Oops, I Guess I Should Edit This To Add a Title...

I think January's two posts represents an all-time low here at EQ, and the first half of February flew by without any posts at all.  [Disapprove]

This semester I am taking two seminars that are half-semester courses (after spring break, I'll be taking two different half-semester seminars in their place) and clearly each professor thinks that the topic is important enough to devote an entire semester to and are unwilling to reduce the coverage of their favorite subject to 50%.  Instead, each one seems to cover about 80% of the material/assignments that you would get in a full semester course.  (This might be a slight exaggeration, but it's definitely a larger work load this semester than last semester, when only one of my seminars worked this way.  It appears that the seminars in my department are all half-semester seminars but the ones in the psychology department are full-semester seminars.)

Other than feeling kind of crazily busy (and hence the weeks are passing so quickly I cannot fathom it), I think things are going pretty well.  The winter weather is being kind to us, at least.

This morning I kind of didn't want to go to my psych seminar at 9:00, but I was looking forward to walking to school in the relatively warm and very sunny weather.  (Relatively warm = my face does not feel cold while I'm walking to school; this happens at about 25 degrees F or so.)  I like walking over to the other side of campus because I can take a route that goes all the way along the river then meets up with the campus from the backside such that I never have to stop at a traffic light.  It was a pleasant walk (although as has been the case most days this winter, the bird life was virtually non-existent; today I heard a few chickadees singing and that was it.  Not even a crow!) and I was in a better mood when I got to class.

And when I got to class, I was on in that way that sometimes happens.  I'm usual a pretty good contributor to the discussion but I was especially good today.  Even adjusting for the fact that my professor tends to give positive feedback to people's comments, I felt very pleased when he responded to one of my questions/criticisms about a hugely important classic paper that we read with, "Were you one of the reviewers on this paper?"  Apparently I had immediately tapped into an issue that people in the area spent years grappling with.  So, I'm getting really good at evaluating other people's research.  It still remains to be seen if I can get any of my own ideas to work out.