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>> Well, welcome everyone to this presentation.
I think [inaudible] by a graduate of the school's program,
Robyn Dexter who is a National Archive Archivist at Anchorage, Alaska's National Archives.
And I'm so glad that she could be with us this evening.
And this is Robyn.
I think you've seen her picture and read a little bit
about her background on our SLIS colloquia page.
So I'm not going to spend much time there except to say
that she's a very interesting person [laughter].
She's got a great story [laughs].
She's got a great story to share with you.
And I'm going to let her do that so that I don't take up her time.
So I'm going to turn the mike right over to Robyn now so that she can get started.
>> Great. Thank you so much, Dr. Reese [assumed spelling].
I really appreciate the opportunity to be here.
Okay. So one of the things when you're working, especially, in a distance format,
is you still have to find a way to connect with your audience.
And so I always like to ask who it is that I'm talking to.
Is everybody familiar with the raising hands over here on the left-hand side under your name?
And then there's also little [inaudible] cons.
Things like that.
Great. Okay.
So can I see a show of hands for the first year people in the audience?
This is your first your year.
Maybe even your first semester.
Okay. All right.
Good. Okay.
Scrolling down looking at people.
Excellent.
Okay. How about people who are even just thinking about doing a thesis.
Not really sure.
Just kind of checking it out.
Okay. I love that little scroll bar.
That just makes life so much fun.
Okay. Is there anybody who's pretty well set that they're going to be doing their thesis
and they're just here to find out some information?
Okay excellent.
Go ahead. Okay.
How many people are here because they have to see me at work tomorrow?
I see at least one of you [laughs].
That's what I thought.
There she is.
All right.
Wonderful.
So I always to, like I said, start out and just try to get to know
who I'm talking to, which is always good.
And - oh there's, we changed there it is.
It's now moved up there.
So one of the things you learn in the military is what we call Death by PowerPoint.
And so I always make it a point to tell people exactly what we're going
to do and when we're going to end.
People like to know that too.
So I'm going to run through my bio.
It's very short.
Talk about My Thesis experience.
Some of the requirements that you need to be aware of.
And so then also where to find all of the information that we talked about.
And then some times for questions.
And theoretically, we'll have it all wrapped up in about an hour.
So excellent.
Shall we? Oop, wrong button.
Here we go.
So I'm Robyn Dexter like we've heard.
I am a 2013 SJSU graduate and an Archivist with the National Archives.
I'm 37. I have two daughters and two Siberian huskies.
I've taken them for the walk.
They should be good.
But I do have to tell you my neighbor's dog is having a come apart,
so hopefully they will stay settled down.
I did try to stay hide from them.
But I'm not sure which set keeps me busier, my dogs or my children or more frantic.
So after I got out of the army, you know, I needed something to do, basically.
I had gone back to school with the intent to teach high school history.
So I was a history major with dual minor in education and military history.
And after doing my first student teaching at a middle school I very quickly realized
that I was not cut out to be a children's teacher.
Well, actually, what where realized was I didn't want to go to jail [laughs].
So I dropped the education minor and focused solely on history and military science.
I was still living on an army base.
And I wandered into one of the museums on post and asked if they needed a volunteer.
And at that point I kind of fell into the archives and never really left.
You know, it's an amazing place to start in this business.
And I was so very fortunate to have had that experience
and that amount of support that I got.
I graduated in December, 2008, and started graduate school the following September.
I worked full time at the museum through graduate school.
I was mostly a single parent as my girls' dad was still active duty and was mostly deployed.
As I was wrapping up my course work, I knew that I had wanted to do a thesis.
And I was through with my proposal from 285.
No. I'm sorry.
That was my third proposal.
I was through with my proposal.
It had been accepted.
The research was half done.
And then a job opportunity with National Archives opened up.
It was posted.
I saw it. I bypassed it because it was for Alaska.
Now, I'm a southerner.
I don't do below 40 degrees.
I forgot all about it.
And then it popped up again maybe two months later.
Something like that.
Two months later it popped up on the FAA board list.
And so at this point there had been some personal changes in my museum.
And, frankly, I was in the market for another job.
So I figured I'd throw my name in the hat.
You know, what's the worst that's going to happen?
And then I got called for an interview.
At the same time my girls' father was on his third tour in Iraq,
and we were on orders to Germany.
And from an army perspective we're pulling out of Germany.
So it's kind of like the last chance to go for his job.
And I did my interview figuring if nothing else I had a better understanding
of the government-hiring process because it is intricate.
Carol can tell you too.
And then I got a job offer.
And it was a really difficult decision that even today impacts every day of my life.
Ultimately, the decision was made that I would go ahead and accept the job.
And we'd get Eric up to Fort Richardson which is in Alaska somehow.
But one of the by-products of the decision of going up there was
that I was going to have to change my topic.
But we're going to get to that.
There's lots more slides about that.
So I went to Alaska.
And I was there from April, 2011, to September 2013.
But we're going to talk a little bit about that transfer too.
Oop, I moved my mouse.
We've got to change that slide.
So as I said, I had always planned to write a thesis.
But I got closer.
I say the constraints and the time involved.
And all of that.
And the ePortfolio was looking better and better.
Let me tell you.
As I said, you know, I was working full time.
My girls were home schooled.
Their dad was deployed.
You know, and I just really wanted to be done with this portion of my life.
And you see this handsome guy right here on the right.
That's Zanarkand [assumed spelling].
He was still today the love of my life.
Ninety pounds of oh, my God.
Love me. Rottweiler.
He was not aware that he was not a lap dog.
Zan also still had his tail because he was a rescue dog.
That's important in a minute.
So this is spring semester 2010.
Cloud computing had really just starting coming into the public stream of consciousness.
And I can be a little slow to hop on the band wagon as Dr. Frank can tell you.
My stuff was saved to thumb drives, disks, you know, it was kind of scattered around.
So Zan went running through the kitchen.
And I was making dinner and his tail caught my charger cord.
Yanked my computer to my tile floor.
My screen was shattered.
So was the casing.
One of the disks that I had saved most of my stuff to was in the D drive.
And we'd moved twice and started a new school
and things were kind of scattered all over the place.
So a healthy portion what I was going to need for that ePortfolio was gone.
Yeah, I guess it was back to the thesis idea.
And this is where the real lessons are going to start.
I'd already taken 284.
Written my proposal, was I thought was wonderful.
And in my naivety I thought that because I wanted to do this project
that everyone was going to want to do this project [laughs].
Everyone was going to want to do it.
And I just needed a chair to monitor the progress on the work.
Yeah. It's wrong.
I submitted it to a few professors who basically told me they didn't have the expertise
whatsoever in the preservation of scrapbooks.
And kind of good luck on that.
So I'd learned there was a great divide in what one wants to do their graduate work in
and what finding a chair can actually support.
Finally, I came to find Dr. Debra Hansen.
And let me tell you, everybody needs someone like Dr. Hansen in their life.
But we're going to talk more about that in just a moment.
Because at that same time, that's when I got the call that I was going to Alaska.
So very quickly, for some of those of you who need a conceptualization of what
that actually means, I'm from Virginia down here.
And as you can see, we are talking about the move of 4,300 miles.
There's an entire country between what we're talking about here.
And I'm really sorry about the add thing.
I couldn't actually get the screen shot to disappear this but still keep the numbers.
So really sorry about that.
But I do want to talk more about the process of finding a chair and because it's first.
And I think probably really the most critical step.
Because if you can't find a chair, you're not writing a thesis.
Finding a chair.
If you're going through the faculty pages, you're looking at this and you're thinking
that you have all of these names right here.
You see I even left a little slider bar
because it shows you how many teachers we have in the program.
And so you think you have all these choices.
You don't.
This note over here, this basically says that only people in one
of these categories can actually chair these three categories.
You really have more like 15 people.
You have that amount of choices.
And they have every student that approaches them.
They have to have an understanding of what they're taking on.
Because really, like I said, you're tying your lives together for a year at least.
Oh, Carol came back in.
Moreover, you really have to find somebody who just gets you.
Somebody that you can work with who wants to work with you.
Who's exciting about your topic.
Who understands where you're going.
And that you really want to work with.
And, frankly, if you're not living in a fear of disappointing them because you respect them
that much, you're doing it wrong.
Dr. Hansen did actually reject my initial proposal.
And for the same reason that the others did.
But she saw something in Me and in my writing and coached me
through writing a second proposal, which was on the history of my museum that I was working on.
So now we're on proposal number two.
You have my original.
And now we have the history of the museum.
She did accept that.
And we got to work on the drafting.
And, again, everyone should have a Dr. Hansen or you're doing it wrong.
She was the best chair that I could have possibly hoped for.
But how does one actually go about picking said magic chair?
So if you click on any one of these names, it's going to take you to the professors' bio pages.
And this is really the first place you want to start.
Here we see Dr. Hansen's bio as well as Dr. Liu's.
And some of what I'm about to say may come
across as I'm being a little critical of Dr. Liu.
And that's absolutely not my intention.
He was wonderful.
I took his 285 class.
He's a wonderful man.
Very good at his avenue in our industry.
The problem is it's not the avenue that I'm on, which is why I'm using him as an example.
As you're looking at what you want to do and what you want to write about,
you need to approach professors that are in your same schema.
The screen is a little small on my tablet that I'm using.
But Dr. Hansen is more in the social aspect of our industry.
Women's history, processing, access, things like that.
And that's kind of where I'm at.
Dr. Liu is more in the technological realm of it.
And that's not what I do.
So this is a mistake that I made that I really want you to learn from.
When it's time for you to start looking at 285, look and see who's teaching it.
And check their bios to see what aspect their coming from and kind
of where their professional development is coming from.
I wrote my proposal in Dr. Liu's class.
But because he is more tech oriented than preservation of scrapbooks,
my proposal actually didn't get the best grade.
I got a B on it because he didn't understand where I was coming from.
And I had hard time wrapping my head around where he was coming from.
And also the format that is normal in his sector
of our industry was completely useless for Dr. Hansen.
I actually wound up auditing her 285 class to learn how to do things
that were appropriate for that side of the business.
Now once I did that, though, I withdrew the proposal.
But it set me back on the cycle semester.
Had I not made that mistake I would have actually graduated
in December and not in the fall.
And if I were writing My Thesis on - let me think of something.
The information seeking habits of second world countries,
Dr. Liu would have been a better choice than Dr. Hansen.
But at that time I wanted to write about preservation.
And, you know, quite frankly I couldn't get it off the ground.
And when I couldn't it became a history of my museum.
So you see kind of how Dr. - and, Janica [assumed spelling],
I'll get to that in just a second.
You'll see how Dr. Hansen was a better choice for me.
Janica said, "So to be clear, are you suggesting we pick a teacher for 285 aligning
with what we want to do our thesis on?"
There are only so many teachers for 285.
I wouldn't say align specifically because you may not have that option.
And I don't want you to think that your caller blocked out.
But hard science versus what we consider a softer science.
At least we, like I said, if you want to do it on the information seeking habits
on second world developing countries, somebody with a harder science who's going to be more
in tune with the hardware aspects and things like that, is going to be better than somebody
who does historical development - I'm thinking of something.
Historical development of gay and lesbian archives.
Does that make sense to everybody?
Okay. Good.
That sounds like - I see some comments.
Good. Now, let's see.
Where was I?
Okay. So this proposal that I keep talking about.
What exactly is that?
It's kind of like a sales pitch.
This is the paper that tells what you want to write about.
How you're planning on doing it.
What you hope to achieve.
And often it's the basis of your first chapter.
It shows how you think.
How you process.
And really how you write.
Like I said, it's literally your sales pitch.
The proposal is usually your final paper for 285.
And it's why it's really important to pay attention to whose class you take.
Like I said, Dr. Liu's a hard science guy.
Preservation's not his field.
But that's exactly what I wrote.
And it was a mistake that I made, which is why I got a B. So don't do what I did.
Like I said, they may be limited.
You're going to have to consider that.
And as long as you know that going in, if this is the only 285 class that you can get in to
or completely derail yourself, at least know and understand and take from my learning experience.
Waiting until you get to 285 until you start thinking about all this is actually too late.
You're going want to start thinking about this about half way through your course work.
And figuring out what you're interested in and what you can feasibly do.
Start reading the bios.
Even if you don't wind up with that teacher as your chair, you want somebody in your area.
Now, I could have taken Dr. Hansen's class and written something for Dr. Franks
because our avenues are close enough.
But Dr. Liu's and Dr. Hansen's are too completely divergent.
The school has some really great material on even making the decision on what you want to do.
This video is an hour of your life.
And I understand that.
And I get that.
But they really - Alena [assumed spelling] and her team
that put this together did a really, really good job.
These are everything you want to know about how to put your thesis together.
And the steps - there's more than one body.
There's more that just you and your chair involved.
There's the Office of Graduate.
GAPE. And, well, any way, we'll go through all that.
Yeah, Office of Graduate Study and Research.
And then there's the GAPE office as well.
So sit down and watch the video,
and really understand what it is that you're trying to take on.
This video is here for a reason.
And then also there is a PDF.
The other thing that I would highly encourage you to do -
and let me get the URL off of this real quick.
And this. This.
Way sensitive mouse pad.
There we go.
So my personal laptop passed away the other day.
And so I am playing with these on a relatively unfamiliar - and that is going to show you all
of the things that you need to know for your final formatting.
The things down to the margin and the pagination.
And how to actually construct the body of work that you're going to submit.
Knowing what is expected of you of a final product
in the very early stages I think is a really important lesson
that I wish I had taken the time.
I scanned it.
I read it.
I didn't truly absorb it.
And that was wrong of me.
I should have actually done that because had I thought about that as I was writing my chapters
and Dr. Hansen is signing off that yes, this is finalized.
I should have formatted them all at that time.
And I didn't do it.
So don't do that.
Let's see where was - yes.
The video.
The PDF's.
Most importantly are going to be these right here.
Janica [assumed spelling], mine is 125 pages.
Deadlines.
Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines.
When you are even trying to debate on when you want to graduate and how you're going
to do this, look at the deadlines.
Absorb them and understand them.
These deadlines are not flexible.
They don't care if you are in the hospital.
I promise you.
I was there.
It's really important to understand the cut off deadlines
in when you are planning what are to do with your thesis.
Because it may set you back a semester.
A year is completely normal to be able to write a thesis.
But we're going to get to that in just a second.
Let's see.
Oh, right.
I was talking about the content of what actually a proposal - where are my - oh.
I need to go back here and yes.
Deadlines that are non-negotiable.
So I found a definition from a school
in Arizona that's actually a little bit clearer than ours here.
The proposal for a thesis or a dissertation is essentially an outline of the research.
Kind of like an architectural blueprint building for a house.
So you have your problem or hypothesis.
And so that is really what is it you're trying to write about?
What is it you want to know?
What are you trying to learn?
And then they want to know the importance of this research.
So my first proposal like I talked about was important to me.
I wanted to know about the preservation of scrapbooks.
But there's not a research value in that.
So you're proposal is laying out why is this even important to people.
Why should we take the time to do this?
Another question for your thesis is how much significant prior research has been done.
And that was actually several of the professors' feedback
that I got is there's just not enough work
to support a master's thesis on preservation of scrapbooks.
That is a better doctoral dissertation.
Let me talk a little bit about that in a second too.
You're possible research approach or methodology -
how you're going to put this darn paper together.
And then potential outcomes of your research and why those are important as well.
So in case people's brains are hurting, because I just crammed a lot of information at you,
we're going to talk about the things that I wish somebody had told me.
So now I'm going to tell you.
This can take a long time.
It takes about a year.
More if you move to Alaska.
And, you know, quite frankly, that's okay.
There is not - in graduate school, there is not a prize for cramming your way through it.
Not having good grades.
And not having the hands-on skills that you're going to need to get out of graduate school.
Next, you're original main topic may not get approved.
And until your topic is approved, do not wed yourself to it.
It makes for a frustrating experience.
And I know because I did that.
I was so invested in those scrapbooks because I was at the museum
and the scrapbooks were staring me in the face every day.
And so I really wanted to do.
And so having to let go of that was kind of an emotional experience.
And, frankly, you know, I still want to write about those darn scrapbooks.
But like I said, it's a better doctoral dissertation.
You may wind up with a chair that leads you rather than directs you.
Like I said, you may not even really get to choose, really choose your topic.
And that's why it's important to find somebody that you really click with.
Because that topic is going to have to grow on you.
My kids are actually still forbidden from saying the words Exxon Valdez.
But we'll talk about that in a minute.
Your abstract.
Yeah, cramming is the worst.
Exactly, Lissette [assumed spelling].
Cramming is the worst.
And there's not a prize for it, frankly.
You're abstract is going to change because your abstract when your first lay it
out is this is what I think I know about this topic.
And this is where I hope to be.
But remember, a thesis is you taking these bodies of work.
Extrapolating all of the information.
Wrapping your head around it.
And coming to some new conclusion.
Or some new body of work that's important to the industry.
And as you learn about your topic and you're writing that abstract, you're going to find
out that what you think you know you don't actually know and it's wrong.
Or it's bigger than what you ever thought.
So when your paper is done, revisit that abstract.
And make sure that it really reflects your findings.
I had to redo my abstract I think probably four times.
You will eat bad food.
And you will be kind of a jerk.
Apologize to your family and love them and help them understand the kind of stress you're under.
But you're going to eat bad food and you're occasionally be a jerk.
Do nice things for people because they have to put up with you too.
But it happens to us all.
This is the one thing.
Lord, I wish people had told me this.
Brain fog.
There are still days that my reading comprehension fails.
I did it to poor Carol this morning.
Carol - I work with Carol Wilson.
She's down there on the list.
Yeah. She said something and my comprehension just failed.
So for a while my brain actually hurt.
Like torn Achilles hurt.
And other days were wet-sponge full.
You know, you can only get so much water in the sponge before the water just starts pouring out.
That's what it was like.
I've been done since March with my paper.
And I'm just now coming out of it.
We all joke that some of the stupidest people that we know are also the most highly educated.
This is why.
They didn't know that brain fog was coming and they didn't take steps.
So it's going to happen, unfortunately.
But if you know about it and you're prepared for it, you can kind of get around it a little bit.
I have run across students who actually don't know what a thesis is.
Some think it's your magnum opus of original work.
No. That's your dissertation.
Others think it's this big, huge book report.
No, like I said - what was my wonderful quote I came up with earlier today in the car?
"Your thesis is your conceptualization of collected materials
that you extrapolate a body of knowledge from."
You basically put a bunch of things in a solid bowl and you pick out the good parts.
So, essentially, what you think you know is wrong.
And your thesis sends you - or not complete.
Sends you on a mission to find out.
And that frustrating learning part where you have to accept that you don't actually know
or that you were wrong, that's normal.
And that's a really big part of why you're doing this.
You're doing this to learn.
However, those preconceived notions can be really hard to let go of.
Really, really hard.
And that's part of why having that good relationship
with your chair is so incredibly important.
Because in the editing process when your chair is giving your feedback and you're like no.
You know, I meant what I said that your chair is trying to help you recognize the larger body.
You're going to gain some weight, too.
You will Or you're going to lose it.
Depending on your body type.
Your gym time, it's going to go down.
You're going eat [inaudible].
You may engage in alcoholic beverages.
The man at my corner store knew my name.
Occasionally he'd put the last bottle behind for me because he liked me that much.
It's the nature of the beast.
However, recognize that that brain function and that brain fog that I talked
about relies on nutrition and exercise.
And guys, getting up, walking up the stairs to the kitchen for more Mountain Dew and Pop Tarts,
that's not the same as going outside for a walk.
Just saying.
Also understand that you may not find a chair.
And just because you want to write a thesis doesn't mean
that a professors has to accept you.
And that was a hard thing for me to come to.
If you can't find a topic suitable for yourself and a chair,
then your thesis may not be the option for you.
However, if you do find one, recognize the trust and the faith that they are putting in you.
And have that same trust and faith in yourself.
Because, frankly, if this were easy everybody would do it.
You guys are following along in a class.
And I'm following Dr. Franks and Dr. Hansen.
Not everybody gets through graduate school.
You guys are an exceptional percentage of people that actually made it.
And you should be so incredibly proud of yourself.
And if you get through the thesis process or the ePortfolio process,
and when you graduate you are in a small body.
And you really need to be gentle with yourself and really focus on that trust and that faith.
Okay. That's enough hand holding and mushiness.
The next slide is the most important thing I may say to you all night long.
Yeah. This is true.
Remember when your mother said that if your make that face, it's going to freeze like that?
Walked around with this expression for six months.
I'll just let you enjoy that for a second.
I always liked looking at it.
Okay. So last few notes.
Seriously, take a Word class.
I thought that I was really, really good with Word.
Do it anyway.
Even if it's a one-hour online kind of class.
Do it anyway.
There are things that you don't know about Word that will make your life vastly easier.
Also, just buy the darn thing.
I'm - yeah.
I tried to come up with a few adjectives here.
As you see, cheap, frugal, yeah, yeah.
I'm just cheap is what it is.
I did most of my paper in OpenOffice because I'm cheap.
And for eight months I could not figure out why Dr. Hansen was telling me move this, move that.
Indent this, space this, adjust that.
Because what she was telling me to do was exactly what was on my screen.
Turns out that my OpenOffice and her Word were frenemies.
Going back and forth of the versions and the software, it just wasn't working.
Just buy the student version.
I think it's 85 dollars.
Yeah. Ultimately as you do your final formatting, remember the PDF that I was talking
about a little bit ago and it has these very stringent requirements?
When you do your final formatting, you're going to need that any way.
And I'll show you why here in just a second.
Just buy it early and save yourself the heartache and the hassle [laughs].
Next, write your citations as you go.
You're not going to remember to do it over here and over there and maybe this but maybe not.
And you're not going to come back to it.
And you're not going to get to it at stage 364.
Just do it.
And use Word citation storer.
Because you're going to take things out and put things in.
And you're going to forget if you had that citation or not.
It's better just if you write them and then come back to them.
Also get a program called Zotero.
If you are not familiar with it, it is a - also somebody didn't tell me this
until I was done with the last chapter.
You don't have to write your chapters in order.
And that kind of seems illogical and unstructured.
But sometimes it's a really great way to re-evaluate your information.
And it doesn't seem like in your brain that the information would flow correctly.
But it really kind of does.
And if you have a chapter that you're really struggling with,
there's nothing wrong with putting it down.
Going back to your research proposal and figuring out what's next
and moving on for a little while.
I wish somebody had told me that.
So at this point you may be wondering exactly what it was I happened to managed
to have accomplished with all of these last few words of wisdom I've got going.
Remember when I said I moved to Alaska?
Dr. Hansen decided that since I was moving away from my research topic - the museum -
that my topic was not going to be the best topic any more.
And she wanted a topic related to Alaska.
So I had to ditch all of my previous work.
Come up with a new proposal.
A new plan.
Start a new job.
My girls got redeployed again all at one time.
Glutton for punishment.
I'm not sure what I was thinking.
But ultimately, so I did.
This is the third proposal that I had done though.
So, you know, I whipped that darn thing out.
Got it done.
She was happy with it.
And got started on it.
And ultimately, I took on the topic of archival roles and responsibility in disaster records.
Using Exxon Valdez or EVOS as my case study,
this isn't my whole abstract because that's kind of long.
But it really gives you the gist of what it was that I was writing.
What I really, you know I came from public history.
I came from the museum into government records.
And those are a very, very different creature, let me tell you.
And so I wanted to know, basically, how the two interacted.
And to do that, I had to figure it out.
So how did I go about doing that?
Time check.
Okay. These are my chapter headings.
And one thing that I learned is that having interesting chapter titles makes the writing
of the chapters - it really just encourages people that actually enjoy what you had
to say instead of try to struggle through it.
Just a note.
So some of them are things like what is this record schedule you speak of?
And a quote.
One of my favorite quotes, actually, "History does not unfold, it piles up".
"Yours, Mine, and Ours."
And the after action report, "Ode the Military."
So I looked at two government archives.
National Archives in the Alaska State Archives.
And then two public entities.
The Alaska Resource Library and Information Service or ARLIS.
And the Valdez Museum.
Because all four bodies have EVOS material.
I looked at history.
How the bodies developed legislation, regulation, researcher habits, processing.
God, what else?
Scopes of collection.
Retention schedules.
Specific document processing.
And, actually, even finally some EVOS material itself.
Really what I was examining was what government
and public history archivists do and how we do it.
You know, I think I was trying to reconcile the two in my head.
And I concluded that the roles or what we do are actually the same.
It's our responsibility, i.e. how we go about doing it, that are so very, very different.
And I think that was the part that I was trying to reconcile, which I did by the way.
Remember the irregularities between OpenOffice and Word?
This is one of them.
This is actually my title page, which managed to turn itself upside down.
If this had only gone to Dr. Hansen, wouldn't have been a big deal.
But this was my final submission.
This is what actually went to the thesis board.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I turned in a paper that's upside down.
Just this page though.
Just buy Word.
Don't be cheap like I was.
So and actually she wrote me a very nice note.
For reasons beyond my comprehension, this page is upside down.
I almost died of embarrassment.
Let me tell you.
And when I submitted this, I blind copied myself and Dr. Hansen.
And neither one of ours were upside down.
So I don't know what happened.
But it did.
Happiest moment time of my life at this year.
This is an acceptance e-mail.
This e-mail basically said I was done with graduate school.
This was a bigger deal to me, getting this e-mail, than hearing my name at graduation
because I was actually still Alaska for graduation.
I still like looking at it.
It's okay.
You will too.
So now what?
You're probably wondering where all of this has gotten me.
I'm, like I said, I'm NARA archivist.
There are - the last time I liked at our TVA, there were about 175 of us across the U.S..
Now, there's about 3,800 NARA employees.
But only about 175 of us are archivists.
When I went to Anchorage ,I went to see archivists and wound
on taking on the acting director's role.
So I got the office handed to me.
And my education at SJSU absolutely helped to prepare me for that.
I'm not going to lie.
There are classes I took that I absolutely don't remember taking.
We all had our classes from those undergrad days.
And you guys know what I mean.
I don't remember taking them because they weren't pertinent
to what I was doing at the time or even now.
But the classes that I do remember taking absolutely prepared for what I am doing.
David DeLorenzo, record's management class.
I owe that man my job.
Not going to lie.
In taking his class probably is what got me my job.
Michelle Simmons' public education class taught me how to structure a lesson plan.
It's actually what I use to come up with for what we're doing tonight.
Erin Lawrimore's description class [laughs].
That poor lady.
I still feel bad.
I took her class when I was in the museum.
And in the military we structure things that -
in the army archives program we structure things very differently.
So everything I turned in to her was something we'd used at the museum.
And she just had the hardest time grading my stuff.
I felt really bad.
But I did learn a lot from her regarding placement and the value of finding it.
Carol, the finding it that we use, I learned in her class.
The template.
Like I said, the template that we used in both my Anchorage office
and my San Bruno are based on what I learned in hers.
Dr. Franks' social media class as well.
I mean the archival world is really concentrated on sharing and access right now.
And I still, in fact, today I even use things from her class
to bridge a lot of generational gaps.
And over came some personal biases as well to be honest.
Those biases are rooted in the fact that I am a cranky old cuss.
And her class helped me learn to share that sarcasm with the world.
They appreciate it.
No, seriously.
I use a lot every day to bring the Anchorage office into the new access plan.
I want to say maybe it was less than three, Dr. Franks, that we did.
I based it off of that.
And I doubt I would have been able to do all of that
without the exact combination of classes that I took.
After two years of running that office I was transferred to the San Bruno office down here
in California to run an inventory overhaul project.
Yeah. Carol, so you now know more about me than you ever wanted to know.
You know the thing about the federal government is that if you want to promote up the ladder,
learn new skills, gain a variety of experiences, you have got to be willing to travel.
Otherwise, promotion comes very slowly.
And challenges only come when a new person arrives.
If you prefer longevity and stability,
you certainly can find a home in the federal government.
But like I said, it comes very slowly.
I know people who have been in the same job for 15 years
and don't understand why they haven't been promoted.
It's because they won't move.
Whether it's right, wrong, or indifferent, it is the way it is.
People have their comfort zones.
But My Thesis and my course work helped guide me through that in two ways.
One, I actually get to understand what we as archivists do.
And why we do it.
And even though I was employed as an archivist before starting graduate school,
my classes helped solidify a foundation that was already built.
The ones that I mentioned earlier gave me to firm footing to stand on.
And it's what set me apart on my interview.
One-hundred fifty people interviewed, well, were selected.
Were on the list.
Twenty-five interviewed.
I got the job.
Also never under estimate the power of vocabulary in an interview.
David taught me that.
Okay. Moving an.
I'm not going to hold your hand and tell you
that NARA is the perfect and amazing and oh, my God.
Everything I ever wished for place.
It's a federal agency just like everybody.
And I know you all saw the news in October.
And besides, Carol knows me in real life.
And she would know that I was blowing smoke in your ear.
Like I said, it is a government agency.
And it comes with every other sector out there: Private, public, government, or civilian.
It comes with benefits, it's draw backs.
Six a.m. East Coast meetings.
But it also has that Holy Magoly, I just found the document.
Amazing people that I can safely tell you, yeah.
And I can tell you honestly, I would go to war with some of them.
And people I would love to kick off the island [laughs].
But My Thesis experience, as convoluted, yeah, convoluted as it was.
And my course work really gave me that hands-on education experiential background
to know when I am absolutely right.
When I'm flat wrong and just need to shut up.
The best of experiences.
And most importantly, how to pass on what I have learned to those of you coming up behind me.
I did put together a short list.
And these are things that I showed you already.
But are also there if you want to be able to copy them down real quick.
But like I said, you saw them on the other page too.
It is absolutely not a comprehensive list of thesis resources.
These are places to help you figure out if you even want to do this.
Even if you want to come down this road with me.
These are the pages, the three pages that I went back to again and again and again and again.
Especially, the deadline page.
Yes. Excellent, we're right on where I wanted to be.
I love it when that happens.
Okay. Wrap up.
Questions.
>> I'm in the middle of My Thesis process now and I find one, thank you so much for -
as a cost-conscience person myself [laughter].
I also rely on OpenOffice and in addition, my chair my visually impaired
and sometimes he can't always- he has a reader.
And sometimes he doesn't always work with OpenOffice.
So I am just going to give in and buy Word [laughs].
You scared me straight.
Thank you [laughter].
But I was wondering [laughter] also.
You know, having a life and having your school being miles away is something I
completely understand.
I live in New York.
How do you stay motivated and how did you plan your schedule so that you could stay on focus
and not let life push it to the side?
>> Part of it, honestly, comes from - you know, I've been military my whole life.
And you just kind of grow up with this mentality of this has to get done so you can move on.
Part of it was the scheduling.
I had my Google Calendar.
And I literally blocked out time.
This was my time.
I was at work from 7:45 to 4:15.
And from 4:45 to 5 I was driving home.
And from 5:30 to 6:30 the girls and I were at the gym.
And it was literally that structured.
I could pull that calendar and tell you what I was doing August 9,
2012 at 2:00 in the afternoon.
Well, I was at work.
At 7:00 in the afternoon.
It was literally that structured.
And the alerts went to my phone and told me it's time
to get off the couch and go work on your paper.
And that really probably was the best tool that I could come up with.
And sometimes I did press ignore and I did press delete.
But it was a reminder that this still has to get done.
And you can watch the rest of "Downtown Abby."
Well, it wasn't on then.
You can watch the rest of "Days of our Lives," but you still have to get up
and go write your paper when this is done.
Yeah. You need blocks of time.
And not just an hour or two.
It's sometimes you're going to be up until 2:00 in the morning.
And that's okay as long as you know what you've got coming the next day.
Tara, I did not.
I wound up moving to - when I moved to Anchorage,
we moved to a really good school district.
What worked for me is I came home.
I did all the girls' school work with them as well.
And I didn't start on mine until after dinner and bath time.
So I generally would start on my work at around 8:30 at night.
Tara, it is important.
How old are your kids?
It can be done.
Okay, you've got one - 6.
It can be done.
Absolutely.
I wrote thesis.
Original research.
Dina, let's see.
I was looking at preservation of scrapbooks.
There is a woman named Jennifer.
And I will remember her last name.
Here. Just Google Jennifer and scrapbooks preservation and you'll find her.
There's just not a lot of supporting material to be able to do it.
And like I said, I had a really hard time.
I still want to write about it.
It would make a wonder doctoral thesis though.
Your pitiful is going to come in your sources because there's not a lot of academic sources.
And it is also going to come in your literature review.
And that's where most of the people I submitted to had issues.
There wasn't enough literature.
Would l say - Lissette, would I say that My Thesis informs my job now?
Absolutely; 100 percent.
I think I really wrote that topic as a way to reconcile what I was doing
as a public historian moving into government records.
They are very different fields.
And I had to wrap my head around both of them.
It absolutely impacts what I do still.
Every day.
Because I had to go through and understand things
like record groups and retention schedules.
And how the paperwork process of the electronic records archive,
which is now having a session is different than a scope of collectings and a session agreement.
I had to work those through my head.
And looking back on it now, that's what My Thesis was really about.
It was less about the Exxon Valdez and more about what we do and how we go about doing it.
Let's see, Janica.
You currently work for the federal government records management.
High five you.
You are one of the few.
Slide into archives at some point.
Captions. Let's see.
Yes. And I have lots of things to tell you that I don't want to take up the others' time with.
But the teachers that I suggested were David DeLorenzo,
Michelle Simmons, Erin Lawrimore, and Dr. Franks.
And I am currently at National Archives San Bruno.
I'm really easy to find.
Honestly. If there's something that you want to talk about after we get off line
or at about 10:00 tonight and you're staring at your computer
and going, oh, I wish I had asked her that.
Just call me at work.
Or e-mail me.
It's robyn.dexter at nara.gov.
Absolutely, Janica, please do so.
I highly encourage all of you.
If you have something that I can help you with, shoot me an e-mail.
I am easy, easy to find.
Can you type your e-mail into the chat area for them, Robyn.
>> Absolutely.
Any other thoughts, questions?
Carol [laughs].
Hey.
>> Hey. So my main question I guess is that because you have the SNAFU
where you lost your ePortfolio and then you ended up doing your thesis.
In the long term in the job market would the ePortfolio work better or the thesis?
Or does that depend on what industry you end up in?
>> You know, after I lost everything that I could have used for my ePortfolio,
I truly did not investigate it further.
I'm not the best person to answer that question.
What we can do is probably push that off
to Dr. Franks who's a vastly better person to answer it.
And, Janica, you're very, very welcome.
Yeah, it's a totally practical question.
It's a great question.
Let's see.
I probably need to take mine off she can--
>> That's okay.
I think Carol turned hers off.
All I was going to repeat is what Dr. Linda Main has told me many times that she believes
that most of the students do ePortfolios.
And that they find value in it because they go back and understand what they have accomplished.
And they're better able to package themselves to sell themselves when they're looking
for new positions or promotions at work.
So they find value in that end.
The other end is she's hearing from perspective employers that they are looking
for students who are able to do that.
And that there is value in them in the portfolios themselves
because they're putting all that material together.
And they're being able to go into an interview and explain exactly what they know.
And how that's going to help them in different positions.
So I think it depends.
If you're really interested in a topic.
If you have a passion for a particular topic as Robyn did,
even though she changed it a few times, I would say the thesis.
If you don't have that passion, remember it's going to take you at least a year.
And ePortfolio is a half a year.
So you're adding an extra year of time to your schooling.
And it might be better that you do the portfolio if you really are excited about something
and willing to give it your all for that length of time.
Could be longer.
>> And if you move to Alaska, it adds time.
>> Or your chair happens to retire [laughter].
Like mine.
>> Yeah, wow.
All right.
So we have one minute left if anybody - I'm a big fan of -exactly.
I don't want to hold up other people from things they have to do.
Tara, what can I answer for you?
>> I was just wondering, it's kind of related to what we were talking about.
About getting a position.
But I'm wondering in terms of if you're wanting to go on and get a doctoral
or enter a doctoral program in library science or in another area perhaps.
Which is going make you be more competitive for entering that graduate program?
A thesis or a ePortfolio?
Yeah. Dr. Franks, I see your comment there.
I think thesis is going to make it more competitive.
Or make you more competitive.
I would think.
That's my question.
>> I would agree.
I would agree.
You have to show you can write.
And the structure of being able to put together a master's thesis and a structure
of putting together your dissertation.
For you with that specific question is going to be more experience.
I think she's right.
Let's see.
Ellen? No.
Somebody else.
Victoria? Was that - I thought I saw another hand too.
>> What I'm going to do right now because I know few people have
to leave is I'm going publicly thank Robyn.
And I'm going to turn off the recording.
And then if you have another question, I'll sure she'll stay around a minute
or so and answer after I do that.
So, Robyn, thank you very much.
We really appreciate you sharing your time with us this evening.
It was a terrific presentation.