{"id":1433,"date":"2013-08-23T12:30:24","date_gmt":"2013-08-23T19:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/freechoicelab\/?p=1433"},"modified":"2013-08-23T12:30:24","modified_gmt":"2013-08-23T19:30:24","slug":"crafting-my-way-through-grad-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/freechoicelab\/2013\/08\/23\/crafting-my-way-through-grad-school\/","title":{"rendered":"Crafting my way through grad school"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There is a lot asked of us as graduate students. We take classes, we read, we talk about what we read, we read some more, we work, and let&#8217;s not forget about our own personal research.\u00a0 And that&#8217;s just the school side! So how does one balance all of this? As <a title=\"Thinking, Hard!\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/freechoicelab\/2013\/08\/19\/thinking-hard\/\">Shawn said on Monday<\/a>, thinking is hard and it&#8217;s time consuming. So every once in while we need to step back and re-center ourselves in order to gain a fresh perspective.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m sure everyone has his or her own re-centering strategy: walking in the park, family time, watching your favorite movie, doing some yoga, baking\u2026 Personally, I craft. I&#8217;ve been sewing since I was in 3rd grade and only recently learned to knit (at the FCL retreat two years ago). There&#8217;s something to working with my hands, to reading instructions step-by-step and to knowing my end goal. The finished product is going to look like <i>this<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>There are so many ways to reflect on my crafting as a free-choice learning experience. I had interest and motivation to learn both sewing and knitting. When I&#8217;m stuck, I turn to the Internet and search for a way to solve my problem. With fellow FCL colleagues I attend a weekly knitting group that&#8217;s really nothing more than a community of practice. And, of course, there&#8217;s basic knowledge acquired over time. Will this fabric stretch when sewn? Can I knit <em>this<\/em> with <em>that<\/em> yarn?<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s comforting knowing what the finished craft project is going to be. There might be hurdles, but each can be resolved and the project finished. Kind of sounds like grad school&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is a lot asked of us as graduate students. We take classes, we read, we talk about what we read, we read some more, we work, and let&#8217;s not forget about our own personal research.\u00a0 And that&#8217;s just the school side! So how does one balance all of this? As Shawn said on Monday,&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/freechoicelab\/2013\/08\/23\/crafting-my-way-through-grad-school\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3878,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2944,177887],"class_list":["post-1433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-grad-school","tag-re-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/freechoicelab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/freechoicelab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/freechoicelab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/freechoicelab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3878"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/freechoicelab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1433"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/freechoicelab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1436,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/freechoicelab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1433\/revisions\/1436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/freechoicelab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/freechoicelab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/freechoicelab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}