I spent sunday reading articles for the review paper due early may in the brain damage class. Now the problem wasn't that I had a hang-over. The problem was that part of me still felt drunk. Specifically, my motor reflexes were absolute shit, and I couldn't type worth a damn. I was amazed at how uncoordinated I was, especially since I otherwise felt fine.

I also spent about 2 or 3 hours either saturday or sunday photocopying 340 exams for the Primate Behavior course.

Monday was alright, mostly setting up shit for the experiment, buying this or that. I got to wake up at 7:30am (on top of daylight savings) so I could meet with my two undergrads to schedule when one of them could show up on experiment days (MWF) for the rest of the semester. Shit wouldn't print, I got schedules confused, but at the end everything was taken care of. And thankfully they seemed to like one another, which was something that I hoped would happen. Can't remember the rest of the day.

Tuesday was more stats class. I'd finished the second part of the semester project last week, so this week I was in "I don't give a drunk rat's ass about this shit" mode. I still got what was going on, but I was a petulant little fucker.

After stats I knew what was coming: the second exam for Primate Behavior, the course taught by my advisor, Dr. C. I'm the reader for the course, so I'm in charge of the exams. All 340 exams were sitting in my office, since the key Dr. C had given me for a room in the psych building didn't work.

So with 40 minutes until administering the tests, I walked back to the monkey lab (3 blocks down the street), touched base with Dr. C, ran across the busy street nearby to Independence Coffee to get my usual chai, came back, sipped chai, filled chai cup with a little cold water to make chugging possible, chugged chai, collected exams, then walked out with Dr. C toward the psych building.

It's a trying life, I know.

So after me, Sara, and Dr. C passed out the exams, it was proctor time. This was my second time doing this, I think I finally nailed down what a proctor does:

1) Look for cheaters who are too damn obvious

2) Look for people with questions and fetch Sara

3) People watch

The job is mostly #3. I confess that I've been paying way too much attention to women lately. There was one young woman in particular who sat at the very back. She was stunning in that hot nerdish way. Good God Almighty Jebus I loves me the hot nerdish look. I'll spare you (and the future me) the details. But for the record: I don't imagine anyone naked. That just seems weird.

And it was unusually hot that day. Not important, but it made for small talk amongst we three proctor folk (including Dr. C sorta).

Wednesday. Ah yeah, wednesday was lab for stats. I always think I'm going to hate lab and it's an unnecessary bitch, but I think that's old programming from last semester. As usual things went fine and the material helped me remember what we'd learned in lecture. The rest of the day was spent email text-messaging a new friend of mine at various points, reading more articles for that review paper, and putting 340 new exams into my master excel file.

All I've gotta say is this: isn't it remarkable that all of the students who failed or got D's on the 1st exam were the ones who "had to" take the 2nd exam late? 17 motherfuckers. And Dr. C knowingly (with a smile) told me some of the more amusing reasons. Apparently, for instance, it's quite common for student's grandmothers to suddenly up and die right around exam time.

So keep that in mind, intrepid college or soon-to-be-college folk: your tests kill granny. No shit.

Thursday (today). More stats annoyance. I also shot over to the lab, talked with Dr. C, and found out the tests hadn't been picked up yet. So I naturally did the most logical thing: I discussed experiment logistics with the building manager for 15 minutes. Then, with no time to spare, I ran to the testing service building, got the exams, walk-ran to psych., and triumphantly walked down the long auditorium seating to put the tests down for Dr. C.

But it wasn't my fate to kick back and hear about primates. My final and biggest goal for the week was coming up:

I was going to give an hour long presentation on a paper for the Brain Damage class.

I'd basically finished the powerporn presentation last week, but I had to rehearse, obviously. And rehearse I did. I count about 6 full-length times--and I had the thing down pat.

And just so I could get in one practice run before the actual presentation, I snuck into the conference room and practiced there. Good thing my building key opens it. At the end I realized that my throat was really dry--and then I remembered some advice about not practicing the day you had a talk. Ah well.

About the talk itself: it went well for the most part. Where all the other 6 people in the class had been halting or generally bad speakers, I was one enthusiastic son of a bitch. Listening to me, you'd think I was a porn lobbyist selling The Art of Fuck. Toward the middle I faltered some here and there. I'd occasionally been doing the eye contact thing, and Dr. Vem didn't look at all impressed. That kinda shook me, plus the fact that my throat was more dry than a dry thing. But I kept going. I was only stopped twice when my total ignorance of cross-breeding mice to get knock-out mice and some other point were revealed. But they didn't mind: I was a psychology dude in a sea (or thimble) of neuroscience people.

I took up all the remaining time, which come to think of it must've been over an hour. But people actually clapped half-heartedly and softly. That was better than the no clapping at all some of these people had gotten.

Afterward, as is our custom, Dr. Vem and I exited the building together from the 6th floor. In the elevator I asked him what he thought. He smiled and said that the talk was 'very nice' and that I'd done a good job in covering the material. He added something about it being natural that I wouldn't be familiar with the techniques used in the papers, since I was a behavior guy. He mentioned that he'd have the same problem approaching a talk that was more behavior-oriented.

But now that I think about it, he did seem impressed that I was able to do justice to techniques that I really know nothing about. To me the logic made sense with some reviewing, it was just the particulars of how they were done that I didn't know.

* * *

Oh, and I went to open mic night. It was crap this time. A few people showed up that normally don't, though, which was cool. As a sidenote it seems odd that for an allegedly super party-going person, Jenny seems reserved in most of the cases we've been out at the same grad student event. She's clever and fun, though, so she helped make the night palatable.

But yeah: I sucked at playing King's Corners or whatever other new card games came along tonight.

And I've been at home ever since, reading political articles or writing this update

* * *

The next four weeks aren't going to be kind, what with:

1) The review paper for the Brain Damage course (11-12 pgs, some of which I have already since I'm gonna re-use some sections of my old emotions paper)

2) A short presentation for that review paper (around 15-20 minutes)

3) The final part of the stats project

4) Starting a 30 minute talk for the biological psychology area group meeting. These meetings are weekly. I can cobble something together quickly, but I obsessively over-practice for talks.

* * *

And finally: no word back yet about the fellowships. At this point I just wanna know. I don't even care if I did or didn't get either one, I just want to have it out of my mind so I can stop thinking about it--and checking my mailbox and those gov't websites everyday.

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