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!

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.