) I was really not sure what it was and in what direction I should go.  After reading the first 2 chapters of MacKeracher and doing some online research on what constructivism is, I came to the conclusion that I must believe in constructivism (to a point). 

Now that we have finished our first week of residency I think that I am less sure than I was before about what I believe and what I know.  My only hope is that time will clear up things for me.

My first ever blog

This is my frist time ever to have anything to do with a blog.  I actually think I did ok considering I am not even sure what a blog really is.