This past week I’ve been focused less on my work as a teacher (preparing a syllabus), less on my work towards qualifying exam testing (a lot of reading), and much more towards my dissertation. I’m not sure if my mind simply can’t handle one thing for an extended period of time (quite possible) or if I’ve consiously chosen to focus on the big picture (maybe subconsciously) but I’ve really come to value a sense of community. When my mind switched gears towards a large paper I started having questions and needing them answered. That led me to the value of community.
One of the first things I started thinking about was formating my dissertation. Schools tend to have dreadfully specific formats they require for theses and dissertations. I remember the difficulty I had forcing standard WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) programs to adhere to the proper format required by the school. Since I’ve been toying with free and open source software for a while now (and becoming more of a student of and activist for in the process) I started getting interested in other ways to approach the formatting of my dissertation. I’ve decided on a WYSIWYM (what you see is what you mean) program. This, however, led to other questions.
I ended up searching the internet for good programs, best practices, and advice for making this change. I ended up sending an e-mail to a WYSIWYM group and my how I underestimated the response. Within hours I received dozens of e-mails asking specific questions, encouraging my decision, listing potential problems, and promising lots of help. I also heard from someone within my own university who had just recently completed his own dissertation. He offered to (and in fact did) send me all of the files for his own dissertation to help with my own. He also offered his assistence if I ever get stuck. This positive assistence has me excited to begin work, learn a new program, and join a new community. What communities are you thankful for?