mean KYLady

If tomorrow were not a holiday, I’d slit my wrists. Returning to work from a week of vacation has not been pretty. No sir. There’s nothing about it that I want to be part of….except for the paycheck aspect of having a job. Damn. I hate working for a living. It’s not that I want to be a trophy wife because, really, even the trophies have to put up with their husbands 24X7; it's their job (and not likely to be a picnic in the park all the time, no doubt). If I were dependent on my husband for money, I’d feel obligated to be nice to him….rather than just being nice because I want to be nice. Maybe I’m just not predisposed to being very nice. Poor Someone, stuck with me. Not really…nobody is really stuck, but sticking it out is sometimes better than alternatives.

Unlike me, vacation was very nice. Not much sunshine, but it turned out OK anyway. We visited Myrtle Beach (again) which is Someone’s most favorite place in all the world. This is not the usual time we go.  Emily has cheerleading camp and practices so we had to take vacation now or not at all.  Someone will take another vacation in a few weeks without us and hang with his family (clan) at the beach house they always rent. Good for him! Erin didn’t want to go without Emily, and anyway, she has lined up some babysitting and tutoring jobs for the rest of the summer. Good for her! Because I won’t be in Myrtle Beach the weekend of the Fiddler’s Convention (our usual week), I will get to watch Sarah sing and perform. Good for me!!! Everyone wins this year.

We had lots of rainy days and evenings during vacation, but there was always at least a brief opportunity to walk the beach and play in the waves every day, even if only for 30 minutes between thunderstorms. We picked up shark teeth on the beach, shopped, read, watched movies, worked a couple of jigsaw puzzles together, played miniature golf, visited a museum dedicated to UFO sightings, and visited Ripley’s Aquarium. We collected enough shark teeth to almost build a new shark. I played my guitar most evenings, so I’m glad I threw it into the van at the last minute.

Do sharks need better dental hygiene?



We stopped by a great zoo on the way down. It’s in Ashboro, North Carolina. I love good zoos, and this one is spectacular. Lots of long winding paths through the woods, rocks everywhere, beautiful flowers and bushes, no prison-like cages (animals probably disagree with me on that one), and great exhibits of primates. I love apes. The gorillas had some adorable babies, but my photos sucked so none are worth publishing. I like looking at the rocks, plants, and sculptures as much I like looking at the animals. If I lived near a zoo, I would volunteer to work there.



Zoo trail



Anyway, the dean finally signed off on my dissertation and now the ball is in my court again. It’s time to reformat the whole thing for publication. Most universities just have you format the paper for publication to begin with, but for whatever reason, my university wants to be different (more difficult, extra work for candidates). I will reformat the damn thing, my chairman will pretend to look it over and approve it, and then I’ll send it in and wait for the dean’s approval (AGAIN). If he blesses it, he will process me for completion, conferral, and graduation. Hopefully this will all happen before I die of old age.

By the way, I probably wouldn’t slit my wrists. It’s much too messy and dramatic.

greenlight

I was drafting an email to my academic advisor to ask the procedure for replacing my chairman.  I had given up all hope.  Tonight, my chairman redeemed himself.  He even suggested I should text him if I have questions and I know how to text.  Know how to text?  Does he think I’m a dinosaur?  He probably does; I’m at least 20 years older than him. 

The best news!  He approves of the instrument to measure safety voice.  No longer will I be looking at intentions to report near miss incidents.  No instrument exists and I have no time for developing an instrument.  Safety voice is conceptualized as including such things as speaking up when things are unsafe, reporting hazards, ratting out coworkers who violate safety procedures, and other such things.  Safety voice includes reporting near misses although the researchers who termed it did not specifically mention near misses.  By most definitions, near misses include not only no-harm incidents but also identification of hazardous conditions or unsafe actions.     

So anyway, I’m busy on a new section for Chapter 2, and I’ll have to go back through Chapters 1 and 3 to  restate research questions and hypotheses.  Fun, fun, and more fun.  I don’t care.  It’s progress and there hasn’t been enough of that lately!!!    

Intermittent peace

Oh, my. The world has no idea what my weekend and Monday have been like! Whirlwind.

Anyway, hopefully that is now at least 20% behind me by tomorrow morning. It’s back into battle for me tomorrow. Defend! Dispel! Deny!

Tonight ends my second session of mentor-led dissertation work. I gave Dr. E. my draft of Chapter 1 for review over the weekend. He returned it to me today and said, “Right on target.” Three words are all I needed to hear, and he gave them to me. The scaffold is in place…

It’s late, if I’m not working I should be sleeping….but not tonight. Good news at the end of a wretched day – time to celebrate. (I have been :)

Erin drew this picture of me…I love it!!!  It gets bigger if you click on the image.  Notice the Book of Crap just above my pencil. :)

Pray for Japan

The disaster in Japan makes me sad. Devastation is overwhelming, and nuclear plants are struggling to maintain control. I read one is now emitting scary stuff into the atmosphere. Are we to have Chernobyl again?


Scenes of a refinery tank farm blowing were horrifying. I wonder how fast an entire refinery can be shut down? Does it seem possible or feasible to practice that drill? Emergency shutdowns and emergency startups are rehearsed, procedures are written and balloted for approval and publication. What happens in a real emergency? If the procedures aren’t engrained and people conditioned to react correctly, who knows what could happen! The Deepwater Horizon survivors gave us insight.

Today was day three of my quest to complete a proposal draft of Chapter 1. I must do more research on transformational and servant leadership before I begin to write. The most exciting part of the day is I found a lead on an instrument to measure willingness to report a safety issue. Now the big question is….can I get permission to use it? Authors will have to be contacted...somehow.  If you click pictures, they enlarge (FYI).

I took a photo of another page of notes about leadership.  I found an excellent article that compares and contrasts transformational and servant leadership. It’s EXACTLY what I needed to start off with.  The authors state very clearly the greatest difference between the two leadership styles:  with transformational leadership, the leader motivates followers to achieve goals of the organization.  In essence, the leader inspires followers to serve the organization by modeling the correct behavior.  With servant leadership, the leader serves the followers for the good of the organization.  His attitude is that of “let me help you be a better helper.”  The leader works (serves) to motivate followers to be more useful for the benefit of the organization. My objective is to determine if either of these can predict intent to report near miss incidents.  In many organization cultures, workers do not trust management enough to report near miss incidents.  In climate and culture surveys, both leadership styles (as perceived by followers) have high levels of two-way trust.  GOD, I hope I can find participants!!

It’s selfish of me to address God with the current disaster going on.

Does God wear a shirt that says God on it?

In over my head

Where is this thing going? It feels like floundering – like I’m in way over my head and I’ve been in it way too long.

I raised the issue with my mentor – what does it mean for my study if the survey comes back with no participants perceiving servant leadership traits in their supervisors? Quite honestly, I can see teachers, parents, and perhaps ministers acting as servant leaders, but a boss in corporate America? I’ve never had one in corporate or small business America. I don’t know of any. The solution to the dilemma (says my mentor) is assess for both transformational leadership and servant leadership and see which predicts intent to report near miss incidents better. OK…but…it complicates everything. Now I have to make sense of the exact differences between the two leadership styles and use (purchase) parts of two instruments for the leadership portion of my survey. Then, if nobody responds that they perceive servant leadership, I will just do correlation of transformational style with intent to report.  What if nobody perceives a leader using a transformational style either??  The problem does not go away - I'm screwed.

I have taken three days off work to crank out this proposal and my progress is discouraging. My outline of fun facts to include is 28 full pages long and 56 sources so far, with at least that many more to incorporate. Three days was terribly overly optimistic. Two days are nearly gone and I am still outlining the theoretical framework and collecting evidence for the argument.

It has rained for days and flooding is bad around here. The Scioto River is the worst it has been in many years. Our front yard is a swamp today. When I am finished with school and have a life again, I’ll have a couple of truckloads of top soil dumped in the yard. Spreading it is good hard work and then sowing grass will be a chore. Our lawn is pitiful – we have so many trees (which I love) but not much sun because of them and our top soil has run off over the hill. I miss playing in my flower beds and working in the garden. Once this dissertation is done, things will be better (keep telling myself).

Back to work now!! Current topic is organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) theory. OCBs are beneficial discretionary behaviors (or actions) that people do for their organizations. OCB theory is often explained in the literature with social exchange theory – basically, you care about me so I’ll do something to show I care about you, as Gyekye and Simo (2005) explained it. Mullen’s (2005) theory is that willingness to raise safety issues with management correlates to safety climate. He asserted this willingness is an OCB and identified that willingness to report is like Dutton and Ashford’s (as cited in Mullen) issue selling concept. Issue selling is when organization members try to influence those above them to pay attention to issues that are important to them. People doing work within a context are in the best position to identify unsafe conditions or hazards in that context. Bringing unsafe condition to management’s attention is voluntary and could even have negative consequences for the reporter if the climate is that of a blaming culture. A safety culture where workers are blamed for mistakes is associated with a negative safety climate (Edmonson as cited in Mullen).

Anyway, all these “as cited” will never do for my dissertation. I will have to retrieve the primary sources and see if I interpret things the same way. If the primaries aren’t available, I’ll have to find alternatives. The time to get back to work is RIGHT NOW!

References

Gyekye, S. A., & Simo, S. (2005). Are “good soldiers” safety conscious? An examination of the relationship between organizational citizenship behaviors and perception of workplace safety. Social Behavior and Personality, 33(8), 805-820. Retrieved from

http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.apollolibrary.com/docview/209882394?accountid=35812

 Mullen, J. (2005). Testing a model of employee willingness to raise safety issues. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 37(4), 273-282. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.apollolibrary.com/docview/220522045?accountid=35812


Happy Birthday #24 to Sarah



Erin, Emily, and I drove to Maysville today to visit Sarah and celebrate her birthday with her.  Cherry pie was her request (she likes pie more than cake), so I got up early today and baked a pie.  The drive is about 1.667 hours across beautiful countryside – from Greenup County, across Lewis County, and into Mason County.  It rained all day long and flooding is bad in the Ohio Valley right now.  The creeks everywhere were overflowing their banks.  I wanted to stop and see the property of interest along Kinniconick, but didn’t take the extra 30 minutes of my time to check it out.  It had to be bad.  The Kinni creek bottom around Vanceburg was very high - it's possible the road to get out there could have been impassible in some places. 

Sarah said she wanted 24 candles.  Candles don't stand up well in pie so I offered to get a little cake to put the candles on.  Sarah said her favorite cake in all the world is the Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls...shelf life of those is like two years at least!  I bought a box and we used 5 of them to hold 24 candles.  

Sarah's grandparents came over and Woody Sr. helped me light the candles.  He has a fire bug in him just as his son did (as do I :))))).  ANYWAY, we sang happy birthday and Sarah (probably made a wish) and blew out the candles.  Swiss cakes for the brave, cherry pie, and kool-aid, with Thomas exploring the new coffee table and Jack sleeping on Erin's feet. Jack is a good dog, but has that hound dog wandering spirit.  He has to be tied up securely when he's not in the house.  He won't stay home and he's an escape artist.

We drove around a bit today.  I had not been in downtown Maysville since Woody's funeral.  It's such a quaint little town with most of the historic downtown buildings still well-maintained.  We ate lunch in Sarah's favorite Chinese restaurant this afternoon.  Spending Saturday with my chiildren - life is good.

Tomorrow will be devoted to hard-core work.  The new strategy begins tomorrow...actually started it tonight.  Dr. E ticked me off this morning, but after thinking about his comments, I've come to agree with him.  I may have to resort to my sample selection methods, but I should attempt more legitimate methods first.  I'm not a people person - it's a handicap in this world. 

thinking



Current state of my dissertation work



 I’m not in the mood to work tonight. Even after another inspirational dream last night about this F’ing dissertation, I am brain dead to it tonight. It’s been a problem to get new theories organized lately; my brain doesn’t like to think chronologically. Fortunately in my dream, I figured out an indexing schema that should get things straightened out, and gee, I would try it if I had any motivation tonight.

I drove 4.5 hours this afternoon/evening for a class that starts tomorrow. Two days of learning how project managers can improve their ability to negotiate. How does a geeky person with no people skills learn to negotiate? We’ll be finding out tomorrow. Class is scheduled to end at 5:00 Friday – at least I won’t be driving through Columbus at rush hour.

So things were kind of weird today. I’m trying desperately to wrap up an estate (my grandfather’s). I stopped by the little bank in a tiny town and picked up one last item from his safety deposit box – emptied it, and released the box back to the bank. The clerk led me into the little room (vault) and opened the box. She left me alone so I could have privacy. I pulled out the box and had an eerie feeling that my grandfather had done this same thing…how many times? I did this today because I had reason to drive down that way (only a few miles detour) while the bank was open. It’s not exactly combining business with pleasure…it wasn’t very pleasant. It was more like combining business with personal business.

He died last summer, just a month before his 95th birthday. Is it bad taste to blog about this stuff? I was with him when he died in the nursing home. I had never seen somebody die, although I’ve been to more funerals and visitations in my lifetime than I could possibly count. What was most amazing to me was how quickly he turned white once he died. A few more details to close out the estate– transferring some stock and dividing the estate account, and then it will all be over. A corpse in a coffin is like plastic or something not real. We had my grandfather cremated per his wishes…so much better.

I spent a lot of the drive thinking about him. Driving through Columbus, I passed Riverside Hospital and remembered about 6-7 years ago, I picked him up at Riverside and took him home. An ambulance had rushed him up there to fix a lead that had come loose from his pacemaker – that could have killed him. My brother called me and said he needed a ride home. I left work and made the 2-hour drive in pouring rain. It was winter and nearly 6 PM before he finally got dismissed. It was like a monsoon all the way home – one of those drives (in the dark) where you have to drive slow with the wipers going as fast as they can and you debate about pulling off because you can’t really see where you’re going. I was on super-alert all the way, hands properly 10 and 2 on the wheel and white knuckles no doubt. My grandfather talked more that night than I’d ever heard him talk in my whole life. That night, I got a chance to know him.

Symbiotic Synergy or Synergistic Symbiosis

The night is very cold and clear – sky just fabulous as always on a clear night here in the lovely state of Kentucky. I stepped away from my work to re-establish blood circulation to my brain...after sitting too long, I’m reading but taking nothing in. The city lights are becoming more (too much) around here. This area is growing more populous quickly. A place in the country is calling…


Yesterday, I was told about a tremendous opportunity. How odd – I didn’t realize the opportunity was even there until tonight. I have been processing the conversation for over 24 hours. Am I really that dense and slow? Anyway, one facet of the giant opportunity involves my leading a work project that is complementary to the direction of my new dissertation topic. It’s the oh-so-magical and wondrous SYNERGY. Work on one benefits the other – is that symbiosis? I vote YES.

Considering the Topic of Auditing

What about auditing? It’s important, right? In the business world, because audits cost money and interfere with business as usual, we only audit what we care about. What are you not doing that you are supposed to do? What did you do that you were not supposed to do? What did you do wrong or poorly? Nobody wants to be audited.  It's a necessary evil.


My opinion is that the quality (value) of the audit depends on the abilities, knowledge, and motivation of the auditor. Any work I do might be audited. Once a quarter, my boss is required to randomly select a change ticket I completed and audit it. Does this make me do better work? Probably so, but will he really be able to judge the actual quality of my work? Probably not. At best, he can compare my tickets to others he has to audit. He knows very little about what I do; I’m sure he has no interest in what I do other than if I don’t do what I’m supposed to do, he’s going to get blamed for it. Perhaps that is what audits are really all about….finding somebody or something to blame.

Do I want to do a dissertation study on auditing? Safety audits. Are they about finding someone or something to blame? I should hook up with somebody in the trenches to discuss it. Perhaps I can be inspired.

Split infinitives….I excel at splitting infinitives. Sometimes it just doesn’t sound good without splitting the infinitive. Maybe I can’t write well because people around me don’t talk well…as for me…if I never had to open my mouth again that would be fine! Which is best?

A. My boss is required randomly to select….

B. My boss is required to select randomly….

C. My boss is required to randomly select…

Correct answer??? Definitely not C, but that’s what sounds best to me. I don’t know the correct answer, but I’m quite certain my professors would not hesitate to inform me if I guessed wrong (and penalize me accordingly).