| So... My life is more ridiculous than ever before in terms of stress and work-load. Honestly, for first AND second year, I'd have maybe a couple of weeks of insanity and then I'd have a week or two where it would let up and I would have time to regroup. Not the case anymore. This year, I have to start getting ready for the next crazy week before I even finish the one I'm in. Falling behind even the smallest bit is detrimental because it throws everything off for the current week AND the next week. It isn't even reading, no I haven't done that regularly since week one of this semester. Instead, I read my text in preparation for testing, which is actually working quite effectively in terms of learning...performance, however, is another issue. I'm happy to say that I haven't failed anything this year so far. Unless I failed my first Biochemistry test (I don't know because I never picked it up due to a week long flu-related absence), which I wouldn't be surprised about. I also wouldn't be surprised if I failed the one I wrote for that class this morning. I really am trying, it's just...very challenging. But, even with the many blows to my student morale and stamina, there have been some very interesting things that have happened. Because I couldn't get into any other courses when I was registering this summer, I picked up "Neurocognition of Language" as my 1/2 elective. I was nervous cause I had only taken one ling. course before and wasn't a huge fan, but what else could I do? The second issue with this course is that it is "qualitative" meaning it is based on a project. The course breakdown is: "Mid-term" which is actually on ALL course material - 30%; Project - 65%; Quiz based on presentations - 5%. I've never been in a course like that, and when I realized what I had done by registering for it, I was very afraid. So I spoke with the professor, a very successful researcher in neurolinguistics, and I told her that I didn't know if I would stay in the course because I was nervous about the linguistics part of it. She reassured me that I would do just fine so I stayed in the class. I just had my last project consultation with her on Thursday (after many failed attempts to schedule said meeting) on my own as neither of my group mates could make it. She was very excited to tell me about research she was doing and to educate me about some other cutting edge neurolinguistics research. I was actually, amazingly, fascinated. Even though I dislike linguistics I was very interested in pretty much everything she had to say. So, we worked through my poster and made small talk in between. At one point, she made mention of her desire to have more neuroscience students in her lab, and of course, like any good 3rd year honours student coming up on applications for a 5th year thesis term, I praised the merit of having students from multiple disciplines in a lab (which was genuine). After proofing my poster, she came back to the thesis thing and I expressed interest, asked questions, etc...everything my boss up in HR always encourages me to do when meeting faculty. And she said "Well Kaitlin, your work is very neat, and I think you'd be a good fit in my lab, I'd like to encourage you very strongly to apply when the time comes. I'd really like to have you." Hm. I was...very surprised, but...happy, and I'm hoping I do a really amazing job presenting on Tuesday to kind of seal the deal, just in case I didn't do stellar on my exam for the course. That's one more option on top of one other in psychology (who I'm most interested in working with: stress related behavioural psychology) who I met in the summer and seemed interested in my ideas. But, again, I've found that it's sometimes better to take the courses you know nothing about than the ones you're super interested in. I think I would really benefit from working in the Neurocognition lab. Second kind of happy thing that happened...I wrote this PTSD analysis paper about the movie, "The Brave One" for my Stress and Trauma course a few weeks back. The paper was due on the same day as our mid-term for the course and it was just...very stressful. So, I didn't end up starting to write the paper until 12pm on the day that it was due at 5pm. I finished it by 4 (so I could study from 4-5), not a long paper (maybe, 2500 words) but it was challenging as I've never taken any clinical psychology classes before. I wasn't expecting a good mark, even though it's worth 25% of my mark, I was going to be happy with a 75%. BUT, I picked it up today and I got a 90% on it and an "EXCELLENT paper!!" comment from the marker. Of course, with a comment like that and my perfectionist mentality, I quickly flipped through it, kinda frustrated with myself for being only 10% away from a perfect paper. So what did I lose marks for? Bolded headings...apparently the APA manual I used was 1 edition out of date. That sucked, but even so, I'm happy with the 90. Living is...kind of a rush. |
