My grueling, agonizing, loathsome process of preparing for my neuroscience final (which is motivated mostly by the realization that if I don't pass the class, I will have to take it again next semester - including repeating the preparation of the midterm and term paper that I've already done - which would be utter hell) continues. I am at about 2.5 answers of out 12, which indicates a perhaps unsustainable lack of speed in developing my responses even though I started with the ones that seemed easiest. There is also absolutely no evidence on which to pin any hopes that everybody will do badly on the exam and that a curve will be forthcoming. It's pretty clear that you've got to hit the mark to get the grade because some people are rocking the class and the prof is quite okay with failing people who miss the mark (like my office mate last year who had the repeat the class).
This is the absolute worst part of my program so far. I feel that I might actually die. The professor mentioned that the course should be two semesters, meeting 3 times per week (instead of one semester, 1 time per week). And while it's true that we did not cover everything in the textbook, we covered about 75% of it, plus additional readings, plus all the extra sources we have to find on our own to prepare for the exams. Bah.
I think it's funny and maybe sadly appropriate that we did cover the chapter on sleep but not the chapter on sex.
On the brighter side, here's my application update:
Applications submitted: 16/17
Applications confirmed completed by the school: 3/17
And no matter what horrors my PhD program will offer, I will not have to take another class in neuroscience EVER AGAIN. This is a non-negotiable feature of any program I decide to attend.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
A Breather
Today I was at school (working) for about 7.5 hours. I came home, had dinner, treaded, watched House M.D., made blueberry muffins, spoke to Robert on the phone briefly, finished up a delightfully trashy action adventure novel that ended with a bad-guy Delta Force agent cryogenically frozen (but conscious and going insane!) at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, did some light weight work, played Alchemy, and am now going to bed. It's so weird - go to work, come home, do things other than work. It reminds me of my old, pre-grad school life.
Oh well. Tomorrow, I'll be back in a more typical school mode, as I'll be getting my take home exam for one class and the infamous list of 12 questions for the in-class final next week. But it was certainly nice to have what felt a lot like an entire day off because I didn't bring any schoolwork home with me to do in the evening.
App update: 16 down, 1 (due Feb. 1, so not a rush) to go.
Oh well. Tomorrow, I'll be back in a more typical school mode, as I'll be getting my take home exam for one class and the infamous list of 12 questions for the in-class final next week. But it was certainly nice to have what felt a lot like an entire day off because I didn't bring any schoolwork home with me to do in the evening.
App update: 16 down, 1 (due Feb. 1, so not a rush) to go.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Duck Duck Duck Duck Goose
Yesterday Robert and I went to the local wastewater treatment plant to see ducks. We did see ducks - a whole bunch of mallards. Plus one goose (a Canada).
And our prize: an American black duck. My ABA Area Bird #472.
No, it doesn't look much like Daffy - it's like a distinctly darker female mallard.
In addition, we added the following to our NC list:
Green-winged teal
Swamp sparrow
Fox sparrow
Killdeer
The killdeer situation was kind of crazy. Before, I'd only seen one or two killdeer at a time, but yesterday, a flock of about 30 killdeer kept flying and landing around where we were standing (on a strip between two ponds) looking at the ducks. Oh, and running around. I love watching sandpipers and plovers (e.g., killdeer) run. They look so silly - their legs move at a million miles and an hour, but because they're so short, they do not move nearly as far as all that action would suggest.
Here's a good video of a running killdeer with the added bonus of the mom's famous broken-wing display used to lure predators away from vulnerable babies. (However, killdeer babies are literally precocious - they can start running right after being born.)
And our prize: an American black duck. My ABA Area Bird #472.
No, it doesn't look much like Daffy - it's like a distinctly darker female mallard.
In addition, we added the following to our NC list:
Green-winged teal
Swamp sparrow
Fox sparrow
Killdeer
The killdeer situation was kind of crazy. Before, I'd only seen one or two killdeer at a time, but yesterday, a flock of about 30 killdeer kept flying and landing around where we were standing (on a strip between two ponds) looking at the ducks. Oh, and running around. I love watching sandpipers and plovers (e.g., killdeer) run. They look so silly - their legs move at a million miles and an hour, but because they're so short, they do not move nearly as far as all that action would suggest.
Here's a good video of a running killdeer with the added bonus of the mom's famous broken-wing display used to lure predators away from vulnerable babies. (However, killdeer babies are literally precocious - they can start running right after being born.)
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Five Minutes
I had decided that I wanted to send my advisor a complete first draft of my thesis proposal by 2:00 p.m. today, and I got it emailed by 2:05. It's great to have this ball out of my court for a while.
Next up: grading research reports and completing PhD applications. The bulk of the work for the apps at this point consists of writing (customizing) statements of purpose and putting together the packets that need to be snail-mailed to the schools. I also need to finish and submit the online applications, but that goes pretty quickly.
Last night I dreamed that I was visiting Tam at school, only instead of her grad program, we were in a middle school. The absolute low point was when Tam suggested we go next door for lunch to a place where they sell 50 cent sandwiches. Each sandwich was one piece of white bread topped with a handful of little disks that look like bologna. The sign announced that the following sandwiches were available:
"Meat, horse, mouse, shrimp, and puppy."
Next up: grading research reports and completing PhD applications. The bulk of the work for the apps at this point consists of writing (customizing) statements of purpose and putting together the packets that need to be snail-mailed to the schools. I also need to finish and submit the online applications, but that goes pretty quickly.
Last night I dreamed that I was visiting Tam at school, only instead of her grad program, we were in a middle school. The absolute low point was when Tam suggested we go next door for lunch to a place where they sell 50 cent sandwiches. Each sandwich was one piece of white bread topped with a handful of little disks that look like bologna. The sign announced that the following sandwiches were available:
"Meat, horse, mouse, shrimp, and puppy."
Saturday, November 20, 2010
A Small Bit of Good News
It hasn't been a great week for news around here, but I did get a small bit of good news by email yesterday. I have received a $500 travel award for the conference I am going to be presenting a poster at in January. Something like 18.9% of grad student presenters won the award. So that puts me in the top fifth of student research being presented at the number one conference for social and personality psychology, which is nice (just for general self-esteem purposes as well as adding a line to the cv). The money is nice, too.
The decision criteria included three things:
(1) Quality of the research
(2) Perceived interest in the research/topic to the conference-goers
(3) Strength of academic record (esp. previous publications / presentations)
So point 3 definitely is consistent with the idea that the best thing you can do to win a scholarship (or whatever) is to win another scholarship. I think of it as basically a way of labeling yourself to the selection committee as "Pre-approved of by people like you."
The decision criteria included three things:
(1) Quality of the research
(2) Perceived interest in the research/topic to the conference-goers
(3) Strength of academic record (esp. previous publications / presentations)
So point 3 definitely is consistent with the idea that the best thing you can do to win a scholarship (or whatever) is to win another scholarship. I think of it as basically a way of labeling yourself to the selection committee as "Pre-approved of by people like you."
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Ten
I have now completed 10 online applications and have the paperwork (transcripts, etc.) together in envelopes to mail to these programs. I plan to pick up with the remainder of the 17 applications over Thanksgiving break, and even then, I still have quite a bit of time before those applications are due - the next one after these 10 is due 12/31.
One school's online app is still giving me fits because they did not send me the ID# to use to check the status of my application as they said they would within 3 business days. I've emailed them about it, but I think I'm going to have to call and ask about it to get anything done. (I would love to be wrong about that.) The big issue is that I don't think the automated system has sent out the emails to my recommenders eliciting their letters. Bah! I am also annoyed that a couple of schools do online recommendations but do not give you any information about whether they have been completed, so I'll have to follow up with my recommenders individually on those.
In other happy news, I have finished my neuroscience paper! At least, I have a paper that I've read through once and looks done to me - I'll print it out and read it again in a day or two. It's due Friday. (And yes, watch this space for the inevitable Word Cloud when I'm totally done with it.)
Debbie sent this joke to me this week:
"A magician pulls rabbits out of hats. An experimental psychologist pulls habits out of rats."
A good section of my paper is about classical conditioning of eating to external cues in rats (nothing at all like my typical topics in metacognitive aspects of attitude change), so this is strangely apt. But I will note that experiment psychologists also pull habits out of rabbits. The eyeblink response in rabbits is a standard animal model of classical conditioning. I am not, however, familiar with any rat hat research using this paradigm.
But: here is a rat hat for a cat.
And that's that.
One school's online app is still giving me fits because they did not send me the ID# to use to check the status of my application as they said they would within 3 business days. I've emailed them about it, but I think I'm going to have to call and ask about it to get anything done. (I would love to be wrong about that.) The big issue is that I don't think the automated system has sent out the emails to my recommenders eliciting their letters. Bah! I am also annoyed that a couple of schools do online recommendations but do not give you any information about whether they have been completed, so I'll have to follow up with my recommenders individually on those.
In other happy news, I have finished my neuroscience paper! At least, I have a paper that I've read through once and looks done to me - I'll print it out and read it again in a day or two. It's due Friday. (And yes, watch this space for the inevitable Word Cloud when I'm totally done with it.)
Debbie sent this joke to me this week:
"A magician pulls rabbits out of hats. An experimental psychologist pulls habits out of rats."
A good section of my paper is about classical conditioning of eating to external cues in rats (nothing at all like my typical topics in metacognitive aspects of attitude change), so this is strangely apt. But I will note that experiment psychologists also pull habits out of rabbits. The eyeblink response in rabbits is a standard animal model of classical conditioning. I am not, however, familiar with any rat hat research using this paradigm.
But: here is a rat hat for a cat.
And that's that.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Can't Argue with Vulcan Logic
In the last 10-14 days, the weather here's gone from being 10+ degrees warmer than usual to about 10 degrees colder than usual (though it's warming up this week). Waiting for the bus last week in the chilly rain, I was idly speculating on this abrupt shift. When I got on the bus, an episode of Star Trek: Voyager was on. Apparently, the crew was having difficulty beaming people down to this planet due to bizarre storms. Tuvok said, "The only logical conclusion is that they are controlling the weather."
And hey, you know, that really does explain a lot.
The best line was when a teenage boy was complaining to his dad, who wanted him to stay home, living in their primitive culture, instead of attending Star Fleet, like "Dad, we have to start living in the 24th century!" OK, it's not up there with "But I was going to Tosche Station to pick up some power converters" in the annals of SF teenage whining, but it was funny.
I dedicate this post to B., the one in Tam's program about whom she said, when I asked her to describe him, that he likes bad science fiction. Apparently he is the "dweeb" of the group. I know, you're thinking, But isn't Tam in a math PhD program - how can there be only one?
But as we all know, There can be only one.
(In the interest of full confession, I did immediately recognize the dude on Voyager as "Tuvok" even though I've probably seen fewer than half a dozen episodes of the show. While you may be tempted to excuse this as just a function of my amazing intelligence - no. There are people in my own program I have a harder time remembering the name of than this character from a minor Star Trek TV program.)
And hey, you know, that really does explain a lot.
The best line was when a teenage boy was complaining to his dad, who wanted him to stay home, living in their primitive culture, instead of attending Star Fleet, like "Dad, we have to start living in the 24th century!" OK, it's not up there with "But I was going to Tosche Station to pick up some power converters" in the annals of SF teenage whining, but it was funny.
I dedicate this post to B., the one in Tam's program about whom she said, when I asked her to describe him, that he likes bad science fiction. Apparently he is the "dweeb" of the group. I know, you're thinking, But isn't Tam in a math PhD program - how can there be only one?
But as we all know, There can be only one.
(In the interest of full confession, I did immediately recognize the dude on Voyager as "Tuvok" even though I've probably seen fewer than half a dozen episodes of the show. While you may be tempted to excuse this as just a function of my amazing intelligence - no. There are people in my own program I have a harder time remembering the name of than this character from a minor Star Trek TV program.)
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