The Intentional Amusement of Misty

It has been months since I have had the time to blog. The reason is an acceptable one. I was writing my master’s thesis and finishing up my degree. This was not a fun process. For reference here is a quick timeline and idea of what happens.

· Two quarters before graduation you take a course titled PPA 691- in this course you write the first two chapters of your paper or at least you are supposed to.

· One quarter before graduation you enroll with a professor aka reader in a credit/no credit course PPA 698- this course has no meeting time, just one on one time with your reader of choice. This is when you complete chapters 3-5.

· You then find a second or pre reader because there must be 2 signatures in the end.

· Once you have registered for 698 you determine if your research has human subjects in it, if so you have to get approval from the IRB to survey or use human subjects.

· Once this approval is done you can research, survey and write.

· During the process you submit the paper to your readers who give feedback and changes.

· When the paper is finished you submit to your readers one last time and if they are completely satisfied they will sign off.

· Then you must take all submission documents and the paper to the library where a clerk signs it in and scans it onto a database for all to read forever and ever.

My Scrapbook table turned Thesis table.

One of the hardest parts of this paper was deciding on a topic. I chose animal abuse until I realized I had no personal resources for information and the articles were so sad. So after a chat with my boss, who happens to have a PHD I decided to write on something I was more involved with, Tourism! More directly, how destination marketing organizations are funded. I work for the City of Bakersfield’s Convention and Visitors bureau (The City’s Destination Marketing Organization) I had access to tons of great recourses and understand the subject from all points of view. This made writing the first two chapters pretty easy.

I decided to compare how other cities DMO’s were funded with how Bakersfield’s DMO is funded. See if I could find out which funding source was best. The process seemed to go ok minus two very serious and irritating issues.

1. A survey subject who had completely agreed to help me until it was crunch time and she blew me off, she was unavailable and unwilling to answer any of my 100 calls or e-mails. I eventually had to write my paper without her data and include a caveat about insufficient research.

2. After my paper is complete and I have my signature and library appointments my professor sends an e-mail that my IRB was not complete. He got this e-mail from the IRB asking for corrections on April 25^th. He sent it to me on June 6^th, the day before my signature and library appointment. I wanted to strangle him for forgetting to send me this earlier and scrambled all of the 6^th and morning of the 7^th to make changes and get an approved survey. (Remember my paper was done and this approval was for research not yet conducted, but we will just keep that our little secret.)

Finally on June 7^th about 11am I received approval on my IRB, made the necessary corrections to my paper, got both readers to sign that afternoon and took that damn thing to the library the same day. It was over. A weight of gigantic proportions was lifted. I will admit I cried all the way from the library to my car with such relief.

With my Second Reader a co-worker of mine, Donna.

With Monica from the Library. Final step complete!

On graduation day my awesome co-workers through me a little party with treats and decorations. I got beautiful flowers from Ma and Pa. I was hooded and walked across stage that night. It was a very exciting day.

The graduation station set up outside my office.

The most adorable cookies ever. See the one with my name. Awe I'm so special.

Such beautiful flowers delivered from Ma and Pa, nothing like flowers to really make your day!

Lucky for me I had a partner in crime, my friend Dawn from work and I pretty much went through the MPA program together and got to complain to each other over the stressful thesis process and finally got to graduated together.

Dawn, our friend Ty who was in the English program and I during line up.

Being hooded by my professor/reader Dr. Martinez and accepting my "fake" degree.

The Graduate, YESSSSS I did it!

The school of my dreams! :-)

A little over a week later I had a great graduation party at the park. All of my friends pitched into help throw it and we had a yummy dinner of tri-tip, rice, beans, and rolls prepared by Mike. A One Smart Cookie bar and a La Rosa cart full of ice cream for a hot summer day. It actually was a beautiful day and very mild weather for Bakersfield at the end of June. Everyone came, visited, ate, and brought wonderful gifts. I am a very lucky girl to have so many amazing people in my life.