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.