What I have been doing?

Hello to all of you who have been wondering where I have been and to those who just may not care :) I apologize for my absence and want all to know that I am doing well. I plan on starting to post again and have missed the wonderful interactions that I have had with all of you. So today's post is a catch up of the past month.

First I proposed my thesis and passed. Yeah!! This is very exciting because now I can start working on the data that I have. My thesis is looking at juvenile drug courts and comparing those who graduate and those who do not graduate. This is going to be interesting because hopefully it will help selection teams to either look at who they are selecting and/or change their program to better fit those who are not graduating.

I am also working on another project that will be evaluating the studies that have been done over the years. Specifically I will be looking at how have they changed after the Institutional Review Board (IRB) came into existence. The IRB is the reviewing board for all studies that are conducted. They evaluate the ethics behind the studies to ensure that the cost/benefits are inline and more importantly that studies like the Milgram project and prison experiment do not happen again. I will be evaluating how studies are benefiting society now or if they have become to stifled because of IRB restrictions. This whole idea comes from my wonderings of what is more important the society or the individual. Is society hurting because of our emphasis on the individual? Have we gone far enough to protect the individual from society? So this is a big theme in my life and in fact a lot of my books look at this question.

School has started again and this semester has been overwhelming as you can tell by the lack of posts. However the exciting thing is that I am in practicum and so I am actually working in the schools once a week.

I also have queried my book to a couple of places and one of them even requested a full. This is very exciting because it means that they enjoyed the first three chapters enough to want to read more.

I went to League of Utah writers conference and it reinvigorated me to write again. I have been working on my WIP and I have developed the magic system and the technology. I have also been playing around with Dragon Age's portrait creator to make pictures of my main characters. This is a wonderful resource BTW.

So that is life in a nutshell. How are the rest of you doing? Any exciting and earth shattering news? Is there anything that you want to hear about? Have a wonderful day!