things i lost track of today, october 3 2025, in no order:
- washing the dishes
- going swimming (working out)
- hanging out with God / devotional time
things i made happen today, in no order:
- reviewing all my emancipatory pedagogy notes and pulling out what matters to me… which gets me closer to those exam questions
- dropping my travel blazer at the tailor (i’m getting the sleeves shortened)
- starting to answer my em. ped. prof’s idea-sparking questions… <more of same>
- lunch
- adding outfits to my digital closet/organizer (shoutout to Indyx, so good)
- following my newly-tweaked morning routine
- getting out of the [insert adjectives] apartment while i do some work
It’s quarter to three. I’m in a study carrel at my local library, and my patron-colleagues in the carrels around me haven’t gotten the “quiet place” memo. Except (sort of) for the woman in the matching carrel to my right, who is sleeping to some tv show with a laugh track. It’s quieter than the woman taking phone calls behind me.
To some extent this is procrastination, because the activity established for this two-hour reservation is “answer my em. ped. prof’s idea-sparking questions.” I have done some work there (see: “starting…”)…
…and now I don’t remember what actually overrode the music that’s helping drown out the meetings and phone calls and whatnot,
and started me on my list of neglected tasks. Which I course-corrected by adding my attended-to tasks.
Anyway, the last real update I shared here was one draft of my elevator pitch on my research. Back in February. In the meantime, I finished up every scrap of classwork-type requirement and bumped myself, academically, into Phase Two: Qualifying Exams.
It’s complicated. They’re complicated. Describing it all (which I have been doing to nearly everyone I encounter, these days) really would be procrastination. We don’t want that, do we? Short version for now?
Back in my first year, I picked out my four topics that I now get to… explore? demonstrate proficiency in? They are: (1) general Christian education knowledge (2) art as theology (3) emancipatory pedagogy (4) theopoetics.
As of last Friday, I confirmed my four examiners (also my dissertation committee).
By that time I also had collected a bunch of thinking-writing prompts around the topics. Plus a few other action items… which, naturally, I did first because they were clearly defined.
So now you have some context for “what I’ve been doing” bullet 1 and 3. 😉
Back to ideating!