Highlights: There was a pretty wicked storm last week, I went to a new church on Sunday and loved it, have been keeping up well with school, and am trying not to lose it at the lab.
Current mood: blah
Details: Last week Davis was hit by a serious storm system. We got a few inches of rain in 24 hours, all blown in sideways from 15-30 miles an hour. It was incredible, and impossible to stay dry. My waterproof jacket, though, lived up to it's function. I was only soaked from mid-thigh down.
I finally went to Midtown Friends on Sunday and I immediately felt at home. The church meets in a small office space, but has been set up to feel like a living room. The music is led by a single guitarist, and there are elements of art, discussion, scripture reading and teaching woven into each service. On the fourth Sunday of the month they "put feet on the gospel" and do something service-oriented. This Sunday we'll be making packages of food and some will go out on the streets to pass them out, and some will stay behind and pray or make more packages. I also found out that Midtown Friends is a church plant of a Quaker church in Sacramento.
I am 3 for 3 A's on weekly tests in Greek, and the midterm is this Friday. I am also getting a take-home midterm on Thursday in Second Language Acquisition, so this will be a busy weekend.
I am still getting used to the way things work in the lab. Evidently, tasks are not presented clearly the first time, and very rarely is everyone on the same page. This has been the source of more frustration than I care to tolerate, but all I can do now is realize that I should ask a LOT of questions up-front. Tasks are presented like country roads with three or four forks. You don't know until you get to the town a few miles down whether or not you took the right fork. This past week, I have taken one wrong fork and one right fork. Needless to say, my confidence is a little shaken. I like to "have it all together" and am still trying to be okay with it when it is not so. This is a huge reason why I need a church that feels like home. I need a place to rejuvinate lest I be sucked in by the vaccum of academic disorientation n'er to return to the threshold of sanity.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Academic Avalanche
This has been a fun, but busy and very academic week.
Highlights: I had another test in Greek (results Monday), I re-arranged my schedule to accomodate more lab hours, I started on several projects at said lab, I saw a movie with Emily when I played hookie from studying and had a rare mid-week dinner with Blake. I attended a workshop yesterday, the first of the year hosted by our graduate group. There was a party with Thai food afterwards- yummy! Today, I will be going to a party of sorts with him to meet his crowd of married friends (though I think not "smug marrieds"). In all, I'm learning how to manage my schedule and the workload so I don't go mad.
Current Mood: Chipper
Details: So as you can see from the "highlights", this has been a rather full week. I will seperate the details by paragraphs. Feel free to skip over the details you don't care about to get to the good stuff.
Greek test: I can now translate from Greek to English and from English to Greek a wide variety of sentences pertaining to a farmer, his lazy slave, and his oxen. Not only can I do this with ease and finesse, but I can do so in several cases. My current favourite Greek word is the plural accusative form of "the oxen", used when oxen are the direct object of a verb, usually "drives". It sounds like "tous Bous", and that is, in fact, the correct transliteration. So if your children are oxen (that COULD even be metaphorical), you can say, "I herd tous bous". Alternatively, just walk around saying "tous bous" like I do and you will instantly appear more intelligent. All that to say I think I got an "A" on my test.
Schedule re-arrangement: David wanted me to be in the lab during hours more ammenable to his schedule, so I asked my Greek professor if I could attend her early section of Greek on Tuesdays and she said that would be fine. My new lab hours are Mon 7ish-11, Tues 7ish-9:20, 11:20-2:20, and Fri 7ish-11, 2:30-5:30. I am already quite busy with projects.
Lab projects: There are several things going on at the Corina lab, and I have my fingers in most of them at this point. I am helping create stimuli for a project looking at semantic (meaning-based) locations for signs in ASL, I am gearing up to kick off a new project with Sarah and David regarding infants and toddlers with cochlear implants, I have reviewed stimuli for another project on semantic processing in native signers, and some other stuff I can't remember right now. Oh! Yes. I am creating a database of participants grouped by age of acquisition of ASL so in the future we can more easily contact people to run new studies.
Playing hookie: I have figured out the amount of actual reading and work required for each of my classes, so I don't feel quite so overwhelmed every night. On Tuesday, Emily goes to see movies for $5, and I decided to drop what I was doing to go with her. (Picking up this narrative on the following day) We saw "The Informant". It was pretty good. We also made a schedule for housework to make sure everything gets regularly cleaned. Huzzah! I'll be vaccuming and cleaning the bathroom counter/mirror.
Dinner with Blake: On Wednesday night, Blake came over bearing Dr. Who and Mountain Dew. I had crockpot bbq chicken and potatoes for dinner and cookies for dessert. Blake had cookies. We watched Dr. Who with Emily (who is also a fan), and it was one of the most enjoyable weeknights I've had in a long time. He will be comming over this Wednesday for steak and potatoes. Mmmmmmm!
Workshop: I attended five sections of the first graduate group workshop on Friday. The first three were relevant to my work at the lab- related to ERP's (event related potentials) and specifically N400 studies. For example, if I say "I like my coffee with cream and ________" you probably automatically fill in "sugar". That would not produce an N400 peak (measure of brain electrical activity). However, if I say "I like my coffee with cream and mud," that semantic oddity would cause your brain to fire in a different way, producing an N400 peak. Another presenter spoke about eye-tracking and body-movement tracking to see how language is processed. If you have a piece of candy and a candle in front of you, and you're told "pick up the candle", in the miliseconds before the "le" comes out for "candle", your eyes will have briefly looked at the candy. If it is a pickle and a candle, your eyes won't go toward the pickle at all because it doesn't begin with the same phonemic cluster. Cool, huh?
Party afterwards: The graduate group hosted a gathering with Thai food. Yummy! I sat around and talked with a neat couple and with Elaine, the woman who keeps the department running. We had a good time relaxing and chatting, and only talked a little about work.
Tonight Blake and I will be checking out a church midway between our houses. I had a great time last night meeting his friends, and I'll post details about that later. Suffice to say for now that they're like his second family and are some really neat people.
Highlights: I had another test in Greek (results Monday), I re-arranged my schedule to accomodate more lab hours, I started on several projects at said lab, I saw a movie with Emily when I played hookie from studying and had a rare mid-week dinner with Blake. I attended a workshop yesterday, the first of the year hosted by our graduate group. There was a party with Thai food afterwards- yummy! Today, I will be going to a party of sorts with him to meet his crowd of married friends (though I think not "smug marrieds"). In all, I'm learning how to manage my schedule and the workload so I don't go mad.
Current Mood: Chipper
Details: So as you can see from the "highlights", this has been a rather full week. I will seperate the details by paragraphs. Feel free to skip over the details you don't care about to get to the good stuff.
Greek test: I can now translate from Greek to English and from English to Greek a wide variety of sentences pertaining to a farmer, his lazy slave, and his oxen. Not only can I do this with ease and finesse, but I can do so in several cases. My current favourite Greek word is the plural accusative form of "the oxen", used when oxen are the direct object of a verb, usually "drives". It sounds like "tous Bous", and that is, in fact, the correct transliteration. So if your children are oxen (that COULD even be metaphorical), you can say, "I herd tous bous". Alternatively, just walk around saying "tous bous" like I do and you will instantly appear more intelligent. All that to say I think I got an "A" on my test.
Schedule re-arrangement: David wanted me to be in the lab during hours more ammenable to his schedule, so I asked my Greek professor if I could attend her early section of Greek on Tuesdays and she said that would be fine. My new lab hours are Mon 7ish-11, Tues 7ish-9:20, 11:20-2:20, and Fri 7ish-11, 2:30-5:30. I am already quite busy with projects.
Lab projects: There are several things going on at the Corina lab, and I have my fingers in most of them at this point. I am helping create stimuli for a project looking at semantic (meaning-based) locations for signs in ASL, I am gearing up to kick off a new project with Sarah and David regarding infants and toddlers with cochlear implants, I have reviewed stimuli for another project on semantic processing in native signers, and some other stuff I can't remember right now. Oh! Yes. I am creating a database of participants grouped by age of acquisition of ASL so in the future we can more easily contact people to run new studies.
Playing hookie: I have figured out the amount of actual reading and work required for each of my classes, so I don't feel quite so overwhelmed every night. On Tuesday, Emily goes to see movies for $5, and I decided to drop what I was doing to go with her. (Picking up this narrative on the following day) We saw "The Informant". It was pretty good. We also made a schedule for housework to make sure everything gets regularly cleaned. Huzzah! I'll be vaccuming and cleaning the bathroom counter/mirror.
Dinner with Blake: On Wednesday night, Blake came over bearing Dr. Who and Mountain Dew. I had crockpot bbq chicken and potatoes for dinner and cookies for dessert. Blake had cookies. We watched Dr. Who with Emily (who is also a fan), and it was one of the most enjoyable weeknights I've had in a long time. He will be comming over this Wednesday for steak and potatoes. Mmmmmmm!
Workshop: I attended five sections of the first graduate group workshop on Friday. The first three were relevant to my work at the lab- related to ERP's (event related potentials) and specifically N400 studies. For example, if I say "I like my coffee with cream and ________" you probably automatically fill in "sugar". That would not produce an N400 peak (measure of brain electrical activity). However, if I say "I like my coffee with cream and mud," that semantic oddity would cause your brain to fire in a different way, producing an N400 peak. Another presenter spoke about eye-tracking and body-movement tracking to see how language is processed. If you have a piece of candy and a candle in front of you, and you're told "pick up the candle", in the miliseconds before the "le" comes out for "candle", your eyes will have briefly looked at the candy. If it is a pickle and a candle, your eyes won't go toward the pickle at all because it doesn't begin with the same phonemic cluster. Cool, huh?
Party afterwards: The graduate group hosted a gathering with Thai food. Yummy! I sat around and talked with a neat couple and with Elaine, the woman who keeps the department running. We had a good time relaxing and chatting, and only talked a little about work.
Tonight Blake and I will be checking out a church midway between our houses. I had a great time last night meeting his friends, and I'll post details about that later. Suffice to say for now that they're like his second family and are some really neat people.
Monday, October 5, 2009
A wiki wiki update
Highlights with a little Detail:
Time to get back to it.
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