is it a conflict of interest to send chocolates to your institutional board reviewer?

Wow, I have so much to share and I haven’t had a chance to share it (I’ve been actually forcing myself away from blogging because it is not as important as dissertating–many of the posts you’re reading were written weeks ago…). But I’m bumping the crap that was scheduled today because I really wanted to share the progress I’ve made on my dissertation in the past two weeks. Whew. So here’s the cliff-notes.

• Remember, I had a really big paper to write. Since then,
• I finished it and turned it in to my committee.
• They read it and I organized a meeting.
• We had the infamous Topic Proposal Approval Meeting and they all signed the form (woop!)
• I made the changes they suggested (contingent on their signing the form, they trusted I’d make these changes).
• I had two IRB protocol changes accepted.
• I contacted my sample and started scheduling data collection times.

Now I’ll explain how all of this has gone down.

I really busted my butt to get my paper done in the ridiculous 2 day time-frame I had assured my advisor was completely doable for me. It was doable but I definitely did not have a lot of downtime during those evenings (I did not have a weekend to work on it…so I had to fit it in around my work schedule). We had decided I’d hand it in on Friday, so on Friday morning I emailed that 35 page document to all of them. At this point, I was happy with my work but I was worried that they wouldn’t have time to read it. Generally you give your committee a month or so. This was a measly one week (including a weekend) and I was asking 4 professors to pick a mutual time to meet on a Friday. This is a very hard request to fulfill and I was very anxious about the possibility that it would not happen. (Normally it wouldn’t be a huge deal, but 3 of the 4 were leaving for a big conference the following week. And as that time ticked by, my small data collection period would wane and I would end up in a situation where I couldn’t collect data until NEXT SPRING. (As I explained a while back, t’s a tricky situation.) Still though, I was asking a lot for these people to make time for me, when I had given them barely any notice of any of this. My advisor and I had only just made the connection involving the tricky situation very recently, otherwise I would have for sure been prepared sooner.

Amazingly, they were able to pick a time in which they were all available the following Friday afternoon: April Fools Day. I felt a little unlucky about this really. I was glad they could meet, but April Fools Day? Somehow, that felt like meeting on Friday the 13th or Halloween or something. Strange. Now the funny thing is, I totally did not think this meeting was a big deal. Just another meeting, right? I meet with my advisor all the time. This was just a meeting with him and a few others. And then people started asking me if I was nervous. (Um, no?) And if I was preparing. (Wasn’t that paper I wrote preparation enough?) People kept assuring me it’d be OK, no matter what happened. (What?) It was after a bit of this odd attention that I realized that this is supposed to be a big deal.

I had a professor at the beginning of my program who was kind enough to walk our class through the steps one takes to get through their doctoral program. One of the steps was a full committee meeting in which students may have their work trampled by their committee. They may have their topic denied or changed to an unrecognizable state resulting in months of extra work. It’s not totally uncommon for a student to cry during this meeting. Turns out, this was THAT meeting. And here I was sending out emails like ‘hey doods wanna meet or sumthin?’ On one hand, I psyched myself up too much after I drew the connection. I wish I hadn’t realized this was such a big deal. On the other hand, I’m glad I knew so that I showed up looking nice instead of in a ratty t-shirt or something.

And the meeting? It went fine. In all my worry and nervousness, I forgot two key things. The first is that my advisor is ‘with’ me. That’s his role as the committee chair. He’s been working closely with me throughout the entire process, so he’s as familiar with it as I am. So it’s not like I’m standing there with 4 people across the table from me scowling about my idiocy. It’s only 3 people! (Hah.) The other thing I forgot is that I know these people. I am comfortable with my committee members. I’ve known all of them for years, and they’re all extremely intelligent, but also friendly. So it’s not like I’m dealing with strangers. Hell, two of them were on my master’s committee. Honestly the meeting was kind of FUN. I’d do it again. It’d be fun to do it over beers and nachos also. Topic Proposal Approval meetings need more adult beverages, I think. But I digress.

By saying my meeting went fine, I don’t want to misguide you into thinking I didn’t have to make any changes. I did have a lot of changes to make. But the thing is: I’m not insulted by change. These people are pros. They know how to do research, and they know how to solidify a shaky study. We changed everything from the title to the methodology to the sample of people who would be surveyed. After the meeting I had to add a lot, but I also had to delete a lot (like, entire pages and sections) of the work I’d done a few days ago. Apparently that kind of thing really upsets some people. Not me, I understand that’s how it works. (And I didn’t really delete that stuff. I just saved it in a different document. I figure it may be useful to me in writing some future paper.)

But the FREAKING COOL thing about this meeting was to sit there and watch these guys (and gal–I do have a gal on my committee) debate back and forth about MY research. I felt like I was watching from a dream. What makes my silly little school project so important that four Ph.D.s–three of whom head up various campus departments and a fourth who is an impressive researcher with a long CV*–are willing to spend hours of their Friday afternoon arguing about its finer points? Moments like that–moments I recall later as being very special–sneak up on me. It was just neat to be in a room with such a wealth of knowledge and experience, and watch (and interact) as that expertise was applied to my work. Effing cool.

*CV stands for Curriculum Vita — It’s an academic person or scientist’s research resume. Lists your publications, articles, conference presentations, etc.

So ANYWAY, all that to say I “passed” it. They all signed the Topic Proposal Approval form and I turned it in on Tuesday. The next step is for the graduate school department to approve it. They’re kind of the overseerers of all the graduate programs at our university..they have to check you out every step of the way to make sure you really should be at the point you’ve reached. If they approve it (and I have no reason to believe they wouldn’t–the committee signed it; it’s all legit), I will be able to “advance to candidacy.” This means I’ll be able to tell people “I’m a doctoral candidate” instead of “I’m a doctoral student.” Otherwise it really makes no difference. Kind of random, but whatever, it’s neat.

The only problem with the suggestions my committee made (and I agreed with) is that I needed to change my IRB (Institutional Review Board) forms to match what they wanted me to do. I wrote a little about the IRB process here. I thought I’d written more but I can’t find it now. To be brief, the IRB is a board of people who review the research that goes on on our campus. Most (if not all) institutions who do research have one…their job is to make sure you’re not doing something stupid like abusing or tricking people during your study. My benign kind of research is pretty easy to approve. If I were working with a ‘delicate’ sample (like children or pregnant women), or if part of my research method involved deceiving people, it’d be a lot more rigorous to get approved. For me, it’s pretty much just a bunch of forms I fill out.

Anyway, the silly thing about IRB and the topic proposal–and I’m sure I’ve written this in another post already–is that you have to have your research methods approved by the IRB before you can seek topic proposal approval. HOWEVER, your methods may change a lot due to committee member suggestions during the approval meeting (mine did). So then you have to do a “protocol change,” which is an addendum to your previously approved IRB. In my case, I had done one protocol change already (approved March 23) and I had to turn in another one earlier this week due to committee suggestions.

I felt crappy about this for two reasons. One, it’s a real person looking over these. I just felt embarrassed turning in two so close together. (Makes it looks like I haven’t thought my project through, and I hate to waste people’s time.) Two, it takes a long time to get approval! As I mentioned earlier, I really need to collect my data in the next few weeks (and definitely finish collecting before the second week of May). My last protocol change form took about 3 weeks to get approval… and I can’t collect data till it’s approved. Yeah. Cutting it close. When approved, they send an official letter, but they also put a fancy stamp on all your materials. Any materials you use (i.e. my survey instrument) have to have their stamp on it.

So I finished writing the thing, went through and made notes (highlighting changes), and decided to walk it over to the IRB office in person (our weather here has been beautiful–finally, spring–high 40s-low 50s). At the last minute as I grabbed my folder, I thought “what the hell.” I whipped out a post-it note and wrote something like “Hi, I apologize for two protocol changes so close together; the changes highlighted herein were suggested by my committee and contingent on my topic’s approval. My time line for data collection is very tight due to unforeseen circumstances… I would be extremely grateful if you could look this over at your earliest convenience. Thank you SO MUCH in advance!!”

I didn’t think much about it after that, hoping to hear back in 2 weeks instead of 3. That was Wednesday (the 6th) at noon. On Thursday morning (the 7th), at about 9 AM, I received an email from one of the board members. I figured I’d forgotten something and she needed me to provide more info. Nope. The email said my protocol change was approved. Less than 24 hours. WOW. And. AND!, if that quick turnaround wasn’t enough, she scanned in and attached PDFs of the materials with the fancy stamp on them. She said she’d mailed me the originals, but wanted to make sure I could start collecting ASAP since she knew I was in a crunch. Holy crap wow. I was floored. I wanted to jog across campus and give her a big hug. Can I send her candy without the IRB office thinking it’s a bribe?

So anyway, I can collect data now. WOO! I’ve already had a few people respond to help me. I’ll describe the process more thoroughly in another post; this one is long enough. But I need to collect data from about 450 students and 50 or so faculty members… in person.. so it is going to be one hell of a few weeks. Especially balancing this with my job. I could definitely not do this without having a job so close to the data collection site. I’d be traveling constantly.

Mr. N update:
His thesis has thus far been well received by his committee; he’s going through the process of setting up meetings with them about it. Since his topic changed during the writing process, he needs to redo a bit of paperwork to clear that with the aforementioned graduate school department. His committee was all on board with the change though, so it’s just a matter of getting their signatures again. Next, he needs to submit a preliminary approval form (also signed by his committee). This form tells the graduate school department that they think his thesis is pretty good and will only ask for minor changes (which may be exposed in his defense, or before that). He’s working on that now too. He is already a candidate (go him!). After the paperwork comes the defense (he plans for mid-May), and then some more paperwork (of course). He’ll be completely set to graduate after that, save for one factor: the comps. He took those exams last Saturday (four of them, yeeeech!!), and they were SO HARD. Apparently these have a 50% fail rate too. They give the same ones to PhD and Master’s students too–no differences for their knowledge levels. I’m not going to get in to how unfair his department’s entire comprehensive exam process is–I could yarn on for ages. Suffice to say it’s NOT pedagogically sound at ALL. It’s intimidation. Not promotion of learning. SO… he’s of course wondering about it, and the rest of the year’s happenings depend on whether he passes. We’ll cross that bridge when it comes–either with celebration (which is where my money is–this is a killer-smart man we’re talking about!) or with acceptance and planning. Anyway, that’s him. He’s enjoying a bit of a ‘lull’ in schoolwork, after spending so many weeks studying and writing and doing homework (he’s got a full course load too) until his eyeballs hurt. Lets hope he passes!

Ah, the grad school life. It’s varied for sure…but it certainly is interesting. Earlier today I was watching some college kids laughing and joking in the parking lot, and thinking: “what will be the happiest time of my life?” I have been so happy–happier than I thought I could be–since I met Mr. N. We’ve had some wonderful times. We get along well and I can absolutely say I’m happy now. But busy too! Busy with good things, yet wishing I had more free time and that he did, too. But, these have been our choices. I’m thinking the best of life is yet to come. Getting our degrees (and basking in their doneness!) are certainly going to be happy times, for example!

This is your resident PhD Candidate, signing off for now. ;-)