So far this year

Wow, since the beginning of the year so much has happened. In January, the school I was working for finished up its accreditation, of which I was the Chair. It went extremely well, with no stipulations or changes!

In February I got sent to Florida for a Resident Life Seminar that my job paid for, since I was going to write my dissertation on the life of the child, the interconnection of academic and artistic curriculum bound together by the resident life program.

I went back again in March for my brother's wedding. Then some changes: my boss, who had been so supportive of everything I did, resigned. There was some political maneuvering at the top levels and he was made a scapegoat. He wouldn't stand for it, so left. That left me "in charge" but I also had 2 PhD classes to go to the end of March and beginning of April.


One was in NY, the other in CA (saw redwoods for the first time, oh my!) The one in CA was about my dissertation. With all this commotion at work I had decided that I couldn't write it about school since the leadership style had changed from one of being inclusive to divided and competing for power, so I was going to just expand on my master's thesis.

I showed Jim Garrison, the President of Wisdom University, my thesis, and he said that it was a good first draft! Yeay, seems like half the work was already done. Then I went to the class and everything changed. The short story is that most everyone in the class spoke about finding themselves through finding their connection with the Divine (choose your own personal word for Him/Her/All/One) which led to finding their passion and how they could offer it/serve others.

What a wonderful theme binding us all together I thought, and with that I came up with my real dissertation proposal--to tell these people's stories as an example/model for this kind of alternative education that uses left and right brain, spiritual and physical, intellectual and emotional in order for the result to be something of value that can be offered to the world, and as an example of the emerging wisdom culture (as WU puts it, or as I wrote about, the new culture of heart) Tentative title: "Divine Sparks, Lighting the Fires Within: How Dissertation Words Derived from a Wisdom Culture Are Able to Create a New Paradigm and Light the Way into the Future" Pretty nifty huh?!

So, anyway, when I came back, work had decided that they didn't need me anymore, and I got laid off. That happened last week. Hmmm, interesting, after all that work I did for them. I was told I was too "aligned with my boss" (who was more than a month gone by this time) and that I was overqualified for the remaining position.

Now I find myself jobless again, but with loads of work to do. I've done 3 out of a required 12 classes. The next one is the beginning of June and I've got a 15 page post-paper, a 7 page pre-paper and 6 THICK books to read before then. Maybe it's a good idea that I don't have to work. Now about money . . .

Oh, and my daughter is graduating in May, getting married in August, and I'm moving my mom from Florida to Wisconsin the end of June. Besides all that I'm just moseying along, writing my posts, my papers, my column (religionandspirituality.com) and reading away. Wait . . . is that the grass calling to be mowed, and the hedges to be trimmed, the house to be cleaned and the laundry to be done? How did I do all these things before and work at the same time!