Thesis Thanksgiving

Before Thanksgiving Break my thesis data collection was administered. Every male student in a residence hall was given my survey as a supplement to the standard residence life survey. I have a response rate of about 600, which is huge. I'm very excited about this. My data set will be substantial and hopefully, that means significant when all is said and done. I collected all of the responses before I headed home for the break. My mom and I spent several hours together entering about 100 of them onto the computer. Between working with Sara during Jumping Bean shifts and afternoons at the Rusty Post (Let's be honest, I'm a poor research assistant... sorry) as well as commandeering the help of my PA staff for a few minutes after one of our meetings, I've got about 360 entered. I head into the Christmas break with 250 or so left to enter. What else could a guy want to do with 3 weeks during the Christmas season than enter data for a research thesis? ha.

Back to Thanksgiving. Dad was down for the count with a bad cold (which he passed onto me right before I left) and Tracy was working like a good poor graduate student has to. This left my mom and I to spend tons of time together during the break. It was great! I can't recall the last time that I spent that much intentional time with only my mother. We caught up on all sorts of stuff. She's been worried about me this semester, as I'm sure most mothers would in response to that sort of stuff. It was good to be able to share everything with her and give her a chance to ask questions and give her answers. So often when I call home, I talk to dad only. I forget that she's left with answers mediated to her by someone else. Though, I know she's understanding, I'm trying to do a better job of calling and talking directly to her as much as I call dad.

Since she's been retired and since I've spent more time with her without so much stress in her life, I think I'm discovering more about how we're similar. This Thanksgiving I realized that we are similar in our low-key personalities and our mutual lazze-fare approach to decisions on unimportant things. I mean, who cares what restaurant we go eat at anyway? Not mom or I. Just choose. Thank you.