After a moderate amount of thought about the word resolution, I’ve decided that I prefer the term goal to talk about what I want to accomplish here. I think that’s more appropriate for me because it’s action oriented and not necessarily dependent on a new year beginning. I’ll be posting a short series on what my new goals are and how I’m going to implement them. This post is about some projects that I’ve been thinking of and what I want to finish.

Work related:

I’ve had some ideas kicking around about some potential research and assessment projects. I want to do some research around patriarchal masculinity and helping people make meaning of how to change their view on masculinity to be less violent, aggressive, and controlling and how to challenge that in their everyday lives. It’s really about redefining feminism for a lot of people because the definition has been hijacked by conservative media that talk about how radical the movement is. (It has also hijacked radical to be a bad thing when in actually it means to get to the root of something or a departure from tradition; progressive).

I also want to do some work around what meaning students take away from going to a cultural competence or social justice workshop. How much does a student learn and what do participants take away from their experience? I want to explore what makes the session more effective for students. Can the students identify the issues in their real life after the program? How does the information stick and what have they retained after about a month?

As a part of my resident director position, I create a community development plan that I’d like to development an assessment method to go along with it so I can measure how effectively my plan is being implemented. The focal points for my plan should be measurable so I’m going to incorporate an assessment tool in my RAs programming so that it’s easy for them to collect assessment data from their programming. Part of that will be creating new posters based on my community development plan so that the residents are aware of what we’re working toward.

Co-Curricular:

I’ve continued to be interested in web design and projects since my bachelors degree in Information Technology and part of that has been just reading some articles on the web about design. But I want to do more. I recently talked to a friend about creating a portfolio site for him which I’m way behind on. So I’ll be getting more going on that project soon. Another piece of that I’d like to do is work to brand that design as a freelance company type of thing that I could do other projects with. Which would mean creating a design for that page too!

I’ve always been enthusiastic about music and I’d like to get back to being more active with that. I’ve got some old songs that I’ve written that I’d like to re-record and refresh. I also have been playing with new apps on my iPad (mostly from Korg – the new iPolysix app is great! I know I need to explore audiobus too which lets you link up different apps.) so I want to explore more electronic music textures and ideas too.

One of the perks of my job is getting tuition remission and I’d like to use that to explore either design or music technology/production to learn more about some of these interests. Eventually I want to explore doctorate programs that I’ll start in the next couple of years. The problem is in what? Higher ed? Social Justice Education?

That’s what I’ve got on the to-do list for 2013. What do you have left undone from last year that you’re finally going to work on?