Check in this September...

Hi Everyone! Just one last final note to say goodbye and let everyone know that a whole new group of bloggers will be coming at you this September. Please feel free to continue to leave questions and comments here!!

Good luck to all of you!

A final farewell

Well, believe it or not this is my last post as a PennGSE masters student! I honestly can't believe how fast this year went and just how much I have learned and how much I have grown. I don't think I will truly realize the impact of this experience until I move on and begin working. I've met some of the most amazing and inspirational people through this experience and somewhere along the way I realized that I could be one too! I think the thing that I love so much about GSE is the consistent emphasis on social justice and equity. I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to attend such an amazing grad school, but I'm even more excited to get out there and make an impact on the lives of others. And I feel completely prepared to do just that.

This is really a bittersweet time right now. I'm so excited to begin a new career in the field of education (if you remember correctly, as recently as September I was working as an industrial engineer!) but I'm sad that this chapter is coming to an end. This week will be busy, just like the rest of the semester has been. I have three more papers due...two are about 90% complete and the third has only just begun! But I'll also be busy celebrating. GSE is throwing an end-of-the-year BBQ for students this Wednesday, the admissions office is having an ice party on Thursday to thank all of the current students who helped out all year long, and then on Thursday night GSE is having a happy hour at a local bar (Cavanaugh's) for all students. GAPSA is also joining in the celebrating and there are events planned on campus all day on Saturday--including a boat cruise later that night. As busy as I am with paper-writing, I will be sure to attend most of these events. It will be the perfect way to cap off an amazing experience that I will not soon forget.

I will be in the Philadelphia area (and working for the admissions office until the end of May) so PLEASE feel free to get in touch with me if you have any questions. Also, if anyone is going to be in the area I will be available to give tours through the admissions office through the month of May. And you can always email me at lmccabe@dolphin.upenn.edu.

Best of luck to all of my readers! I hope you choose Penn and have as memorable an experience as I have!

The end is near...

Hi Everyone!

Wow, I'm still a little bit shocked at just how soon I'll have finished my masters program. This year has really flown by. This week will be super-duper busy with papers and projects due as well as two presentations.

So, some big news...I handed in my thesis on Thursday!!! I am so happy and I have to say, proud of myself. I know it probably sounds kinda cheesy, but it felt like a big accomplishment completing my thesis. Everyone in our program met the deadline and handed in their papers to our readers. We should know in a week or so if we passed! Because of all of the preparation and support that I received from the professor I'm not nervous about passing...all that much! I still am anxious to hear the results.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I went to the Global Development Initiative Forum on Thursday and Friday. It was a fabulous event and truly inspirational. There is so much that I could write about what I learned but that would take up way more than one post! Penn's President Amy Gutman annouced a partnership between Penn and the Save the Children Fund which will fully support graduate and undergraduate interns from all of Penn's schools to work and conduct research in developing countries. And the goal is to continue to grow the partnership. If anyone would like any additional information please get in touch with me.

I hope everyone has a great week. I have to get back to work!

~Lezlie

In the home stretch...

Hi Everyone!

Well the semester is really starting to come to an end. The reason I can tell is that I have SO much writing to do! I have quite a few papers due this week as well as a presentation. Luckily, it was rainy all day today so I wasn't tempted by nice weather and I was able to do a lot of reading and writing throughout the course of the day.

This week will also be another busy one. Tomorrow is the big event that I blogged about last week...the accepted masters student preview day. I'm looking forward to meeting all of you that can make it and for those of you that cannot, please send me some questions!

I will also be busy with the Penn Global Development Initiative Forum this Thursday and Friday. For more information about the forum click HERE. One of my professors, Dr. Daniel Wagner has worked to organize the forum which seeks to enhance the University as a global player in international research, policy and development as well as to illuminate the potential of research universities (such as Penn) to contribute to the Millenium Development Goals (set forth by the United Nations) - and to enable new synergies across the Penn international community of students, faculty and staff. I am really looking forward to attending a few of the panels and I will be volunteering on Friday. This is going to be a great event and I'm glad that Penn and GSE are so interested in development efforts for the international community, as those issues are of great importance to me. There will be speakers from the World Bank, UNESCO, the United Nations, as well as faculty and students from all 12 of the graduate and professional schools at Penn.

I will be sure to let everyone know how the GDI Forum goes. I hope you all have a great week!

~Lezlie

Important Information!

I wanted to let all of my readers know that Monday, April 16 is the Preview Day for Accepted Masters students. I know that I have spoken to many of the accepted FPE students and I sincerely hope that all of you can make it--as well as the rest of the accepted students. It is a great way to see how the students, faculty, and staff at GSE all interact with one another. It will also be a great chance to meet other masters students. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the event last year and I really regret it. I heard it was a great day and I can assure you that we (the admissions staff) have put a lot of time and energy into making it a memorable and helpful day. Choosing a grad school is a big deal!!! By attending the preview day we will be able to show you that Penn is a great place in which to study, live, and explore!

If you plan on attending, please RSVP by clicking HERE!

Besides planning for the Masters Preview Day I have been busy doing some research for my Cultural Perspectives on Human Development course. I have decided to write my final research paper on language revival--specifically the revival of the Irish language in recent years and how it impacted schools and culture in Ireland. I studied abroad for a year in Ireland and I never met a single person who's first language was Irish, yet every person my age that was Irish all knew how to speak the language. I always found it so interesting that a language that is used by such a small group of people (comparatively) and in such a small place is still alive and well. All of the streets signs are in English and Irish, which surprisingly only happened in recent years. I'm looking forward to learning more about the impact that the language revival had on schools in Ireland, in particular the difficulties that occurred because of the division between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Besides doing some research I enjoyed some relaxing time with family for the Easter holiday. This is the first weekend in over a month that I wasn't either away for the weekend or out all day with plans. This will probably be the last weekend that I'm not going crazy trying to write a ton of papers or out trying to enjoy the last few weeks of grad school. It is definitely bitter sweet. Let me know if anyone has any specific questions for my next post and I'll try to accommodate your request!

Happy Easter!

~Lezlie

Hello readers!

This past week was another busy one...mostly revolving around the Accepted Doctoral Student Reception that the Admissions Office (my employer) held this Thursday. There was a lot of preparation early in the week and then the big event was an all day affair on Thursday. It was really nice to meet some of the prospective students and talk to them about their experiences, as well as what I have experienced here at Penn. It was also great meeting some of my readers, please leave comments or send me emails if you have any questions that I haven't covered!

This past weekend I went to DC to visit some friends from college. It was the start of the Cherry Blossom Festival and the weather was fantastic for the fun event. For those of you not very familiar with the event, check out the link. This year was the 95th annual celebration commemorating the cherry blossom trees given to the U.S. by the city of Tokyo. It's nice that Philly is so close to DC so even though I'm busy with school I managed to take a road-trip for the weekend.

Now it is back to reality. I have yet another busy week, including getting back into the ESL classroom at the Community College of Philadelphia because the faculty were on strike for the past three weeks. On that note, I have to get ready for tomorrow. Please keep the questions and comments coming!

~Lezlie

Another week come and gone...

Hello everyone! I hope you all had the opportunity to enjoy the fantastic weather (at least in the Philadelphia area) today. I love Spring and I am so happy that the weather is finally beginning to cooperate!

School has been quite busy, as usual, but on Friday I had the opportunity to participate in some of the events for the GSE Diversity Weekend. The event was the idea of Dr. Marybeth Gasman, one of the faculty members at GSE, and with the help of the Admissions office her ideas became reality. The entire event was planned by Jamie, another Graduate Assistant with the Admissions office. She arranged for 15 education undergraduate students from Historically Black Colleges and Univerisities and Hispanic Serving Institutions to come to Philadelphia for a weekend to learn more about graduate school and GSE, and specifically what we are doing to address issues surrounding diversity. I'm sure she will be blogging about the experience, but I think she (with the help of her "right-hand man" Sadiyah) did an amazing job. I only wish I could have spent more time with the students. I think the event was really an important step in developing relationships with this group of talented students as well as the institutions from which they come from.

Today I have been preparing for an interview that I am conducting tomorrow. I am interiewing Dr. David Larsen, the Director for the Center for Education Abroad at Arcadia University. I am interviewing him for one of my courses, EDUC 569 - The Organization and Administration of Student Life. The goal of the interview is to better understand the position he holds as well as what I can do to position myself to one day have a similar job. I have also interviewed the Associate Director at Penn Abroad, which I believe will give me a nice balance when looking at similar positions but at two very different institutions. On the advice of my advisor, I contacted Dr. Larsen during the Fall semester for some guidance regarding my thesis so it will be nice to have the opportunity to meet him in person and let him know that I am nearly done my thesis!

I hope all of my readers have a great week, please feel free to contact me!

Busy Week!

Well, my Spring Break flew by! And here I am, already one week has passed since the break. This was an especially busy week for me. I had to transcribe the hour long interview with the Community College of Philadelphia student that I interviewed over break. It was a great interview and I'm really looking forward to hearing his story. I realized something that we had talked about in class--I had made some assumptions about the experiences of this student that are very false. We talked about this in my Ethnography course, that it is human nature to make assumptions about people but after transcribing the interview and listening to the tape I realized this student's experiences were quite different than what I had expected. And for that I am glad!

I also had to hand in a research proposal for my for my Cultural Perspectives on Human Development course. I have decided to look at the experiences of immigrants to the U.S. and what factors affect the acquistion of English and the maintenance of first language by immigrant children and adolescents. I have to say that I feel lucky to have so much freedom in my courses to really explore topics that are of interest to me, as opposed to being forced to concentrate on an area that is chosen by the professor. More often than not I have been in control of the research that I conduct, which is empowering.

I had another paper due for my Globalization and the University course. This was a short paper in which I decided to look at the impact that distance education has on international education, from a U.S. perspective. Again, the topic was quite broad for the paper--the readings related to quality control for distance education programs, such as the University of Phoenix--and I decided to integrate my interest of international education into the paper.

After a busy week I decided to enjoy the social aspect of Penn and on Thursday I attended the GASPA (Graduate and Professional Student Association) St. Patty's Day Happy Hour at Roosevelt's in Center City, Philadelphia. It was nice to see classmates outside of the classroom and relax after a busy week.


Friday was just as busy, as I attended the Annual GSE Career Networking Fair at the Inn at Penn. I found the panel of alumni speakers quite helpful and it was nice to hand out some resumes to potential employers. I can't believe how soon I will be done with my Master's! Not only did Spring Break fly by, but so is this year! Only about six more weeks of classes!

On that note, I need to get some reading done!! As always, if anyone has any questions please feel free to post a message here or email me directly.

~Lezlie

Ethnography is on my mind!

After spending a good part of the day on Friday at the Ethnography Forum, then writing a reaction piece and setting up observations and interviews for my Ethnography class it is only natural that I will continue my discussion on the topic here in my blog!

The forum was great! I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the two sessions that I attended and I only wish I had more time to attend additional presentations. While I don't really see myself going into research any time soon (I am looking to get out there and PRACTICE!), I really admire the dedication and perserverence of the researchers from the forum. I wrote a two page reaction paper where I talked about the how the forum related to my coursework and it really was astounding how much carried over. I think I connected most with a presentation from a woman studying immigrant education and literacy in a Washington, DC school. She worked with these students for more than two years, and in my opinion, told a wonderful story about the lives of these students and just how connected they still are to their sending countries through way of technology and communication. She really focused on the theme of transnationalism, which interstingly enough she did not even discover as an over-arching theme in her data until after the two year observation and interview period, because she was focusing mostly on literature and literacy. She also noted that some of her findings could have been influenced by the focus on immigrant issues, an extremely hot topic at the conclusion of her research in May 2006.

I think the fact that a person can spend two years doing research and assuming that it will go in one direction and then after analyzing the data find very different themes then originally anticipated just shows the intricate nature of research. I am in the process of conducting my own research with ESL (English as Second Language) students at the Community College of Philadelphia. I am starting out just trying to understand the motives for taking ESL and "regular" college courses at a community college for non-US residents, but who knows where my data will take me. I have already observed the strictly ESL class for two hours and tomorrow I will observe the Sociology class that all of the ESL students are enrolled in with other non-ESL college students. I am interested to see how the dynamic will change and how the students will act in a setting in which they are earning college credits.

I am on Spring Break next week and I will use that time to interview some of the students. I just heard on the news today that the faculty at the Community College of Philadelphia are planning to strike. I wonder how this situation will affect the interviews and the findings from my research, just as the national immigrantion debates potentially affected the data from the ethnographer in politically charged Washington, DC. I guess I will have to wait and see!

~Lezlie

Ethnography

Thanks again for all of the comments and emails! I really hope that I have been able to help all of you that have contacted me. PLEASE let me know if there is anything else that you'd like me to blog about, I'd be happy to write about what interests my readers...

So, this weekend is the 28th Annual Ethnography in Education Research Forum. The forum is sponsored by the Center for Urban Ethnography and is hosted by the Graduate School of Education. Some of my classmates are volunteering and others are just attending a few of the sessions in between working or studying. I volunteered as a reviewer last October, where I had the opportunity to read about a dozen proposals for the forum and give my opinions on whether or not I thought others would be interested in seeing any of those papers presented here. It is now interesting to see which of the papers that I reviewed are being presented.

There are two days of presentations, Friday and Saturday, where numerous ethnographers present their work. I will be attending the forum on Friday, for most of the day. I still haven't decided which presentations to go to, there are so many that seem really interesting! You can find the schedule here, which will give you a better idea of the critical subjects that these scholars examine.

I am currently enrolled in EDUC 672 - Introduction to Ethnographic and Qualititative Research in Education, so the forum will be a unique way to see the kind of work that ethnography produces. And admission is free to Penn students! I will write a follow-up post with my reactions after I attend the forum. Please let me know if you have any questions on this or other events at Penn.

~Lezlie

Hi everyone!

First, I'd like to say how pleased I am that so many people are reading this blog and commenting and emailing me...I think this sort of thing would have been really helpful when I was going through the admissions process last year, so I'm glad that I have been able to help!

Keep the questions and comments coming!!

Second, can you say THESIS??? That is pretty much all that I've been talking about, thinking about, dreaming (more like nightmares!) about for the past week or two! I realize that I have already blogged about my thesis, but I'm sorry--you will just have to deal with it for at least one more week! My first draft is due this Friday. I'm writing about a topic that really interests me, but it has been a lot harder than I thought. There is so much that I want to cover yet when I'm writing I have a hard time getting it all out. I have read so much about my topic (the effects of September 11th and globalization on the flow of students between the U.S. and other nations) and I have read a lot about writing literature reviews, yet when it comes down to it this is HARD!

Luckily, the final draft is not due until late April and I will already have my first draft complete by the end of this week! That will give me plenty of time to meet with my peer group and instructors to get suggestions for revisions. The anxiety level of most of my classmates is at an all-time high right now. We have been researching our topics since early October but this is now the "real deal." Even though our instructors have stressed the fact that this is a first draft and there will be plenty of revisions, I can not help but be a little bit nervous.

With that being said, it is time for me to get back to work! I apologize for the brief nature of this post--I promise to shed a different light on the happenings at GSE next week after my first draft is submitted and out of mind, for a short while at least! Please continue to get in touch with me, I love hearing from prospective students!!

~Lezlie

Debate

Today I'm preparing for a debate that I'm having in one of my classes this afternoon. The class is called Globalization and the University and so far I really enjoy it. There are about 10-15 students in the class so it's very intimate and discussion driven. Our professor is extremely knowledgeable in the field as he has worked for a number of universities in Australia, Asia, Europe and the U.S. in addition to working for the World Bank. I could sit and listen to the fascinating stories that he has to tell all day!

For this particular assignment my group has to take the position of a higher education institution and decide whether or not we are going to "join the global market" and then defend our position when our classmates and professor try to find holes in our argument. For me, this seems like a very practical (if not a little bit stressful) exercise because we truly have to think about our own positions on these kinds of issues as opposed to just memorizing what we feel the professor wants us to learn. There are no wrong answers, but at the same time this is not an easy assignment.

I believe that students who study abroad gain a very valuable experience by doing so. In addition, I feel that international students add to the diversity of U.S. campuses in a unique way. While I hold these beliefs, this assignment has really made me think about WHY? Why do I believe this to be true?

As an undergrad I studied abroad for a year in Ireland and it was one of the best experiences of my life. I met amazing people from all over the world, I learned a lot about other cultures and I really grew as a person as I developed my beliefs and values. Likewise, the interactions that I've had with international students here in the U.S. have been enriching and memorable.

I'm heading to South Africa this summer with students from GSE and it only seems natural that I'm adding an international element to my graduate studies. Ultimately, I believe that my educational experiences have been shaped by my exposure to cultures different from my own and I appreciate the fact that I’ve had these opportunities.

Wish me luck on my debate!!

My first post!

Hello everyone out there in blog-land! This is my very first post and I have to say that I'm a bit nervous! I'm new to this, so please be kind :)

So if you read my bio you know that I'm a Master's student in the Education, Culture and Society program here at Penn. The Spring semester started less than three weeks ago and I'm already super busy. That is mainly because I have my Master's thesis looming! The great thing about the thesis though is that we actually have a class each week that prepares us for writing the thesis and my professor is extremely knowledgeable and approachable. It is still a daunting task though. So far I've put together a proposal and I've read a good deal of the literature...but there is still the whole writing of the 40 pages that I need to do! It will get done though, but I can tell this will be another busy semester. Before I know it I will be graduating and looking back on my time at Penn. I invite you to join me through my adventures this semester!!


I think these blogs will be a great resource for prospective students so please feel free to get in touch with me if you have any questions.