School Stuff

I am quite happy to report that I am starting work on the experiment(s) that will be my first year project. I don't think it's a good idea to discuss the project in detail here, but I will say that it's in the area of persuasion, and that I have a two stage study - I will be bringing people into the lab for a persuasion paradigm, then bringing them back a week later to see if the persuasion stuck and whether I can persuade them again (in the opposite direction). I would be happy to talk about the project in excruciating detail with anyone who is really interested. Consider yourself warned.

Today I started programming the actual experiment in the psychology-experiment-specific software my advisor's lab uses, and it is proving to be easier than I expected. Like a lot of the questionnaire development software I've used in the past, very little genuine programming is needed; the built-in functionality is there for a wide range of experimental designs.

The director of grad studies for the department (who is one of the world's most extremely nice people) gave me a ride from the building to the parking lot this afternoon, and she asked how I was doing, mentioning that I seem...I can't remember the word, something to the effect of relaxed and on top of things. Oddly, I think that assessment is pretty accurate and that I'm not just doing a good job of faking it. I feel like I'm starting to get a decent handle on the workload, but I won't really know that for sure until after midterms; it's too soon to know whether the level of work / understanding I'm operating at is sufficient or not. I am loving the whole "having my own office" thing. When I can get and stay focused, my productivity is good.

I got back my reaction papers for my neuro class and the comments came out to around 5 "good point" or "very good point" (over 3 papers) and 0 "you are a moron." So either I'm being more smart than dumb with my observations or he is pulling his punches. I prefer to believe it's the former. Certainly there was no indication that my level of understanding was woefully insufficient or that I was completely missing the point, which is very good. (These are ungraded assignments, and we only have to do 5 total for the semester, but as I learned from the psych grad course I took a couple years ago, writing these reaction papers is probably the best way to ensure that I understand the material at all. I plan to do one for each week's set of articles.) I am almost entirely caught up with taking notes over the textbook chapters also, which is Step 3 in studying for the exam. (Step 1 is reading the material before class, and Step 2 is showing up to class and taking notes.)

I also got my required presentation of an empirical paper out of the way for social psychology class. It was one of the classics in the area of attitudes, and I think I did a reasonably good job of explaining it. Since the grad class class I took before (which only had 4 students) required me to do an entire lecture period on a topic, including explaining several empirical papers as well as the theoretical foundation, and lead a discussion session, discussing one paper (in my field no less) was neither intimidating nor difficult to prepare for.

Oh, and while my students were taking an exam today in lab, I started reading the journal article for tomorrow's neuro class, but found that I was not able to take the information in very easily since there was some distracting clicking calculator noise. I gave up at this sentence: "Low perceptual load in the relevant task, on the other hand, results in the processing of irrelevant as well as relevant information, and therefore requires some active means of rejecting distractors for maintaining appropriate control of behavior." I settled for desultory web surfing and looking around for roving eyes.