January 2011
1 post
6 tags
November 2010
1 post
Some Thank-Yous Are Too Big for Cards
As an “academic” working full time, I spend enough time with page limits, word counts, deadlines, style guides, formatting, etc., that sometimes I want to write freely. So, once again, I’m writing in appreciation with no Thank-You Card attached. I promise one day to return to the script, but today isn’t that day. Today I am going to write some things about my Mom and though...
September 2010
1 post
Numberless, Cardless Thank You Cards
There’s an old saying about it taking a village to raise a child. While I don’t yet have experience to say whether this is true, I do know that it also takes a village to complete a dissertation. Or at least, it does when you’re a graduate student studying health communication in a fantastic academic department that is, unfortunately, not affiliated with a medical school, nursing school, hospital,...
August 2010
2 posts
Thank You Card #13
Throughout grad school I’ve spent a good deal of time studying persuasion, with a focus on health-related behavior change. One of the theoretical tools with which I’ve become familiar is the transtheoretical model (TTM, Prochaska, DiClemente, & Nordcross, 1992). The TTM is a framework used to measure and predict behavior change based on an analysis of behavioral patterns of effective...
Thank You Card #12
When I started this blog, I hadn’t written much in the previous five years aside from course papers and research proposals. Although graduate school allowed me to develop my scientific writing, I felt like I’d lost the spark for writing in general. I’ve always written throughout my life, and though I don’t think of myself as a writer, I was feeling disconnected from the part of me...
July 2010
1 post
Today’s is a double post: Thank You Cards 10 and...
June 2010
10 posts
Preface 1: I switched from Blogger to Tumblr...
Thank You Card #8
This past February I turned 30 years old, and while I thought this milestone would be a terrifying herald of my mortality and I’d wake up all gray and wrinkled and arthritic with the Reaper at my bedside, it turned out when I woke up I could recognize no more signs of my advancement toward old age than I could the day before. Huh…weird. And even if I had woken up all senescent and on the edge of...
Thank You Card #7
No one in California ever really believes Tom and I when we say that the best pizza in the country can be found in New Haven, Connecticut. And I get their skepticism, I do. Unlike New York style pizza or Chicago Style pizza, New Haven style pizza (also called “apizza”) isn’t famous. In fact, most people outside of New England probably don’t even know New Haven has its own...
Thank You Card #6
The dogs know now that any time Tom or I drag our red suitcase from the garage into the house that something’s going on. To be fair, they probably have some indication that something’s going on when we start cleaning like crazy in the day or two prior to the suitcase’s appearance, but it definitely confirms their suspicions. They used to see the suitcase and look at us accusingly, like, “Oh...
Thank You Card #5
When we were in San Juan this past February, Tom tried on a Panama hat for the first time and fell in love. Up until this point, he’d never been much for hats, aside from those of the baseball variety, and even then it would be a stretch to say his feelings toward these hats were at all serious. He did, for instance, leave a Yankee hat in Boston in 2007. I shudder to think what happened to...
3 tags
Thank You Card #4
I’ve been running around like crazy the past week and a half, and though I’ve now given out about ten thank you cards, I’m pretty far behind with blogging about them. Now that I have some time I’m going to make an effort to catch up. So, all the way from lovely Milford, Connecticut, I bring you: Thank You Card #4! TYC4 was given away in response to a minor miracle. Have you ever...
4 tags
Thank You Card #3
As I’ve progressed through graduate school, I’ve had to face the sad reality that as I learn more, it becomes increasingly difficult to explain to the world just what it is that I’ve dedicated my life to studying. Not only have I become so entrenched in my specific area of study, but I’ve also spent the majority of the past five years immersed among academics who speak the same...
Thank You Card #2
My life would definitely be different (i.e., worse?) had I not grown up in Connecticut during a time when there was a thriving underground music scene and enough venues to host amazing shows every weekend. Most weekends there were shows on Friday and Saturday, and sometimes there was more than one show on the same night, which meant you actually had to decide between shows, almost...
Thank You Card #1
Thank You Card #1… where to send it, where to send it? I can think of a million people who have influenced my life in amazing ways, both big and small, and any one of them are deserving of the first card. However, this decision is actually a lot easier than it would have been had I not remembered that today is actually a special day — it’s 6 years since my husband...
An Exercise in Gratitude
I recently purchased 100 thank you cards for a study I’m running for my dissertation. The study was funded by a grant, and as such, I have $5 to give out to participants. My original plan was to allow them to select from a couple options of $5 gift cards like Starbucks, because it seemed like getting a $5 card to Starbucks would be more substantial than just getting a check for $5. I...