What Follows 'The End'?

I successfully defended my portfolio today. It was one of those moments that I had built up in my head. I spent an insane amount of time reflecting, researching, and preparing for this milestone. Now that it has passed, I finally feel like I can breathe. During my portfolio defense, I highlighted my background and experiences and shared that the theme I found during my reflection is that all my professional and academic pathways have a theme of coming full circle. Everything has connected in this web of points that ultimately have my doctorate and future career at the center. 

Now that this milestone has passed I can focus my efforts on preparing for my dissertation. The dissertation project I had been developing is still incredibly ambitious. There are a lot of moving parts and the overall topic is still broad. However, I do have a plan for my dissertation, and with some finetuning, I can parse it down and focus on the direction of my dissertation study. 

My career path is in higher education. I want to be an academic and a researcher. It is what I love to do, and to be paid to research something I am interested in like learning technology is a dream come true. This past spring I began to look at higher education job opportunities. I applied for a handful of roles in grant specialist positions. My role as a librarian has given me grant writing experience. I had hoped that making that change during my final year in the program would give me additional higher education experience, outside my experience as a teaching assistant, as well as provide a foot in the door for when I began applying for faculty positions. As of now, none of the applications I put in have panned out, but I remain optimistic. 

My overall plan moving forward is to complete the final two courses I need this summer and begin focusing on my dissertation study. The fall and spring semesters will be dedicated to completing my dissertation and defending it. I intend to graduate in May 2025. If more time is needed then I am willing to push graduation back to Summer 2025 or December 2025. I do find it interesting that if I graduate in December 2025, I will have completed all of my higher education degrees in December. Prior to graduation, I will begin searching and applying for faculty positions. I am fortunate that where I live there are a few universities I could apply to. The one that interests me the most is the University of Houston. They have been working hard over the last decade to become a reputable research university. This is the ideal school to work at because it would be comparable in research level to UNT. 

Overall I have a plan laid out, and will continue forth with it. The only part of my plan that is still developing is my dissertation. I have an amazing committee that is invested in my success. Dr. Eutsler and I are in continuous communication and we will work together to finetune my dissertation topic and prepare for my proposal.