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.

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!