1/10th of the way there!

I have completed the first semester of my graduate school career. Woohoo! Only nine (or more? who knows) semesters to go. It's amazing how quickly the time went by. Sure, some parts draaaaagged and I thought I would never make it to winter break (the NSF fellowship experience comes to mind). But all in all, it was a decent enough semester.

Now I'm spending my time doing productive things like catching up on television shows, watching all the DVD's I got for my birthday and Christmas, hanging out with friends, and eating Christmas cookies. Oh, and playing Spore. I know there have been a lot of negative reviews about the game, but so far, I'm pretty impressed. Yeah, there are things that could be better and things that could change. It took me forever to get out of the "creature" stage (you're basically an animal running around, eating, and mating), and that got a little frustrating. And there's definitely a learning curve. But, no game is perfect, and especially for this nerdy biologist, the fun of running around collecting new body parts to evolve with and trying to ally with other critters far outweighs the negative bits.

For Christmas I also got The Future is Wild (Discovery Channel and Animal Planet). It discusses animals that might exist far into the future (5 million, 100 million, and 200 millions years future) after humans die out from planetary changes and whatnot. For example, marmots might evolve into large rodents capable of surviving an ice age, and wolverines might evolve into a larger sabertoothed version of themselves that preys upon the evolved marmots and other creatures. We don't know that these animals will evolve, but scientists looked climate changes, current species, past species, and evolution, and came up with all these species that could plausibly evolve. One thing bothers me though. All the scientists featured on the show as the experts are male, as is the narrator. I double checked the credits to be sure, and yep, all seven science consultants are white males. There isn't even a racial minority or one female to try to fill some quota. What's up with that, Discovery Channel?? Surely there were some prominent female evolutionary biologists, paleontologists, or natural historians you could have consulted.

What is that bright light up ahead??

The end of the semester is...in sight? Weird. I have surprisingly little to do. Today I turned in my last statistics assignment. Now I only have an essay and two finals left (stats and animal cognition). Oh, and one more journal club meeting. Then I get almost a whole month off to relax (eg, write grant proposals, read lots of papers, and analyze more data). YAY!?!

We interrupt your regular program...

Today, we are going to deviate slightly from the usual biology nerddom to look at two videos.

This first one is about a month old - I meant to post it earlier, but see previous post. But I like it, it's a good message, and so I'm still going to post it. Here you go (it's captioned if you go to the YouTube page and turn them on): Keith Olbermann on Prop 8




This second one is hilarious (but also a good message). And it has that Barney guy in it from "How I met your mother" (alas, no captions): Prop 8 - The Musical

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Slacking...

Actually, not slacking. Well, slacking with the blog posts, but that's only because I've been busy not slacking as much in other areas. Like, you know, minor things like grant proposal writing, statistics homework, weekly essays, data analysis, presentations... You get the idea.

To expand upon the above... I did get the grant proposal in. There were lots of revisions, some banging of head on wall in response to revisions, and many late nights involved. And I might have hit "submit" a mere forty minutes before the deadline. But it got in! Now I get to wait six months for results, by which time I will probably have forgotten about the thing entirely. Or repressed the memory. Something.

As for statistics homework and weekly essays, I have only one or two more statistics problem sets after I turn in tomorrow's, and no more weekly essays for animal cognition (the last one was due today). Granted, I have finals in both classes (ew), but on the plus side, I don't have animal cognition next week, and we're having a pizza party during the last week of class. You are never too old for in-class pizza parties.

Data analysis has progressed nicely. Mostly. I just might have lost an important scrap of paper, and had to remake some sound files and rerun the data (twice), but it all turned out okay in the end. The past week has involved a great deal of math and conversions between things I'm only semi-familiar with, but it's been a good learning experience. Unfortunately, the math resulted in me rejecting the main part of my hypothesis (*sigh*), but the data are interesting nonetheless. All this data analysis led up to today (well, yesterday I guess, since technically it's Wednesday now) when my advisor and I gave a tag-teamed presentation at my alma mater. That went quite well. We were very well recieved, and at least one student is interested in working in our lab for research experience. I'm hoping to recruit some undergrads from St. Kate's to work with me this summer. They get research experience that they can't get at St Kate's, and I get peons. I mean, assistants. Win win.

Tomorrow (er, later today) either 2/4 or 3/4 of my classes and seminars are canceled, so my Thanksgiving break starts at least two hours earlier than I thought it would. Not that I'm a fan of Thanksgiving (don't like turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes...I'm weird, I know), but I am very much a fan of not having to sit through classes at 4 and 5 pm, particularly when four days of sleeping in are so close.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Elevated cortisol levels

Lombard research has been put on the back burner, and all focus is currently on my grant proposal. The research proposal section is lacking, and needs to be much better by Sunday morning, so that I can make a powerpoint about it in the afternoon, because I have concert tickets for the evening. Monday I present my proposal idea to my lab group so they can give feedback before I present the "real thing" to the behavior group on Friday. Oh, and I have to have final drafts of all three essays (personal statement, previous research experience, and research proposal) by Friday. This is more a self/advisor imposed deadline than anything, but it's still a deadline.

My advisor is predicting late nights this week. I am predicting no nights. :( I have homework (a weekly essay and weekly stats homework) to do too. And a committee meeting to prepare for and conduct. I'd like to think it gets better from here, but I don't think it does...

Not fringe science, but almost as cool.

I'm currently involved with my Tuesday obsession (otherwise known as the tv show "Fringe"), so hopefully this post won't be too disjointed.

Research is going very well. Data is mostly analyzed. That was incredibly tedious, but went relatively quickly. I now have lots of graphs. All of them are quite interesting, some more than others. Some are stat sig too...but not necessarily the super interesting ones. I thought they were most stat sig originally - the error bars were ridiculously tiny! - but alas that was only because I didn't calculate the standard error correctly the first time. Oops. But all is well now.

(Sidenote: This is a really creepy show to watch when you're alone in the house.)

I've started a second project, in conjuction with another student in my cohort. Today we made our sound files. It went a lot better than I thought it would. Only a couple of hitches, the main one being my lack of DOS skills. Yes, we have a program that runs in DOS. On the plus side, I can now navigate in it decently.

The other big thing going on is a grant application. Lots of writing and editing and rewriting. And then doing it all over again. Hopefully it will all be worth it, in that I get the grant. But even if I don't, it's at least good experience. (But I'd really like the grant!)

Back to the show...

Woohoo!!

All the raw data has been gathered! Ten frogs, five noise conditions each, three variables per condition. Lots of data. The Excel spreadsheet I have been working in the past however many weeks is over 4 MBs and takes a bit to send via email. I no longer have to deal with quirky software...but as soon as my advisor and I get our baseline amplitude value, I get to do lots of math. (Where is my calculator??) As much as I hate statistics class, I'm kind of hoping that I can do some data analysis in R, at least so I can get some practical application out of it.

Also, I have a computer in my office, finally! I haven't actually used it yet becuase I've been basically living in the lab, but it is there and I plan to utilize it tomorrow.

I'm trying to decide if it would be a good or bad idea to do the same thing for my grant proposal as I want to do for my thesis. The idea is vague right now, but I need something for this grant proposal. It is due in 43 days. I suppose I might as well...I'll at least figure out if I hate the topic or not.

Also - I flipped the title and subtitle for this blog. It was a boring title. It got demoted.

I like lists

1. Data analysis is nearing completion! (Well, completion as compared to a few weeks ago.) I have eight tests left to analyze to get raw numbers. Then all we have to do is subtract some things (once we figure out the thing to subtract), and run some statistical tests, and ta da done! Er, there might be a few more steps in there too. But the point is, there is a light at the end of the tunnel and I will soon get a break from sitting in a windowless room clicking buttons in the quirky software and copy/pasting things in Excel.
2. I have a computer for my office now. At least, I'm assuming it's there and set up. I haven't actually been to my office yet this week (see above), but all signs point to it being in my office at this very moment. I am delighted, because now my desk won't look so bare, I can check my email and such without taking up lab computers, and I can do that in a location with windows.
3. I still hate statistics class. Friday, he had us flipping coins to determine probability. I'm in grad school and I'm still flipping flipping coins in class. *sigh* Today there were new symbols and weird vocabulary and even my interpreter didn't quite know what he meant.
4. I have way too much reading to do.
5. I have an inkling of an idea for my thesis, but absolutely no idea what to do for a grant proposal due in less than two months.

I have some links I want to post, but it's nearly midnight and I want to get some more work done before bed. I'll post them soon(ish).

Still alive

I did indeed survive my first day of grad school, no worries. The long silence is a result of statistics homework that takes eight hours to complete (!!), a paper due the second week of school, a ridiculous number of BBQ's (what do grad students do in winter when they cannot BBQ??), data analysis and battles with quirky software, and me squeezing in sleep where I can. Welcome to grad school Emily!

I'm enjoying it though - I think I'm happiest when I'm busy. (This does have a limit, however. If you plot busyness on the x-axis of a graph and happiness on the y-axis, it would probably look like a Normal bell curve. If I get too busy and insane, it's all downhill from there. (Look, applied statistics knowledge! The course is useful!))

Data analysis is plodding along. It's slow and rather tedious but it's getting there. Ten tests down, only forty more to analyze. I'm also in the planning stages of an experiment for this winter, in conjunction with another student in my cohort.

Looking at my schedule before school started, it seemed like I would have a lot of free time. Then school started and suddenly there were all these weekly meetings I need to attend. My weekly calender has a lot less white space now. And while the white space may technically be "free", I don't feel very free. My stack of articles and books to read is growing quite rapidly. Most of it is interesting material, but it's just a LOT of material to read and digest and remember. Quite a bit of it has to do with sound as well, and I've never really worked with hardcore sound stuff before, so I'm trying to figure that out in addition to reading the behavioral stuff. Since I haven't yet fulfilled my physics prerequisite, my advisor suggested an independent study on the physics of sound. I'm really hoping we can do that next semester so that I don't feel quite so befuddled about what's going on physically in the experiments I'm reading about.

*gulp*

First day of school tomorrow.

T-minus 3 days

School starts in three days, and I don't even have my notebooks set yet. I have purchased my textbooks though. I'm not pleased about the cost of my statistics textbook...or that I must once again enter a stats classroom. "Evolution and Animal Cognition," however, I am really looking forward to.

I have finally, mostly, recovered from my three week flu -> bronchitis -> pneumonia episode. Still have this annoying cough, the ribs/muscles on my left side still feel odd (they think I strained the joints or tore muscles), and walking for over a quarter of a mile at a time makes me wheezy. I hear that takes awhile to clear up though, so I'll take what I can get for now.

Now that I'm off the couch, I've been back in the lab. I finished a third of the data analysis for the Lombard experiment. Granted, it was the tedious but easy third, but a third nonetheless. I started the other two-thirds on Friday, but now I have to deal with the "quirky" software again. My files are finally small enough that I can manipulate things, but when I try to import data into Excel, it does it's own thing. Logically, data should arrive at the highlighted cell. Illogically, it arrives on the previous spreadsheet in the file, somewhere in the vicinity of cell A1729. My scrollwheel finger is getting sore. Progress on this two-thirds will be slow.

Deviating from work-related talk, I have to comment on the latest political happenings in the US. Palin? Seriously? I know he's 72, but I didn't think he was senile yet. And if he thinks that he's going to get the Hilary votes because he picked a woman as his VP, well, then he's definitely senile, or else has a really low opinion of females. We are not dumb, we know the difference - Palin is not Hilary. I would love to have a woman VP or president, but no way am I going to vote for someone who is strongly pro-life regardless of situation, pro-creationism in schools, wants to drill for oil in the Alaskan Arctic Refuge (in the middle of the caribou migration route and calving grounds), and denies that humans have anything to do with the current climate change and global warming...just because she's a woman. I'm way smarter than that, thanks.

Continuing the negative theme, my city has thrown democracy out the window this week. The RNC hasn't even started, and already people are being held and arrested, houses are being searched (without the inhabitants seeing the search warrant beforehand), and laptops, cameras, and phones are being confiscated. I hate to see what will happen once the event actually begins. Read about it here and here.

On a brighter note, Barack Obama responded to fourteen questions regarding science in America (scroll down to get to the questions and responses). I'm pleased with most of his answers, puzzled about a few, and not so pleased about a few.

Sick day...or twelve

All frog related work has currently been put on hold, at least in my little sector of the world. I'm sick. It started with the flu (the achey kind, not the stomach kind) twelve days ago. That cough became bronchitis, and that bronchitis has now become pneumonia. So besides impressing the urgent care and emergency room staff with stunning x-rays of my lungs, complete with a pronounced white blob of pneumonia, and watching the Olympics and episode upon episode of Star Trek, I haven't been doing much lately. I plan to continue that plan for another couple days (hopefully with the exception of events involving urgent care and ER staff) and hope I get better soon. The umpteen drugs I've been prescribed should help with that too.

Plugging along

I'm about halfway through the summer program I'm in at the U. Friday evening I finished and turned in the lit review paper I had to write. Whew! Now all I have to do is analyze my data, write up the paper about my research (including the results of my analysis), and do a presentation on everything. I'm not too worried about the presentation, and I think the full write-up should go fine. I've already written bits and pieces of it for other things, so I just have to combine things and make everything flow.

The analysis part, on the other hand, is being the frustrating bit. I'm supposed to use a particular program to analyze my sound files, and I've worked with it a little bit. However, the manual has proved to be very little help (it says what certain things do, but does not tell you specifically how to do things or where to find specific buttons and commands), and last time I was there, the program froze every time I tried to manipulate something. I was told it was "quirky", but I thought that was referring to it's lack of user-friendliness, not it's inability to function... I'm going in again tomorrow, so maybe I'll figure things out a little better then.

In between all this data analysis, I have a giant stack of print-outs to read about sound and sound analysis, and a bunch of stuff to pack so I can move into my new place. Busy busy busy....

Endless paperwork

I knew the grad school application process would be grueling and involve lots of forms and paperwork (online paperwork, but paperwork nonetheless). But I thought it would end once I was accepted to and accepted a school! Not so. There is currently a rather large stack of forms - like, physical paper forms - that has been residing on the piano bench for the past week, waiting for me to finish filling them out. This has been a lengthy process, involving much research into which insurance policy I should have (but my father did this, whew), the address of the local newspaper (yet unfound), the dates of various vaccinations (need a new tetanus, ick), and my student ID number (also yet unfound), as well as numerous signatures.

I'm curious why I even need this large stack of paper forms. I applied online to go to college, and that was four years ago. I applied to go to grad school online - a much lengthier form - and that was just seven months ago. So why is there not an email form for me to fill out about my vaccinations and which insurance policy I choose and which newspaper to notify about my acceptance to grad school? Online forms would make my life a lot easier. I've had several forms filled out for a week, but they only sent one envelope for all the forms, and I'm not going to waste an extra envelope and stamp just to send in two pieces of paper. If the forms were online, though, I could have sent them in and crossed them off my list days ago. And there wouldn't be so much paper being used.

Anyway, assuming I can track down my local newspaper's address, my forms are all set and ready to send off tomorrow. Just in time for the holiday weekend.

End of the season

There haven't been any pairs for the past four nights. I was hoping to get about ten more pairs so I could test ten more males in my experiment, bringing my sample size up to twenty males. That would have been a good size, and enough to write a paper on and get published. (That was Mark's idea actually, to get more males, test them, and then write and publish a paper in my first year of grad school.) It was a good plan, but alas the frogs did not cooperate, and so it appears that I will have to wait until my second year of grad school to publish a paper.* I did not expect the frog season to die down so suddenly. We were still getting ten or so pairs a night last week, then there was one relatively cool day and they just stopped.

I have this week off from the lab. It's nice to be able to sleep in late, although I'm starting to feel guilty about sleeping until (or, ahem, past) noon. Next week the summer program I am doing through my fellowship begins. It's only one or two days a week until the end of August, but I have to do some research, write a paper about my research, and present my findings, so I'll definitely still be busy.

Also, I changed the banner picture again. Now it's a pond - much more appropriate to frog-related research. I'm not sure if the green corners match the green in the picture though. I'm not a perfectionist at all, no...

*However, I still have not written the paper about my brain lateralization research, like I have been meaning to do for, oh, the past six months. So I could still work on that (in my free time??) and get that published. I actually really want to, because it's pretty cool stuff.

Data

I have some! Between the frogs I tested yesterday, the couple that the evening shift tested for me yesterday, and the ones I tested today, I now have data from ten males. Ideally, I would like to test about ten more males, but the sound chamber is needed for other tests, and I at least have some data to work with. I'll get more next summer, and use what I currently have for the research I'm supposed to do for the summer program I'm in at the U. (Yeah, apparently even grad school can have summer school. It's some special program because of the fellowship I got.)

I've also done more fiddling with my website and this blog. I'm pretty satisfied...at least for now. Everything looks up to date on the website, links are all good, and pictures all show up. I realize that, according to the banner picture on this blog, it looks like I do my research in the mountains. I wish, but no. I just don't have any pictures of ponds. Mountains will work for now. I really do need to bring my camera to the lab and field though. I've promised several people I'd get a picture of me in my fashionable chest waders and headlamp.

New school, new blog

I've been pondering having a "work" blog for some time now, probably since I started tinkering around with my main website last summer. Earlier this week I was at a conference on Inclusive Science, and someone gave a presentation on blogs. Many of the others in attendance were intrigued by the idea, and having seen other people's blogs about their graduate work, I thought I'd go for it and set one up. After several hours of tweaking color schemes and page designs, I think I might be satisfied. Well, not really, but it will due for now. The color scheme matches my website for the most part, at least.

Since this is a "work" blog, I should probably mention work. The Gray Treefrog (Hyla chrysoscelis) season is nearing its end, but before it does I'm squeezing in my first real experiment as a grad student. We only just got things going today, and the kinks aren't all worked out (definitely not...), but so far our few results look intriguing. I won't say anymore for now, in case I jinx something.

Other than that, I think I might have a new interest, or at least a semi-new interest. I've always enjoyed teaching, and part of my undergrad Senior Honors Project involved discussion and suggestions for teaching d/Deaf students in a hearing classroom and making sure they are included. The Inclusive Science conference touched on many aspects of inclusion (including gender and race), although deafness was not one of those topics. Between my interest in gender and my work on including deaf students in mainstream classrooms, I'm now quite intrigued about Inclusive Science as a whole. More research definitely needed!