Love much, travel often.

I feel so very blessed daily that I was able to find a partner that is as much in to world travel as I am. Last week, Aaron and I started planning out trip to Spain. We were just sipping coffee in our office together, discussing what we might like to do there when I started looking up airline tickets. My eyes nearly popped out of my head when I saw that round trip tickets from Dallas to Barcelona were going for under $700. Aaron and I were both convinced to purchase those tickets immediately.It's a good thing we did because tickets went up to $1700 the very next day! How is that legal, United Airlines?

Just FYI - we purchased tickets on a Sunday morning almost 10 months out. We are flying out on a Tuesday and returning on a Wednesday. I always heard that flying mid week is cheaper and the best day to buy tickets is a Tuesday, for us it was a Sunday. I found this site really helpful for flight advice. 

We are doubly blessed to have our summers "off" to travel. I say "off" because we work a 10 month teaching contract and are required to split it in to 12 months of pay. Teachers don't have summers "off"...we work for it.

Either way, we decided it's not worth going abroad if you can't stay for a long time. We'll be there for 28 days. Spain for a month! I can't wait! Now it's time to work on the itinerary. 

Proposal Accepted: July 25, 2016

At the end of July I actually presented my dissertation proposal to my committee of three counseling faculty and my husband. It was a boring 2 hour long proposal, which I will amend greatly during my defense, but I got done....and approved! 

My next step should've been working on the IRB, but my job started up again. Everyone knows how difficult it is for a School Counselor and Teacher at the beginning of a new school year. Adding the stress of a looming IRB deadline was a bit much, so I focused on getting the school year off to a good start. Now it's September and time to crack down on the IRB. I was at lease able to check two more items off the list!

Happening this week: ordering my Official TTU ring!

Dissertation Completion List

1. Present dissertation proposal to committee at Texas Tech University
2. Complete final edits by my committee and submit final proposal draft
3. Complete CITI research training
4. Get initial permission from LISD to conduct study at LISD campuses
5. Submit study to IRB
6. Get final permission to conduct study at LISD campuses
7. Send study invitation to Principals in Lubbock ISD
8. Schedule intervention module sessions at 6 LISD campuses
9. Recruit participants at staff meetings after school 
10. Collect consent and pretest information
11. Separate participants into control and treatment groups
12. Invite treatment participants to treatment sessions and complete posttest
13. Send posttest information to control group participants
14. Analyze data using MANCOVA
15. Write up Chapters 4 (Results) and Chapter 5 (Discussion)
16. Schedule final dissertation defense
17. Graduate Spring 2017