Takes a lot of freaking time.
Grad school is hard. There is so much going on that I am not sure where to start. I am currently working on my thesis. Coding the material is a long process. I have a lot to read and write and piece together to make it work. The first part of the process is video splicing. Yikes!!
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
In discussion agin
I am a bit bored so therefore I am writing. We are learning about personality disorders today. Fun, fun. It is still strange to teach people. I usually don't know the answer to their questions - usually because I am way to busy to study for this class. It is funny how well it sticks in your head when you are expected to know it on the spot and you look it up while people watch you and you have to formulate a response that is fluid so they can understand you. I also had a girl flip out on me because I gave her a B on her paper. Her paper sucked though so I didn't change her grade because I had substantial evidence to back it up. In this school the grad students seem to have more power over the grades then the teachers as they grade all papers, exams, and quizzes and in some instances even write those materials. This structure is so different from my undergraduate experience - we didn't have grad students because my old school didn't award PhDs so we were stuck with the professor only.
Heidie's mom is sick and will be in surgery this Thursday morning for open heart surgery. If you are reading, please send lots of light, love, positive energy, and blessings.. which ever you are most inclined to do. She is such a sweet lady.
Heidie's mom is sick and will be in surgery this Thursday morning for open heart surgery. If you are reading, please send lots of light, love, positive energy, and blessings.. which ever you are most inclined to do. She is such a sweet lady.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
More on Summer
I am in discussion right now. 3 hours about abnormal psychology which I have already taken. The other TA has done abnormal 4 times. She is not here in class and I don't blame her. The best thing about being forced to sit for three hours is that I have time to catch up on things with minimal interruptions. Love it. Teaching these kids is another story.. I suck. They seem to think I am good but I feel pretty unprepared. Knowing something and teaching something are two different things. This experience is going to really help me with being more aware of my communication and organization skills - which are lacking.
It is so weird to me that Heidie had to go to school for years to get her teaching credentials to teach high school kids when I on the other hand just get thrown into a college course and am expected to know how to teach with NO training.
Hello?? That is stupid.
So far this summer (since I have been back) has been pretty crazy - lots of work to be done. I just wrote the data entry file for the first half of the AAO and am training three research assistants today how to enter the data. I am hoping they can get all the data entered in this week. The Society for Research on Adolescents is in March 2010 but the abstracts are due next week so I need to start playing with the data to see what is in there.
It took me a week to write the AAO file. Writing these kinds of files has really helped me get to know Excel, Word, and SPSS. It is somewhat frustrating right now because formatting is quite a pain but as I figure it out and work with it - it is starting to get easier.
I moved in to a new house. My new roommates are cool. They are guys and they are very low maintenance and no drama. There is one weird thing they do that is somewhat annoying.. they both leave empty containers in the fridge with is pretty limited on space already. I am not to sure why they need empty containers to be kept cool but whatever. There are a lot of trails around my new house and that is awesome. I do not miss being an R.A. what so ever.
I will be starting my thesis soon - I am a bit nervous about that. Hopefully it will all work out.
It is so weird to me that Heidie had to go to school for years to get her teaching credentials to teach high school kids when I on the other hand just get thrown into a college course and am expected to know how to teach with NO training.
Hello?? That is stupid.
So far this summer (since I have been back) has been pretty crazy - lots of work to be done. I just wrote the data entry file for the first half of the AAO and am training three research assistants today how to enter the data. I am hoping they can get all the data entered in this week. The Society for Research on Adolescents is in March 2010 but the abstracts are due next week so I need to start playing with the data to see what is in there.
It took me a week to write the AAO file. Writing these kinds of files has really helped me get to know Excel, Word, and SPSS. It is somewhat frustrating right now because formatting is quite a pain but as I figure it out and work with it - it is starting to get easier.
I moved in to a new house. My new roommates are cool. They are guys and they are very low maintenance and no drama. There is one weird thing they do that is somewhat annoying.. they both leave empty containers in the fridge with is pretty limited on space already. I am not to sure why they need empty containers to be kept cool but whatever. There are a lot of trails around my new house and that is awesome. I do not miss being an R.A. what so ever.
I will be starting my thesis soon - I am a bit nervous about that. Hopefully it will all work out.
Friday, July 24, 2009
could have been either one of us
I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges
I see my father strolling out under the ochre sandstone arch
the red tiles glinting like bent plates of blood behind his head
I see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks
with the wrought iron gates still open behind her
its sword tips black in the May air
they are about to graduate
they are about to get married
they're kids
they're dumb
all they know is they are innocent
they would never hurt anybody
I want to go up to them and say
stop
don't do it
she is the wrong woman
he is the wrong man
you are going to do things you could not imagine you would ever do
you are going to do bad things to children
you are going to suffer in ways you've never heard of
you are going to want to die
I want to go up to them there
in the late May sunlight
and say it
but I don't do it
I want to live
I take them up like male and female paper dolls
and bang them together at the hips like chips of flint
as if to strike sparks from them
I say
do what you are going to do
and I will tell about it
Sharon Olds
I see my father strolling out under the ochre sandstone arch
the red tiles glinting like bent plates of blood behind his head
I see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks
with the wrought iron gates still open behind her
its sword tips black in the May air
they are about to graduate
they are about to get married
they're kids
they're dumb
all they know is they are innocent
they would never hurt anybody
I want to go up to them and say
stop
don't do it
she is the wrong woman
he is the wrong man
you are going to do things you could not imagine you would ever do
you are going to do bad things to children
you are going to suffer in ways you've never heard of
you are going to want to die
I want to go up to them there
in the late May sunlight
and say it
but I don't do it
I want to live
I take them up like male and female paper dolls
and bang them together at the hips like chips of flint
as if to strike sparks from them
I say
do what you are going to do
and I will tell about it
Sharon Olds
Sunday, July 19, 2009
hello
Currently in TN to train how to code for this narrative measurement. This training is wicked triggering. The material is very detailed and I am sure my next T app will be all about how to process the things which are being dredged up from my distant past.
Lots of traveling and lots of planes this summer. NY was great - I think I am in love with the Adirondacks. If I got cancer and was given 3 months to live I would like to go there to die out. It is so peaceful and beautiful there. TN is much less humid than NY - I am bummed I didn't bring my running gear. I can see the Tennessee River from my room which is pretty fly. Tonight there is a surprise birthday bbq for one of the undergrads whose birthday is today.. after, we get to walk down along the river. I like that.
I have been living out of bags so far this summer. Very much the vagabond. Tuesday night I will finally be settling into my new home. Hopefully it will be an easy transition for everyone. Thank the stars for therapy. I am going to need it.
Lots of traveling and lots of planes this summer. NY was great - I think I am in love with the Adirondacks. If I got cancer and was given 3 months to live I would like to go there to die out. It is so peaceful and beautiful there. TN is much less humid than NY - I am bummed I didn't bring my running gear. I can see the Tennessee River from my room which is pretty fly. Tonight there is a surprise birthday bbq for one of the undergrads whose birthday is today.. after, we get to walk down along the river. I like that.
I have been living out of bags so far this summer. Very much the vagabond. Tuesday night I will finally be settling into my new home. Hopefully it will be an easy transition for everyone. Thank the stars for therapy. I am going to need it.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
The First Year
Just finished the regression final. Now I wait until Tuesday to see if I passed. I only got a B- on the midterm so I am crossing my fingers for a B or better on the final. The final is 60% of the grade. 60%!!! The stress level in the exam room today was tangible. People looked exhausted and nervous.
Regression is so expansive and detailed - it is almost impossible to understand even the general gist of it right away. The material we covered over the past nine weeks this quarter is meant to be taught over three semesters - a year and a half worth of material smooshed into you brain in 9 weeks and a final test on it that is 60% of the grade. If you fail with a C grade, you leave your life, your dreams, and all your friends in utter embarrassment and shame, disappointing your mentor, yourself, and your family. Wasting time, money, and all that time and energy of studying. The amount of stress to pass that final mounts and mounts until you feel like your going to explode. The information you have tried to retain is profound and if you don't do the iterative procedures to keep it in there you'll lose it and lose points on the final. Expending so much energy into retaining what you know and learning even more. Letting al other things in life fall away, your friends, exercise, up keep of chores, email, personal hygiene, research, the lab, t.v., music, sunshine... all unimportant - the one thing that matters is passing the final.
The final was at 8 this morning. I tried to go to sleep early but I tossed in bed for hours thinking about latent growth models, path analysis, structural equation modeling, nested interactions, anovas, missing data, fits tests, and logistic regression. I didn't fall asleep until 1 and woke up from a regression nightmare three hours later at 4 in the morning. I couldn't get back to sleep so I studied. This morning I mind vomited it all out onto paper for 3 hours straight.
After, 7 of us went to IHOP to celebrate.. bar is later tonight. :o)
I find out on Tuesday.
The other class, my core, was cognitive development. I loved that class and I read (almost) all the readings!! I had to write a lot in that class. I counted up the number of pages I wrote over the quarter and it was 51 pages!! I never had to write 51 pages in any class in my life. I don't know why but now 50 pages didn't seem to be too hard.
The final in there was pretty brutal - probably because my regression final was looming in the near future but before I could study for it I had to write a 25 page final about cognitive development. (Thanks Heidie for editing that!)
Find out on Tuesday.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thoughts of my first year..
Fast - it went by SO fast. I want times to slow down so I can be a student longer. I don't want time to get sucked away from me so fast. I am enjoying my life and I want to stay in the cocoon of school for a while longer. The older I get the less 4 years seems to last. I have learned SO much and made a few lifetime friends. Working in housing was a good experience. I payed off some serious debt. I learned some crazy time management skills and can type faster. :)
Four years left...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I am officially a second year! Hurray! In the second year, the goal is to write your thesis and get your masters. This next year is going to be very, very busy. I will be interviewing for two studies instead of just one like last year. The new study is all my own.. so I have to deal with scheduling, paperwork, interviewing, informant info, write ups, and in this study I will need to drive out to the local of the participant to visit them. The amount of hours needed to do this I am not really able to fathom yet.
Besides data collection... I will be coding and entering in data from previous research I lab collected on high risk preschoolers. I am going to a training this summer to learn how to code this data and it is very qualitative data and is very hard to code. To code I watch a video of a child narrating a story stem in play. Each video is about an hour long and to code each hour of video could take 2 or 3 hours.. then I have to enter those codes into the compute. Entering coding into SPSS can take 1/2 to an hour per participant depending on the number of IV's. Soooo I am guessing about 4 hours per participant.
I have to code 200 participants so I can run my data analysis - so I can start writing my thesis - which I hope to start by November.. I don't really want to think about the 800 hours of work that is going to take. 200 videos and 600 hours of watching kids telling a story and then 200 hours of entering it into SPSS and then however many hours to run the right analysis of the data and then the hours to write up a 40 or 50 page thesis. Wow. Good thing I am interested in this.
Trauma and it's effects on narration is a very hot item in development right now so I am hoping to publish my paper - as we have some really unique data from a very diverse group of kids.
And I will be teaching! Me teaching college students!?! Like I know what I am doing.. Thats like 25 hours a week
Also I will be taking 4 classes like always... Graduate level classes in my breadth.
I decided that being an R.A. on top of all of that would be a mistake especially if I wanted to publish my work so unfortunately I will be leaving housing - no more R.A. I am moving in with two other grad students. They are both guys so that will be so fun. They are really sweet and I will get the master bedroom with my own bathroom, patio, and side yard. It is also in the ritzy neighborhood on top of the hill. Lots of running trails and beautiful views. Ryan my future roommate was pretty funny about it actually. The neighborhood streets are all named after authors. Ryan who doesn't want people to think he lives posh calls our neighborhood the "literary hood"
I think this next year will be even better. I am excited to have roommates (not so much for rent). I am excited to be done with regression, I am excited to not be the newbie! I am excited to make friends with all the newbies!!
I need to go nap because tonight's going to be off the chain. I already have 4 people texting me about it.. as I type.. haha!
More posts can come later because I have time for a few days!!!!!
Regression is so expansive and detailed - it is almost impossible to understand even the general gist of it right away. The material we covered over the past nine weeks this quarter is meant to be taught over three semesters - a year and a half worth of material smooshed into you brain in 9 weeks and a final test on it that is 60% of the grade. If you fail with a C grade, you leave your life, your dreams, and all your friends in utter embarrassment and shame, disappointing your mentor, yourself, and your family. Wasting time, money, and all that time and energy of studying. The amount of stress to pass that final mounts and mounts until you feel like your going to explode. The information you have tried to retain is profound and if you don't do the iterative procedures to keep it in there you'll lose it and lose points on the final. Expending so much energy into retaining what you know and learning even more. Letting al other things in life fall away, your friends, exercise, up keep of chores, email, personal hygiene, research, the lab, t.v., music, sunshine... all unimportant - the one thing that matters is passing the final.
The final was at 8 this morning. I tried to go to sleep early but I tossed in bed for hours thinking about latent growth models, path analysis, structural equation modeling, nested interactions, anovas, missing data, fits tests, and logistic regression. I didn't fall asleep until 1 and woke up from a regression nightmare three hours later at 4 in the morning. I couldn't get back to sleep so I studied. This morning I mind vomited it all out onto paper for 3 hours straight.
After, 7 of us went to IHOP to celebrate.. bar is later tonight. :o)
I find out on Tuesday.
The other class, my core, was cognitive development. I loved that class and I read (almost) all the readings!! I had to write a lot in that class. I counted up the number of pages I wrote over the quarter and it was 51 pages!! I never had to write 51 pages in any class in my life. I don't know why but now 50 pages didn't seem to be too hard.
The final in there was pretty brutal - probably because my regression final was looming in the near future but before I could study for it I had to write a 25 page final about cognitive development. (Thanks Heidie for editing that!)
Find out on Tuesday.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thoughts of my first year..
Fast - it went by SO fast. I want times to slow down so I can be a student longer. I don't want time to get sucked away from me so fast. I am enjoying my life and I want to stay in the cocoon of school for a while longer. The older I get the less 4 years seems to last. I have learned SO much and made a few lifetime friends. Working in housing was a good experience. I payed off some serious debt. I learned some crazy time management skills and can type faster. :)
Four years left...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I am officially a second year! Hurray! In the second year, the goal is to write your thesis and get your masters. This next year is going to be very, very busy. I will be interviewing for two studies instead of just one like last year. The new study is all my own.. so I have to deal with scheduling, paperwork, interviewing, informant info, write ups, and in this study I will need to drive out to the local of the participant to visit them. The amount of hours needed to do this I am not really able to fathom yet.
Besides data collection... I will be coding and entering in data from previous research I lab collected on high risk preschoolers. I am going to a training this summer to learn how to code this data and it is very qualitative data and is very hard to code. To code I watch a video of a child narrating a story stem in play. Each video is about an hour long and to code each hour of video could take 2 or 3 hours.. then I have to enter those codes into the compute. Entering coding into SPSS can take 1/2 to an hour per participant depending on the number of IV's. Soooo I am guessing about 4 hours per participant.
I have to code 200 participants so I can run my data analysis - so I can start writing my thesis - which I hope to start by November.. I don't really want to think about the 800 hours of work that is going to take. 200 videos and 600 hours of watching kids telling a story and then 200 hours of entering it into SPSS and then however many hours to run the right analysis of the data and then the hours to write up a 40 or 50 page thesis. Wow. Good thing I am interested in this.
Trauma and it's effects on narration is a very hot item in development right now so I am hoping to publish my paper - as we have some really unique data from a very diverse group of kids.
And I will be teaching! Me teaching college students!?! Like I know what I am doing.. Thats like 25 hours a week
Also I will be taking 4 classes like always... Graduate level classes in my breadth.
I decided that being an R.A. on top of all of that would be a mistake especially if I wanted to publish my work so unfortunately I will be leaving housing - no more R.A. I am moving in with two other grad students. They are both guys so that will be so fun. They are really sweet and I will get the master bedroom with my own bathroom, patio, and side yard. It is also in the ritzy neighborhood on top of the hill. Lots of running trails and beautiful views. Ryan my future roommate was pretty funny about it actually. The neighborhood streets are all named after authors. Ryan who doesn't want people to think he lives posh calls our neighborhood the "literary hood"
I think this next year will be even better. I am excited to have roommates (not so much for rent). I am excited to be done with regression, I am excited to not be the newbie! I am excited to make friends with all the newbies!!
I need to go nap because tonight's going to be off the chain. I already have 4 people texting me about it.. as I type.. haha!
More posts can come later because I have time for a few days!!!!!
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