Master's at Purdue

At Purdue, we lived in West Lafayette for 5 ½ years. There we had 2 children (Connor and Katie) and while Eric worked on his post-graduate degree I pursued a Master’s degree. My graduate degree is in Education. More specifically, Educational Technology or Instructional Design. For corporate folks, the buzz words would be Training Design. While there, I worked for the Purdue College of Nursing to design better instruction for their nursing students. The instructors I worked with most frequently were from the Maternal-Newborn Department. So once again, my experience was with moms and babies, educating future nurses how to handle their care. As part of a collaborated effort, we designed an instructional CD-ROM for Newborn assessment and apgar scores.

Psyched

My clinical psych experience was in the Utah State Mental Hospital. There I chose to be in the Forensic unit (translation: Dangerous Criminals with Mental Illness). Those of you who have seen Law and Order: Criminal Intent can get the gist. That all-male facility is locked down and only 2 BYU (female) nursing students are allowed in. Talk about juxtaposition of good vs. evil. The rules were to: 1) Stay within visual proximity of each other 2) Never go into the sleeping areas, and 3) Steer clear of the bathrooms (and don’t believe it if someone tells you they are indeed coed). Our instructor told us to talk to everyone, play cards, volleyball, and essentially just “hang out.” After 3 weeks of knowing the patients as people, THEN we could look into their charts. What I found was some very well-groomed, well-spoken people (I initially mistook them as staff). Much to my chagrin, they weren’t; they were predators. Others were troubled and “just a little bit off.” Needless to say, I enjoyed these folks and human beings and appreciated their personalities, their “friendship,” and (gasp!) some of their personal stories. One of my well-used conversation starters was not, “So you come here often?” but “So tell me about yourself…” I usually got an earful and needed to debrief with someone afterward (the staff psychiatrist, social worker, psych instructor, or my poor husband). At times, I nearly bust out laughing at some audacious delusionary moments (schizophrenic). At other times I tried not to panic or show any fear while some predator delighted telling me about their “glory moment” involving some heinous crime or another (antisocial personality disorder, a.k.a. psychopath). “Show no fear” became my mantra during that clinical experience. Surprisingly, I did build respect and trust through time. One “inmate” confided in me that if someone dared try to jump me, the rest of the guys would be right there to protect me. In other words, it was the proverbial “I GOT YOUR BACK.” I had my own up-close-and-personal psychological thriller and to this day I have great respect for when mental illness goes bad, really bad.

Employment arena

Eric works for ExxonMobil in Houston, Texas. He works for the Upstream Research Corporation which means: 1) He is in Research and Development, 2) You have to have a PhD to work there (Good or bad, everyone has to have a PhD in something technical. No MBAs unless Exxon specifically sends you out to take Executive classes from Kellogg at Northwestern or elsewhere). Basically, this part of the company, the “Upstream” side of the company hires lots of engineers and geophysicists to find and “suck out” quantities of oil in places all over the world. Since we have already discovered and “sucked out” most of the oil in the easy places (Texas, Oklahoma, Gulf of Mexico, Alaska, etc.) they are working on the more difficult areas of the world yet to be explored (and exploited ☺). Nigeria, Cameroon, and the Congo are obviously difficult because of political unrest and lack of infrastructure. Sakhalin Islands, Nova Scotia, and the North Sea are difficult because of temperature and adverse weather conditions. Qatar, Saudia Arabia are well, the Middle East in all of its tumult.

Eric gets new assignments about every 2 years and with it comes a new skills set either technically or managerially. For the past year, he has been “pegged” as managerially tracked (science track versus management track) and has been pushing a project to get drilling software out to facilities around the world. It seems that he has been on a number of highly visible projects and Exxon tends to put him into positions where two groups are feuding. He appears to play the Colin Powell role. His job seems to be to ameliorate the customers and the engineers while keeping the upper echelons of the company happy. One of his favorite lines is, “Engineers have feeling too,” which of course makes everyone either crack up or roll their eyes. Although I fondly refer to him as a “nerd” he claims he is the “touchy-feely” of the group. Apparently, if you have technical as well as soft skills, one can go far.


There are always possibilities that we might have an overseas assignment. Our good friends (and former Bishop and family) left for Qatar for a 3 year assignment. Qatar is bordered by Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf. They are having a great time seeing the world and enjoying many luxuries on “the Tiger’s dime. Other friends have left for Australia, the Netherlands, and Alaska respectively. If we were willing, we would be sent to Nigeria in a New York minute. However, the idea of living in a compound and sending my kids to school with bodyguards by way of armored car is not my idea of a good time. I am usually one for adventure but this is taking it too far. Call me overprotective.☺

Purdue Life

At Purdue, we lived in West Lafayette for 5 ½ years. There we had 2 children (Connor and Katie) and while Eric worked on his post-graduate degree I pursued a Master’s degree. My graduate degree is in Education. More specifically, Educational Technology or Instructional Design. For corporate folks, the buzz words would be Training Design. While there, I worked for the Purdue College of Nursing to design better instruction for their nursing students. The instructors I worked with most frequently were from the Maternal-Newborn Department. So once again, my experience was with moms and babies, educating future nurses how to handle their care. As part of a collaborated effort, we designed an instructional CD-ROM for Newborn assessment and apgar scores.

Study A-Broad

I went on my mission to Taiwan (Republic of China). So did Eric, my husband. In fact, he was my zone leader that passed me off on the discussions. To answer the common questions, that often follow: Yes, we had some interactions. No, there was no romance on the mission, The day we met I had been hit on my bicycle by a small, three-wheeled truck and was an emotional mess. I was also culture-shocked and wondered, “Why Chinese? Why me?” Needless to say, Elder Mulkay wondered how this poor Sister Dixon was going to fare…

Two years later, we met in a BYU Chinese class. He asked me out the first weekend of the Fall 1991 semester. We went to the Taiwan Goodwill Mission singers’ performance in the DeJong concert hall. I laughed so hard when he cleverly described the musical finale of a semi-Chinese version of GREASE. He said, “So here we have Wang Travolta and Olivia Newton-Jang!” I was smitten with his intelligent humor and the cross-cultural commonalities that we share.

For those that know Eric, he does have a intelligent wit somewhat akin to Alan Alda on the hit series of M.A.S.H. His quips come fast and you have to follow the course of conversation to catch it all. His comedic timing is good. Sometimes I wish I had instant replay to capture it all.

Another aptitude Eric has is either a photographic or aural memory. In any learning situation, there is almost nothing that gets past him. In other words, his ability to recall information is nearly flawless. Many students can attest to the frustration that causes in a language class (or any other for that matter). While many students can be pleading our “case” for credit to the professor, he/she can always justify his/her position because Eric seemed to get it right. (Grrrrrr) I will never purposely be in a language class with him again, my ego just can’t take it.

The next summer we both went on BYU’s China Study Abroad where we studied for a semester at Nanjing University about 70 miles inland up the Yangtze river from Shanghai. There we had coed dorms where we had language and culture class (Chinese, of course) tai chi, and other variations on Chinese themes. We would jog in the morning, go to class throughout the morning, find some native “dive” to enjoy lunch, tour historical sites on bikes for the afternoon or just have adventures (mishaps), and then study or do homework to prepare for the next day. At this point in time there was no TV, no movies or even streetlamps for any semblance of a nightlife. Basically, as a group we had to be creative, ambassador-like in behavior, and as a result there was a lot of interaction. I believe there were 17 guys and 4 girls. Never before or again, in BYU history are the ratios that favorable for females on study abroad.

We dated in Hong Kong, got engaged in Thailand, and trekked off to Japan to stay with friends who worked for Seiko. We joked about eloping to the Toyko temple but instead were married 7 weeks later in Manti.

Back at BYU, I took nursing courses and Eric finished his Bachelor’s degree and then started a Master’s degree in mechanical engineering. My favorite semesters in the BYU nursing Maternal-Newborn and Psychiatric nursing. I loved the new moms and babies because it was such a happy occasion (generally). Yes, the moms required some clinical attention. But the majority of them wanted encouragement, teaching, and someone to talk to them while they accomplished such a miraculous experience as growing another person and then birthing that child. http://www.itap.purdue.edu/tlt/facultyshowcase/newborn/index.cfm Newborn Assessment