My life has been kind of hectic, but tonight I am taking time away from folding laundry to give you the run-down on why I can’t sit down and write.
School–We are slowly approaching the middle of the semester. I’m only in three classes this semester, which is great because if I were taking more I would probably die. My Child Development Psych class isn’t too intense (taught by the amazing Dr H), but since Dr H and I are so tight he has high expectations for me in the class. And voices said expectations in front of EVERYONE. If ever I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole, I would have wished it with all of the fervency of a six-year-old wishing on her birthday cake candles when I had a question about something on the review sheet and Dr H said “Well, if you don’t understand that, then I doubt anyone else in the class does.” Blerg.
Anyway. My Creative Writing class is pretty interesting. We’re now in the creative nonfiction unit, which is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. Poetry? Bring it! But CNF? Oh my goodness. Please shoot me now. This week I have to write a story about someone (or something) who is not close to me. I have no idea what I’m going to write it on. And then the following week our masterwork is due. Say what?!? My pieces are horrible! My grade is not going to be fun to look at.
I’m also in Shakespeare and Film. This class blows my mind. Recently, we’ve been discussing epistemology and ontology in relation to Hamlet, Othello, and now Macbeth, and I actually “get” a lot of what we talk about because of my background in psychology. Sometimes I amaze myself with some of the comments I come up with in class. Half the time I feel like I’m just faking it, but apparently I make sense.
Research–I have two research activities going on this semester. First off, I am now a part of Dr S’s massive team. He recruited me specifically to work with the database and get everything organized, but Adrian stole that task from me and has done pretty much all of the work on it (and won’t let me touch it). Now, however, we’ve finally come up with a way to design Dr S’s newest study idea (thanks to the incredible insight of Dr H) and so we’re feverishly figuring out costs and stuff to get the research grants in before Tuesday, when Dr S goes to Anaheim for the week (the first grant deadline is on Thursday). He initially wanted to shoot for the October IRB review (which is on the 20th), but I doubt we’ll have everything ready in a week. Maybe next month. If we do get approval (fingers crossed), we’ll have to get cracking on it right away so we can work out any bugs on it before I graduate and leave (which could be as early as April), since I’m the most familiar with the design (modified human intruder paradigm) and I know the new software (The Observer) we’ll be using really well.
I’m also working on an independent project with Dr H. Basically, I’m just writing up my summer project from Oregon with the hope of getting it published somewhere big-ish. We’re talking like a national peer-reviewed journal. I’ve just been running my data set through every single test I could possibly think of, and trying to get the articles I’ve been reading into some sort of organized format so I know what’s where and what I need more studies on. The lit review is going slow, but I think I have my data at a place where I can just ignore it for now and focus on getting everything else organized.
With all of this going on, it saddens me to say that I had to resign from Sam’s team. I really loved working with him and his other RAs, but it was time to move on and get some different experiences under my belt before I apply to graduate school (maybe).
TA-ing–Yes, I use it as a verb. Anyway, I’m back to being a TA for Psych 304. I know, I know, I was supposed to move on and “broaden my experience,” but Dr S wanted me back for 304. Well, he gave me the choice of doing any combination of TA-ing 304, 111, and joining his research team. I chose research and TA-ing 304. This semester I have a co-TA for my section who is also an undergrad, and happened to be one of my students last Winter. She’s so amazing and hilarious and I really couldn’t think of anyone else I would rather have working with me. Seriously. And guess what? My students are the same awesome combination of absolutely wonderful and terribly maddening as they have been in the past! Sigh.
Life–Life is crazy. I don’t have time to do a lot of the fun things I want to do, but hopefully in the next couple of weeks I can finally get back in firmer control and do some fun things. Rachael’s home from her mission and in Provo, so I need to clear my schedule to hang out with her and hear all of her crazy mission stories. Emily and I keep talking about how we need to hang out and do dinner or something, but we always forget to actually set those plans in stone. Our lab has been challenged to an Ultimate Frisbee smackdown against the CEPICA team.
I think that is all. I do have a funny story to tell, but that is one for the private blog.
