Waiting...

I'm pretty sure that never happened

The last week or so has been filled with a vast expanse of nothing as I've stayed at home and watched online videos and read articles about how much the world, or at least the US, sucks right now. While I have absolutely no expectation that the Rapture will occur this weekend, despite the assertions of some right wing lunatics to the contrary, with all of the reports of Conservatives taking away people's collective bargaining rights, voting rights, and rights to entitlements around the country I can sort of see why some might be waiting in anticipation for such an event. I'm guessing Jesus offers a better universal healthcare plan than the US!

On the plus side, I finally received some emails from the good Doctor about starting research. His group of around ten research undergraduates, including myself, will meet up with him next Monday, assuming the world hasn't ended, to discuss our various work assignments. Because he has so many students working with him, the Doctor is dividing us among several different research projects. We will have a weekly meeting for all the groups to talk and update one another on the work being done by everyone. I am part of a group that will be doing some literature review work about geriatrics and social psychology. Right now, things are sort of vague, but the meetings on Monday should clarify what we are supposed to research. My group is working under the Doctor's graduate student in cooperation with a research group in Surrey, England.

The Numbers Are In...

I was really expecting a B in French

Well, that wasn't at all like having teeth pulled!


Now that I've completed my first semester at NC State, I have to say that in some ways it was harder and in some ways easier than I had originally expected. As you can no doubt tell by the semester grades, the two biggest struggles for me were French and Psych Research. I was really disappointed with my French grade. While I can only really blame myself, I did explain in detail during my course evaluation a couple of weeks ago that I don't think the course should have required as much homework as was expected of us. That was my major downfall, as I usually made 85-96 on the tests. The course is on one hand sold as a refresher or review of French, and students are required to take a placement test to stay in the class. But, on the other hand, the course crams all of the material from French I and II into the span of one semester. As I commented in my course evaluation, the main reason students take this course is because they don't feel confident in their speaking abilities and want extra prep time before entering the 200-level French course which is taught almost exclusively in French. Students, such as myself, want French 110 to give us greater confidence with our speaking and oral comprehension, which I don't feel like the course actually provided. Granted, my French writing and reading has improved slightly, but I feel as though my speaking and conversational skills actually regressed a bit over the semester because so little time was focused on actual conversation skill. And, after all of that, I have a C on my transcript!

Preconceived Notions

Number Crunching in SPSS

Hopefully, as you get older, you start to learn that first impressions, while important, aren't the best gauge of a person's worth.

I've been doing a final project in Psych Research Methods involving self-segregation in college lecture halls based on race and gender. Because we weren't allowed to choose our group members, I happen to be in a group with a young woman whose initial impressions early in the semester left me feeling less than enthusiastic about working with her. We had a few minor conflicts in the first few weeks of class which showed her to be a self-centered snob with a very low opinion of me. For my part, I was probably a bit petulant, and unwilling to let her off-hand comments go unchallenged. To be fair, out of the four of us in the team, she and I are probably the most dominant personalities of the group, as evidenced by our performance during our in-class presentation. But, after getting a chance to work with her and have a few normal conversations, I've come to appreciate her contribution to the group. Of course, she now comes off as another one of those overachievers that I've encountered here at NC State who wants to have her entire future mapped out in detail. However, getting a chance to learn that she and I have both been frustrated with our grades in Psych Research Methods, and that we both have issues with how the grad student instructor of the class has taught the course, has allowed me to see her a little more three-dimensionally than before. She still has a little bit of an air of haughtiness about her, but I get the sense that it, probably, is more a guard against her minor insecurities than an actual excoriation of people as being less important than her.

Limping Toward the Finish

Honesty is so refreshing these days

This was the last week of the semester, and I gave oral to women on three different occasions this week, which made things seem incredibly hectic. Now that I have your attention, settle down. My life isn't that interesting!

On Monday I had my final French oral exam. It went well, at least in the beginning, as my female partner and I were reasonably prepared for our skit and art conversation. Things started going downhill once we were required to ask each other questions from a predetermined list of questions in various tenses. The professor started dropping our generally high scores on the grade sheet. At least, we got through it with at least a C.

On Thursday, I had to rent a campus Zipcar for a trip to Wake Tech's Health Education facility for an oral exam that I had promised to do for an old acquaintance from high school that friended me on Facebook. It was okay, although I got there early and ended up sitting in the wrong building for half an hour before anyone came out and asked me why I was there. I was told that I needed to walk to the opposite side of a parking deck from where I was to get to the dental facility. I had some x-rays of my horribly crooked teeth made, but otherwise my teeth were apparently in too good a condition for actual cleaning work to be done. Since it is a teaching facility for dental hygienists, they wanted someone whose teeth were worse off than mine, I guess. At any rate, it was nice to see an old classmate who somehow managed to have a daughter in the intervening years and somehow didn't gain much weight, as so many of my other high school comrades and I have.

Sometimes We Make Sausage, Other Times... Progress

Poe Hall From the Court of the Carolinas

If you happened to friend me on Facebook, you probably already learned that I had a meeting on Monday with a Doctor about PSY 499 work. The good Doctor is a young man, perhaps younger than myself, with a very quiet demeanor. His German accent only adds to his charm, and I described him to a couple of people as "adorable". In fact, even though we have had very little contact with one another thus far, I'd be willing to say I have a little bit of a crush on him. This is hardly a new phenomenon for me, as I have had exactly four crushes on men in my life. Of course the good Doctor is married, and his wife is quite attractive in her own right, if the photo on his desk is an accurate depiction. To be honest, I'm not sure where I was going with that!

At any rate, we only spoke for about fifteen minutes, but it was enough time for me to feel like an idiot, albeit a well-spoken idiot. The Doctor is very intelligent, as are most Europeans when compared with us lowly Americans. He attended the prestigious Max Planck Institute and is currently studying emotion and cognition in adults and the elderly. He asked me simple questions for which I felt like I had no good answer, though I flapped my lips and came up with something to fill the silence. Honestly, how do I get caught up on a question like, "What are your goals for the future?" or "What sorts of things would you like to research?" After giving it some thought, I think it has something to do with motivation.