Now where was I...last wednesday, I think...

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I'd never prepared so little for what sounded like one hell of a serious confrontation. At 2:30pm that wednesday, I was to hold a defense of my first project for my advisor, one of the demigods of emotions research, and one of the leaders in clinical depression.

That past night, though, I'd finished the conclusion for my revised cognition paper, and finally satisfied myself with how good the defense paper was going to get. Spent nearly as long on it as I did the original draft, but it seemed like it might hold up to Brad's onslaught--at least enough to get me an A for the course. Seeing as how I also finished the last of the required readings by 1:30am, and went to his seminar class from 9:30am to Noon, I didn't give myself much time to prepare.

And so for about 2 hours, I hastily snipped this slide or that slide from all of the presentations I've recently done and printed them out. Combined, they provided the experiment description, graphical design, and the methods in a small stapled packet. I figured more visual aids were better than none, although the defense paper had every relevant graph I could think of. Didn't have any page numbers, as I suddenly realized during my defense, but it had graphs.

Given that it was a wednesday, Assistant N was here doing data entry, so I had to wedge myself to get by her a few times. It's a small, small office. There's literally no other place she can do it besides my office. That's only a slight pain in the ass. Thankfully she's self-sufficient now, so she doesn't get in the way as much as she used to.

So with my packets, my own copy of my paper (which I hastily printed out), and the sports coat I'd conveniently left here at the lab for whatever reason, I walked over to the psych building. I'd reserved the huge meeting room, just like before, and I set up the chairs and tables just like before: three on one side, one for mine. Since Dr. C (my advisor) was the first to come in, he chuckled that we could just form a circle or have some other arrangement that wasn't like a tribunal.

I told him I wanted to be judged. And I did.

Dr. A came in shortly thereafter, looking bubbly and happy as usual. She told me that I'd done a really good job on the paper. I thanked her, but I didn't think much on that thought. Soon after, Dr. D came in. He looked pleased to see me. I'm not entirely sure why.

And then it began.

I'd decided to run through each of the experiments I'd done, moving through the course packet and occasionally refering to my (pageless) paper for this or that graph. Dr. A kept her eyes and attention focused on me the entire time. Dr. C mostly looked off and out of the window since he'd heard variations of this spiel 4 times--but he did offer useful comments when someone else mentioned something. Dr. D yawned a few times but was following what I had to say, occasionally making notes.

To cut the meeting part short, I basically got some suggestions about different sorts of statistical analyses I could do. A few had occurred to me that I wasn't sure of, but some others seemed like they could be useful in a published article. Dr. A also mentioned an interesting facet of the depression research I hadn't known about, which could explain one of my findings: apparently, a little stress helps to bolster one's resolve in dealing with stressors. It's only when they become overwhelming that people get depressed.

As I stood up after explaining the whole deal, everyone looked terribly pleased and enthused. I of course made myself look as serious and comported as I could be.

I left the room for about 5 minutes while they deliberated. I already knew I was going to pass--everyone does unless they're a useless blackhole for the department and an actual harm to it. I'd hoped for some criticism, some sort of pushing of the kind that Brad did for my paper, but it seemed I'd done a thorough job.

Eventually the door open and Dr. D, of around 500 articles of fame, shook my hand and gave his congratulations. I was officially a second year student. Dr. A came out and again mentioned that the paper was great and I'd done a really good job. Dr. C and I then headed over to the lab and talked about some other official hurdles I have to jump, as well as some stuff about the new project.

All in all I guess I should have felt happy. Other students had treated it like a big deal, and Dr. C said afterward I could relax and have a drink or something.

And I, I felt nothing. Regarding the meeting, I'd just read email today about how my committee was "very impressed" with my work and progress etc. It was sent to the graduate coordinator and my area group chair. I just assumed it was making me sound good for the sake of sounding good. I suppose I just see it as noting satisfactory achievement. It's only if something is going wrong that I usually feel some emotional response, usually as far as work goes.

So that's the end of the official first year project stuff.

- - -

Since then I've started to grade short answers for the psych of motive test. Got through the first 2 questions of about 100 people last night. The tediousness is genuinely wonderful. I love the mindless routine of it. I may finish that up today, but I have until next thursday to grade the final question. Thankfully, most of these students seem to think alike and write answers in mostly the same way--with some interesting variations--so it's much more straightforward than I thought.

Likely, I'll spend most of today studying for my stats exam on tuesday. Only re-read the first few lectures in my notes. The exam from last year doesn't look bad, so I'm not terribly worried. I could cut it close and go to this psych graduate student party on saturday, but that would be irresponsible. I have too much work to do.

Speaking of which, I need to start reading articles in order to begin drafting a fellowship (read: scholarship for grads) proposal for mid-November. This is the one I got an honorable mention for last year, which basically means: "If we had extra money, we'd have funded you. But there were a few little things that kept us from actually giving you money." I'm a hell of a lot more conversant with my area of focus now, so I think I can blow them away.

It'd be nice not having to be a Teaching Assistant for the rest of the time I'm here.

- - -

So that's what I've been doing and what I'll be doing later on.

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