I fell off the face of Ethnography.com last Spring, the result of committing myself to completing my dissertation, teaching 5 classes, parenting, a few health issues that needed to be taken care of, and the coming summer, which was filled with lots of camping and traveling with my family. We spent nearly a month trekking all over California, finding the ocean in Fort Bragg in July, and again in San Diego in August,
To be honest, the real reason I fell off of Ethnography was I have been writing my dissertation proposal. I began from scratch in early March, and just sent the first rough draft of the first two chapters to my dissertation chair last Friday. My writing brain has been tired, burnt, overwhelmed.
But my brain is feeling rested now, or at least not as overwhelmed, and topics other than education attainment of Hmong immigrants are popping up in my thoughts, and yesterday, I wrote more sociologically on my Facebook page than I have in months, and I realized, it might be time to write again.
So, I’ll be popping in here a bit more in the next few months, hopefully regularly. But I’m teaching 5 classes again this semester, and I’ll be writing and editing my dissertation for the next year or so, and I’m still a wife and mom to two young kids, and one not-so-young kid, who still need my attention. And of course, there’s the dog, and two cats, and the fish to think about. But it’s all good, because I love writing for Ethnography, so I’ll be stopping by now and then to say hello. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy my day-late, but not a dollar short, contribution for today: a musical tribute to Labor Day.
Marianne Paiva, recovering paramedic and adrenaline junky who comes to Ethnography.com after 4 years driving ambulances very, very fast. When she gave up life in the fast lane, she decided to study paramedics instead, and wrote the book, Breathe: Essays from a Recovering Paramedic, which every trauma junky and ambulance chaser should buy multiple copies of from Amazon.com.
A professor told her after she finished her B.A. at Chico State in 1999 that she could study paramedics as a vocation, if not a living. This she has done off and on for ten years or so, while also teaching Introduction to Sociology, First Year Experience, Sociology of Stress, Population, Ethnicity and Nationalism, and other courses for California State University, Chico. On slow days in class, she wakes students up with stories about ambulances, and funny stories about freshmen. In her spare time, she gardens, tends to her children, and writes creative Facebook postings, and Ethnography.com blogs. You can connect with Marianne at her website www.mariannepaiva.com and also purchase her collection of essays here from Amazon.com. Marianne Paiva is a lecturer in the department of Sociology at California State University, Chico. Currently an inactive author, awaiting a poke with a sharp stick.