I was expecting to hear back from the DePaul PLuS program director today.  He was to have visited my advisor and talked about how I would be tested, what I wanted and what would be expected in the way of cooperation.  I did not hear from him today.  I wonder about my advisor and how he is cooperating.  It would some times take a week to get an appointment with him.  I have learned that people can use a bureaucracy to their advantage when they need it.  I hope that this is not the case.

Still working the text books on zed and waiting for instructions on how I should proceed. I got an email back from the Director of the PLuS program. He said he had received my last 2 emails but had yet to act on it. He said that I should hear from him by tomorrow.

This morning I mailed the previous tests to the Director of the PLuS program. I sent all of the previous exams that I have. They go back to April of 1997. I also sent him the syllabus of SE431 showing that there were no references to Zed. This is the class that was supposed to teach Zed. I don't think that it is good policy to have an exam question on the tests that I have taken and not have any way to gain validation. I have a similar problem to a problem that was on the first test I took. The question was on structured vs OO analysis. What I could find on structured analysis was in an out of date book I got off of Amazon used from a guy in Canada.

Haven't heard anything from DePaul as of yet on how this is going to play out. Been working on zed more to get fuzz fully working. Some of the sample tests failed so I tried to investigate. It seems I have more problems than I thought. It isn't really working. I have installed Latex2e and the style is for Latex2.09. Went looking on the web for the correct style. Found something after looking for several hours. I have yet to figure out how to load it. Seems pretty stupid to be working so hard to get something working pre-1998. None of this stuff seems more current than 1998 and most is before 1994. I found a new java editor but haven't found a way to get fuzz to work with it. I really need to be able to validate my specifications otherwise learning will go undone. Very frustrating. This is not the kind of learning that is spelled out. First you think you have something but then you find out that it is wrong or not really working. If someone is not learning your not teaching...said to DePaul University. Where is the path for proficiency? When I went through this the first time I had to go to the used book section on Amazon and get a book from a guy in Canada. He was surprised that I wanted his zed books. It shouldn't be this hard to get proficiency in something your going to be tested on.

Yesterday I got up early to adjust my day so that I could visit with the PLuS program director. The visit was pretty good. He said he would get in touch with the director of graduate studies to let him know that I made contact. We discussed where things are and we will have a followup meeting to discuss what will happen. He said he could get the test done un-timed and also get some of the questions rephrased to make them more conducive to my learning problems. We talked about what it means for a test to be reliable and how alternate forms of a test reinforce a tests reliability. I am optimistic though not necessarily for any good reason.

Today I hadn't heard back from the director of the DePaul PLuS program about our first visit. Since it had been a couple of working days and a weekend since I had responded to his message I called him. He seemed a bit like he had not reviewed the times I selected. We talked a bit about the times and he said that tomorrow or Wednesday would be fine. So we plan to meet tomorrow. I am a bit apprehensive about this arrangement but what choice do I have. I don't feel like I have had good results from working through programs like this. It is because my personal results depend on day to day factors. Working on rigid time frames hasn't been very productive because of the hit or miss nature of getting program help on a fixed time frame. I also seem to always have better techniques of learning. It is a white box advantage over a black box thing. Today I spent some time looking at more zed. I am re-reading a number of chapters to prepare for the test. I wanted to be prepared with my objections to the testing situation but decided to wait and see what the director has to say.

I have begun to go through the process of getting back to work after some time off. I have passed all but the last of the qualifying exams in my program. The last test has given me some trouble. I have taken it twice and failed it both times. I have petitioned for the right to take the test again and have been granted that chance. Based on my medical tests and other factors at the time of the test I qualify for such a chance. That chance comes at the price of going through the DePaul PLuS program. I was active in the program a number of years ago. In my opinion I know more about my condition than they do. Even in that light I have agreed to work through the PLuS to get another chance at the test. More on my thoughts about the test later. On Thursday of last week I responded to the PLuS program director about possible times for us to meet. I told him this Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. I have been trying to contact both my adviser and this director for the entire summer and were not successful. Not until last Thursday had I finally heard from both of them. Now I wait to get word on what day I will meet with the director. I have begun to get ready for the test ahead of anything that the PLuS director or my adviser would have me do. One of the questions on the test will most assuredly be on Zed, often called the Z notation. This language is for formally specifying software. It has been on every software engineering qualifying exam. This is a frustration for me since I have had a great deal of classes and every class that is supposed to teach Zed has one assignment or less and less than one full lecture on the subject. One more tidbit is adviser's dissertation involved Zed. Last night I loaded tetex and latex. I am an emacs user so my editor works well with these type setting technologies. On top of latex you put Zed. The major accomplishment last night was getting fuzz to work on my PowerBook. Fuzz is a collection of tools that help with formating and printing of Zed specifications. It can check them for compliance with the Zed scope and type rules. I got fuzz to work last night. This will make it possible for me to use the fuzz tools to gain proficiency in Zed. It seems that this requirement is not one possible to waver on and pass the exam. I must be cable to get expert proficiency from a text book. Zed is not taught to the level needed to answer the questions on the exam. So I must use the technology at hand to validate my learning. It is interesting to me that every time I have gone to review any of my candidacy exams the professor doing the review with me prefaces the experience with the statement "Some of these questions are not in my area of expertise." This is baffling to me. Other professors have said "These test are designed to show other universities that you have a level of knowledge worthy of a PhD. A PhD is a credential that is accepted all over the world. We want you to measure up to that standard." I perfectly understand academic testing terminology such as "Establishing Test Reliability" and "Establishing Test Validity" These actions don't seem to fit the experience. Four types of reliability are used to establish whether a test produces scores that do not include much random variance. 1) Internal reliability - Is each test taker consistent across different items within a single test? 2) Test-retest reliability - Is the performance for each test consistent across two administrations of the same test? 3) Inter-rater reliability - Is performance for each test taker consistent if two different people score the test? 4) Parallel forms reliability - Is performance for each test taker consistent across different forms of the same test? I can see at least a few things wrong with the university strategy for these exams. I would say that the test is not designed to show proficiency in multiple ways. Five entirely different questions on different areas and choosing four does not give the opportunity to demonstrate knowledge in different ways. Test-retest reliability is in jeopardy because there is much subjective analysis needed to score the test. If no two professors can cover all the test because "Some of these questions are not in my area of expertise" how can we say that this is a general test? They will all grade it differently. I don't believe that there are multiple forms of this test. If for some reason you cannot do this kind of test but know the material you fail. All test I have taken for software engineering have been nearly identical. Test anxiety, reading skills, flat organization of three dimensional facts without a skill for organization in a flat space, historical clues to answers with no historical significance, all these and more play a part in making a test that is not about the technology and all about passing a test. At the current time I would judge this test unreliable. I plan to work hard and pass any kind of test regardless of whether I think it is fair or not.

I have chosen to begin a log of my current experience at DePaul University Chicago. I have been a student at the university since 1993. First for a masters degree in computer science and now a PhD in software engineering. I have had a rough time of it. I have gone from having no money to having lots to having little. I have gotten married, had a child who nearly died at birth, and have had two people in my extended family die during that time. I am writing this because I hope that by putting it down I will encourage others. I struggle with a learning disability and have for the largest part of my academic career been able to hide the problems excelling to heights other said I could not. I have also been accused of not having such a condition by others and been discriminated against because of an inability to demonstrate knowledge in certain ways. I believe I can do it in others. I have now come to the last qualifying exam in the PhD program. I am asking myself what is it that makes a PhD. I find it difficult to define. I have come to feel that it has nothing to do with complexity or difficulty. I have had many people tell me what it is and what it isn't. I am not satisfied with any of them. I currently develop embedded device software. I spend time in the labs at Lucent and work with some of the finest people. Even though we do product development I am developing new protocols and working in the very same manner as researchers. I use the scientific method every day. It would seem that the application of formal methods and other systematic techniques would constitute research but it doesn't seem to get that respect from the academics I come in contact with at school. I have had professors say "The PhD will be the hardest thing you have ever done in you life." I think that is a pretty bold statement. I am not so upset at the disrespect of my work life but the lack of respect of what it took to develop techniques to get around a learning disability and do these things school, work, or otherwise. I am not saying it won't be hard because I think that it is hard and will be hard. I just think that they have no statistical grounds to judge me against other students or in the same statistical manner. My learning disability has never been diagnosed to my satisfaction. The current medical diagnosis is ADHD. I think that ADHD is wrong and it is probably an autistic spectrum disorder. It doesn't much matter what they are but that I can identify my deficiencies and cognitively get around them. Social aspects coupled with memory anomalies manifested in phobias, reading and aphasia problems are just to name a few. These issues due overlap. I will succeed they just don't know it yet. So I plan to document the journey to its end from this day forward. I plan to write on every significant event here from now on.