Lit review blues

Warning: this post is about boring thesis stuff...

(Wow, one of the campus parrots just flew across above the building in front of my balcony.)

I've spent the past week writing the lit review for my thesis and the reasons why that's a bit worrying are the following: 1) writing lit reviews is not that hard, 2) I've had most of my lit review written for my proposal. But it just doesn't want to come together. I have 15 pages on meetings in organizations, sensemaking and sensegiving, meeting practices and the practice approach, group performance and decision making and organizational change and I've been shuffling these around, experimenting with different orders, writing different connecting and intro sentences and it just doesn't seem right. The order I have right now is something like this: I start out with discussing organizational change (because the meetings I have been studying took place and were initiated in the context of organizational change) and then I go on saying that meetings are exciting to study in the context of organizational change because they can further change or preserve the status quo. Then, I talk about what meetings are, I introduce 4 different conceptualizations of meetings and then try to come up with a synthesis under the umbrella of the interpretivist tradition. Then, I argue that the concepts of sensemaking and sensegiving can deepen our understanding of both organizational change and meeting dynamics. Then, I define what sensemaking, bracketing, framing and sensegiving are before explaining why these concepts could be useful in studying the meetings at UC. Then, I discuss the practice approach (pragmatic turn, practice turn, methodological innovations in the study of organizations, i.e. ethnography, strategy as practice - maybe I should just scrap SAP) and go on by saying that meeting practices are interesting to study because they can open a window into understanding group decision making and group performance, so it's pretty much applied research. Then, I have a mini lit review of group decision making and group performance. Then, I'm planning on writing a short part on studying meetings, sensemaking and sensegiving through language. I used to have two bits on language, one at the end of the sensemaking section and one at the end of the practice section, but I thought it would make more sense to have one. Maybe I should take it out of the lit review all together, but then again, I don't like really long methodology/methods sections and this would sure make it quite long. Oh, I miss positivistic research.

I think I'll read this again tomorrow and make some decisions.

As for the rest of today: I'll submit an application to a trainee program and then try to get in the mood for a small huisfeestje that will be thrown by one of my thesis groupees. The weather sucks again. At least she also lives on campus.

A short holiday

I spent 5 days at home, mainly because I decided to throw a surprise party for my mother's 60th birthday. I started organizing it about a month ago, I talked to Béla bácsi, my grandma, my aunt and everything seemed fine until just about a week before the event. I called my aunt to ask at what time they could come and she replied that they had decided that they were going to have dinner in a restaurant instead. I was stunned. I came up with the idea, I booked a ticket to go home, I invited them, I consulted Rosemary on what I should cook (because she is the best. cook. and everything else.), I asked Jani to buy stuff for me, and then she tells me THEY decided that dinner was going to be at a restaurant? I wrote an e-mail to Béla bácsi saying that I heard of the new developments and that he should let me know where to go and when. Interestingly, Béla bácsi did not know of the change of plans, took my side and talked to the rest of the family. He basically told them that they were invitees and they had no choice. Way to go!

I arrived Saturday afternoon (I had 2 hours of sleep the night before because of the last salsa party in Medemblik), wrote the Cinetrip Ambient description of the week for the radiocafé website and collapsed on the couch. The black one. Even though that's the smaller one, for some reason Jani and I always take naps on that one. Then I decided to run a final (and only) rehearsal for the chicken and prepared 3 legs with lemon, thyme and garlic. It was amazing! The next day, I went to do the rest of the groceries and cleaned the apartment in the morning, then called Irma if she wanted to join me for the baking. Poor thing broke her arm a couple of days before, but she came to keep me company while I was baking the chicken. I opened the door covered in butter and thyme up to my wrists...

Tibi, her boyfriend picked us up by car, and you have to imagine a small car that had a small table and a tray of baked chicken at the back, Tibi was driving, and Irma and I were both sitting on the front seat. If I were a believer, I would have prayed for the chicken and for no policemen on the way to my place. We arranged everything upstairs and there were only two things remaining to be prepared: the appetizers and the salads. The bell rang at 17.20. I was expecting the guests at 18.00... Well, my cousin decided to come "a bit" early and I almost wanted to kill him for that. Arriving 10 minutes early is okay, 15 minutes early is bad planning, 20 minutes early is plane rude, but 40 minutes?? And he took his 5-month-old dog, which, of course, had to pee on the floor in the first 10 minutes. I pretended to listen to his chatter and complaints about not being able to meet girls and I just managed to get ready with the food by the time the rest of the people arrived. On time.

I think it's enough to say about the rest of the evening that the surprise worked.

I had another big event planned for the week, which was a job interview with a headhunting agency. I applied to one of the jobs they had on offer and when I saw that they were also looking for someone for their own agency, I called them again to mention that I was interested in that position, too. I only realized that the headhunter was quite serious about me when she said that she wanted me to meet someone else, too. I ended up talking to 5 people in the end, the headhunter, the two bosses and two other team members. The managing director gave me a call later to tell me that they really liked me, so that's a good start and we'll meet again in June, once I'm back in the country.

The rest of the week was composed of: some time with Irma, some time with Jani, getting a new haircut (which looks exactly like the old one) and some cooking. Pretty good, except for the ridiculously bad weather. We spent Wednesday evening packing, and really, the relaxing effect of travelling with Jani this time and the stress of him being so difficult about packing and travelling more or less cancelled each other out. The morning was much better than any other mornings when I leave the city. (Except that he can never get ready in time, for which I have a remedy - I tell him that we have to be somewhere 15 minutes before we actually have to be there - which usually works out fine, but it still gets me mad. See, I get everywhere on time.) We met Zsuzsa and János (her boyfriend) at the airport. We arrived to their hotel on the Beethovenstraat around 3 pm (and I was very proud of myself that I knew where that way), bought some wine, bread and olives and waited for the rest of the crew on the balcony (Eszter, Cini, Kincses, Orsika, Simi, Szilárd and Taki). They arrived by car, immediately unpacked their pálinka and energy drinks and started working on the "baseline" for the evening.

Jani and I sometimes joined them during the weekend, mainly for the evenings, but we spent most of our time together, just chilling. One morning he biked to the Albert Hein with me on the back of the bike - that was quite an adventure. I realized that I can do the running next to and jumping on the bike act after Kevin's St. Patrick's Day party, when Fede offered to take me home and that was my best shot at getting home before dawn. I wouldn't have jumped on his bike if I wasn't drunk enough, and now I figured that if I can do it drunk, I can probably do it sober. It worked. The weather was great the whole weekend and we spent a whole day lying in the sun, watching people doing capoeira, following the activities of a black bird, and reading a mediocre novel, the two of us at the same time. And at that point I figured that it cannot get any better than this. Here is the man I love, we managed 9 months apart and here we are, together, reading in the sun.

The story - continued

As it was to be expected, I received a very long e-mail from Jancsi about the other post asking me to delete it, password protect it or at least edit some things out so that if Rea ever found it, she wouldn't be extremely mad and upset. Fair enough. I am not exactly a fan of re-editing my posts, but in this case I'll make an exception. Partly, because I agree that a certain thing I wrote crossed the line. So, whoever has read the post already, you've seen the full version, and if you haven't, well, too bad.

These days...

...will hopefully be over. Eventually. I get up, check my mails, check facebook, start typing up my recordings, type for an hour, play 15 minutes of salsa, zouk or reggaeton and dance, check my mails, type again, let's say for about 40 minutes, dance 15 minutes, type, dance, type, eat, type, watch some west coast swing videos on YouTube, type, type, type. I'm going nuts here. Tonight I'll be done with typing up the recordings of the working group that is redesigning the language courses at UC, so tomorrow I'll start at the VU and print out the transcriptions of these meetings. That will be 50 pages, single spaced. I'll spend a couple of days going through the transcriptions and see what I get out of them. I have to present something to my thesis group and my supervisor on Tuesday, so I have to get this going.

Last week I unexpectedly bumped into my stats 300 teacher. He was giving a class outside - cool, eh? - and I wouldn't have noticed him but he called my name as I passed by. It took me some time to realize that the people he was sitting with were actually his class, well, I don't think you would talk about structural equation modeling with anyone else, so it should have been clear from the very start. Realizing that this was not the right moment to start a conversation, he asked if I was up for drinks the same time next week, so I might see him tomorrow evening in Utrecht. I'll be at UC for a meeting anyway and then we will probably go to the Primus on the corner.

Qué más? Copa Cabana night at the BrazaZouk studios on Friday, which is a must. People who go there just call it Copa; it's one of the biggest salsa/zouk events in Amsterdam every month. I'm pretty sure my salsa buddies will be there. I started going to the salsa parties of a small Cuban style school during the fall, got to know the owners and some of the people there. They are great people! Most of them (at least the men) are from the ABC islands and Suriname, and they are lots of fun to be around. The two owners decided to split the school into two - one of the owners actually asked me whether I wanted to be one of his teachers, which I took as a compliment but then turned down the offer - but the people from the two schools still party together. The other owner invited me to his teachers' practice session and that was really nice, just focusing on complicated LA combos. I was also dancing with them on Koninginnenacht and Koninginnedag and I expect them to be there on Friday.

Then, I might see Sjoerd on Saturday and there is a UWC dinner planned for Sunday at UC. Both should be nice.

I really have to be productive during the days so that I can enjoy the evenings.