And look at the first page.

And you wonder: there's gotta be a trap somewhere in here because it can't possibly be this straight-forward?

Well if you haven't, you have vicariously lived what the beginning of the stats midterm was like for me. By and large, the questions were straight-forward. For the most part, the questions were easy. On the whole, I think 'I kicked its scrawny ass' would be my frame of mind. There were a few really tricky ones--not so much because they were tricky, but my brain was getting a little tired and stressed at the end. Thankfully the prof. is kind and merciful, and stuck around for way long after the test was officially over. I took my very slow and good time about reading over my test at least twice. I'm thinking the other 13 people who were working after time appreciated it, too.

After that I had two hours to re-read all of my note-ified Brain Damage articles for the upcoming class. I quickly re-read three articles and listened to some instrumental U9R music (lacking access to WiFi internet radio), since the two musicians we have for the game remake group are damn good at their work.

My goal: to find a few intelligent questions to pose to people, so I'd make my mark in the prof's head that I had, indeed, discussed stuff that day. I found some really juicy things to bring up.

The amusing highlight was probably the 4th article, which I had to speed-read. Y'know that weightless feeling you got as a kid when you swung really high on a swing? That was kinda comparable to blasting through something published in the International Journal of Neurochemis*ry. Not that it mattered or that we even covered that paper, but just in case anyone else brought it up to score points (ha).

The student presenter for one of the papers wasn't there that day (yesterday, on thursday). She'd been snowed in while checking out a medical school in New Hampshire. To compensate, our prof. lectured for about an hour and forty minutes over the history of glutamate's role in the brain. Glutamate is an amino acid that acts to cause an increase in activity, generally speaking. We shot through an army of slides on molecular biology minutiae, covering a week's worth of material. I loved it, every single nuanced and supremely hardcore "hard science" piece of it. Which is funny, since studying stuff like the Kreb's Cycle in high school was absolutely boring crap to me at the time.

We ended up ending class without any discussion. Still, since I really wanted to talk about an idea I'd had, I flagged the prof. over and he seemed quite eager to hear what I had to say, as usual.

My idea was basically this: at Mt. St. University, I'd learned about a brain chemical called that--when released even if small quantities--shuts down brain activity to 'emergency mode'. We're talking just breathing and a heart-beat mode, nothing else. This chemical gets released when there's way too much energy being consumed by the brain.

Now, for the other piece of the equation, there's a major release of glutamate after you have a stroke or traumatic head injury, and because of glutamate there's a massive increase in brain cell death. This massive increase in glutamate really drives up the energy needs of the brain, eventually (I would assume) exhausting them.

So you have glutamate -> increase in massive energy consumption

And you have emergency mode chemical -> brain shutdown because of massive energy consumption

So I'm thinking that this emergency mode chemical might be another factor in causing all of the damage that happens in a brain days and weeks after a stroke.

The prof. didn't know much about the emergency mode chemical, but he thought the prospect was really interesting and he'd do some reading, get back to me, etc. We also had a long talk while returning the powerpoint projector to the neurosci. office. Mostly we talked about cellular inflammation, which is exactly what I study and how it can acutely (i.e. 'at a given moment) and chronically affect behavior and make us more withdrawn from the world.

It's awesome being able to exchange ideas with the Brain Damage prof. He has the same biological research interests I do in general, but he's far more 'hard science', while I'm a weird hybrid of psychology and 'hard science'.

Later on that thursday night, of course, was open mic night. At first it was a little slow and the lights were on full blast for some bizarre reason, but things gradually got better as the hours wore on. More people came, the acts (kinda sorta) got better, and much playing of the card game Asshole was had.

If I remember right we had: Xtian, Xtian's charming and remarkably nice girlfriend Jenny, Tat, Bryan, Scott and his female friend Lee, Lindsay (who comes every once in awhile), her boyfriend, and some other people.

What made this open mic different was that Bryan wanted to go out for some pizza, and so did I, and so did Scott and his friend. Now I hadn't realized it at the time, but breaking away from the main group (which we thought was temporary) would lead to some very interesting revelations. We got to Casa di Ass, ordered some slices, sat, ate, and talked about largely irrelevant but fun shit about grad school. Lee is a grad student in philosophy, y'see, and thinks we psych folk are fucking odd but pleasant critters. After awhile she had to go--and that's when it got interesting.

See, we knew absolutely nothing about Scott. There are some folk in our incoming class who don't socialize in the department, and he'd been the most enigmatic. So when Bryan asked him full out that he didn't know much about Scott, the guy started to talk about himself a little...and a little more...and then at one point he opened up to us and didn't stop for awhile. I couldn't have imagined all of the hardships that he's been going through, and how fucked up some profs. in the department have been to him. Bryan has a similar problem with his advisor, so they commiserated some on that end. I guess I thankfully don't have to deal with games and politics in the department. Thank God for Dr. C being an ass-kickingly good human-being.

Bryan and I are pretty similar in that we know how to listen when it's appropriate. He gave out some suggestions, I gave out some. In general I got the sense that we were trying to help Scott sort stuff out, and after awhile I think we helped him see that things were getting better for him and to stick to it. He'd climbed out of one hell of a hole, y'see, and he was still struggling some to get out. I can relate, I've been there a few times (to a lesser degree than him).

After that we got to talking about department politics and some of the games Bryan and Scott (among others) deal with. Every department has skeletons in its closet. I'd heard some really disturbing, borderline shocking things, when I'd been waiting outside this secretary's door to drop stuff off. I'd never told anyone about them, so I decided to tell these two. Apparently, for instance, there've been a few grad students who have committed suicide in the building in recent years past.

Regarding the fucked up shit that they mentioned, though, I still have yet to get "hazed" or ridiculed or given shit. or really have to have dealt with any kinds of games or politics. It's been hard, no doubt, but those've all been academic problems, not personal (at least around the department, I mean).

Bryan admonished me a few times that I work way too damn hard and worry too much. He's very good-natured about it since we like each other, and he's right. There are people who take seminar courses, barely do the work right, and get A's--same grade as me, but there's a world of difference in how we got there. Really, the only reason grades matter now are for some fellowship applications. I guess I keep telling myself I'm busting my ass just in case I don't get any of these fellowships I applied to this year. After all, it might be the grades on my transcripts that make the difference.

At least that's what I tell myself, and everyone else.

So at around 1:20 Scott had to jet back to his apartment. Since Bryan lives pretty close to me, we ended up walking and talking more. Mostly it was about me working my ass off and how alot of people had coasted to A's because it's the "Har,vard mentality" around here. Profs. give A's even when they aren't deserved, or boost up grading curves to give more A's to people who don't deserve them. Here I'd thought it was less commonplace to get the grades I did last semester. Fuck, Scott got the same grades I did and he was never in class, always at least 25 minutes late to our stats exams, etcetera.

Basically Bryan doesn't want to see me stress out as much. I appreciate the sentiment. Can't say anyone else in Insanity has expressed it. Alot of people think he's a smartass or a goofball or some shit like that, but I really like the guy. I respect him and what he stands for, which is anti-bullshit, basically. I'm so used to playing The Man's game that I forget I'm doing it.

So, just like a past few times, we talked in his apartment's stairwell and eventually I jetted off. Not before he gave me a phonebook from behind the door. I'd mentioned earlier I needed to get my trenchcoat dry-cleaned. He said I could look it up at the time. Getting the book made me laugh.

Friday has been ok so far.

I mailed out my DMV paperwork shit.

I finally figured out why I had this weird feeling I had something to do on friday: I had something to do on friday. I was supposed to meet one of my research assistants at 1 and give them a tour of the monkey floors. I'd completely forgotten when we'd scheduled it, and apparently I hadn't put it down in my appointment book. I felt terrible and scared since she'd obviously come by and talked with my immediate supervisor. I called her, rescheduled, apologized, sent an email to gabe, apologized and such. Later on we talked and I mentioned it. It wasn't any big deal to her, since everyone forgets meetings from time to time. I took that as a sign not to worry and took care of alot of meeting time appointments after that.

Been writing this thing for over an hour now. It's not exactly Shakespeare, but I guess I still feel a little weird about today. I don't have any immediate goals to fulfill. I'm gonna get started on some stuff I need to do for the future, I think, so that I don't have a crunch period at the end of the semester. That's all I'll be doing this weekend, next week, and during spring break.

Well, that's not all I'll be doing.

I learned today that there were only sniggling questions from the animal committee, which Dr. C can answer in short order. I could actually start my projects by next week (!). More realistically it'll be spring break, when I've gotten our assay kits ordered, gotten the camcorder shipped that Dr. C bought for me to record behavior, gotten some better idea of how in the hell to score that behavior and make it interpretable.

But it looks like things are moving ahead! I'm more excited than scared.

And after that long post, I wish you all a good weekend...and thank ya for your patience.

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