I’m back in my blog after 10 months. Like so many other aspects of daily life, blogging was crowded out by the need for me to completely immerse myself in writing the story of my PhD journey and research project, a document called my dissertation. Last Wednesday, I completed the last perfectionist technical edits and uploaded the dissertation .pdf, submitting it to one final review by my school, California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and ultimately to UMI/Proquest to be published publicly. Sometime in June or July, you should be able to use Google Scholar to search for and download it, if you are so inclined. It’s not as dry as some academic writing and has lots of pictures, but was still largely written for an academic audience. (Be warned!) My dissertation abstract gives you an idea in text form of what I’ve been exploring for the last 6 years. And the image below visually expresses this artful action inquiry process I’ve been engaged in and with.
What does being a scholar-practitioner mean to me? I’ve always been curious and now that inclination has deepened into being an inquirer, one who lives into reflective practice, meaning making, and the continuous exploration and articulation of knowing. Through my PhD process, I have confronted, engaged with, made sense of and integrated much of my experience of life. I’ve processed 1000s of pages of books and articles. I’ve made the first of my contributions to the academic knowledge base.
And here, in this blog, I’ll continue to contribute to the online conversation, sharing what I notice about how we are Making Up What Comes Next.
Copyright 2012 Nika Newcomb Quirk
I’ve come to the determination that Knowledge while being the analysis and breakdown of information to form an understanding; it is wisdom or rebuilding of what we have learned(knowledge) through experiences that is what we all really seek. You have touched many lives and your wisdom is cherished.