We took a cruise with Grandeur of the Seas down the east coast and Bahamas last week, and I didn’t do any work on my classes as I planned. Bummer. I guess I could have gotten that last data analysis paper done, but the 40 foot swells (no lie) were keeping me occupied. We managed to avoid the coronavirus excitement although they did pull all the Chinese people aside the last day of the cruise, presumably for an extra screening.
Jared and I did Charleston in style, buying a pair of the famed shoes (they hurt on the inside — maybe I should have saved my $150) and hit the Gibbes art museum. At Port Canaveral we did Universal Studios to see the new-to-us Harry Potter bit. The crowds were super light and we got to ride everything except Fast and Furious which broke down when we were about 60 people back in line. We waited for a while and just left because we had just two hours left before our shuttle left the park. Gringott’s wasn’t too scary for wimpy me, but the Mummy was rough. Jared tricked me into it, too, which was not my favorite. Pretty sure he has marks on his arms from me gripping him.
At CoCo Cay we really did have a Perfect Day. We and our cruise partners booked beach beds that were perfectly located, right on the snorkeling bay. The weather was perfect, the boys saw an 8 foot ray, and it was just bliss. I could have used a few more days there. I had read the Zipline was lame, so we just did the newly opened water slides—tallest in North America. My friend’s fear of heights got to her and she had to go back (120feet is no joke), but I was able to keep mine under control. The longest slide is totally enclosed and not scary at all except for the last direction change switchback, which was fun because you know you’re safe in the tube. I didn’t do the falling slides, but the boys did and liked it. I also did the face first slide but it was so slow it was a baby slide. Climbed my very second rock wall over the pool (like 8 feet so No big whoop) and just had a wonderful day.
We have visited Nassau I don’t know how many times, but our friends hadn’t, so we did our typical tour — Bahamian Kitchen for Mac and cheese, queen’s steps to the Pink House, across the Geyfriar’s chocolate factory and on to the Staw Market. My friend saw a Pirate Escape Room on the way to the straw market. We didn’t have reservations (the website was down anyway), but they let us in because it was such a slow day. We escaped with 12 minutes to spare. So fun!
I completed the Annotated Bibliography on the 21st and passed easily. I submitted the Lit Review on the 25th and also passed that first time. Neither was particularly challenging, although the Lit Review started out seeming like it’d be hard, and I had a metric crap ton of information to parse for the Bibliography. Worked out fine.
I got the data collection instrument finished on Jan 28 and got the news that I passed as we were boarding the cruise ship. Perfect.
The data collection instrument was a Likert scale based questionnaire that I used Google Forms to create because I’m lazy. Even though the website tosses an error “not recommended” or whatever when you post a link to Google forms, as long as you’ve set the form to open for anyone who has the link in Settings, you’ll be okay because the evaluator can look at it. It was a lot easier to use Google Forms than making the data collection instrument in Word would have been. It does astonish me that in a “Learning and Technology” degree we’d be discouraged from using, ya know, tech to develop our materials. This degree is kind of a joke.
Anyway, yesterday I knocked out my data analysis. It was so easy I wrote two pages just based on the abstract and skimmed the paper for supporting details for the rest. I haven’t gotten in back yet, but I expect it to pass just fine
Today I am working on a framework or outline for the research proposal, and then I can start my capstone. My friend texted me last night to ask me to do a watercolor because the SRSP had not been able to get permission to use a particular image she wanted, so I worked on that for about an hour today. It turned out… okay. I could do better with time, I think, but they need it stat, so I just sent it on as is:
I don’t love the version with Christ’s hand showing because I think the composition is bad. The detail is better in my opinion. But SRSP wanted that image, she got that image, and I’m back the the grind for my research proposal, which seems very daunting somehow.
