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A week ago, on a tuesday, I'd realized to my dismay that I was missing the canon article for my cognitive neuropsych class. I'd photocopied all the articles at the beginning of the semester before they were..misplaced, but somehow I hadn't gotten this one. And what with class happening the next day, I got anxious.

I looked around the psych building for people in my class, needing to make a copy, only a copy. Good thing, then, that I came across Ferret Jen. She owns two ferrets, hence the nickname. We'd spoken on a few occasions about my working with monkeys and how awesome that seemed. Yet, we'd never gotten a chance to just sit down and talk. Even with the gimp-paced crisis on my hands, we sat and talked for a good 45 minutes about grad school and life in general. Her copy of the article was at her place, unfortunately. She did say that I could drive over, visit, and copy it if I needed.

I was busy as all hell, but this sounded like a neat idea. And she had two ferrets, which demands a visit to pet the tubey critters.

I tried getting a hold of Sara, my lab colleague, but I didn't get a hold of her in the next few hours. So I decided to stop worrying, started reading some of the other required articles, and waited until Ferret Jen got out of her lab meeting.

It's rare that I take the beltway, so I had to figure out just where the hell the on-ramp was in the tortured traffic rat maze that is downtown Maddie. But I found it, the condo community, and Ferret Jen's place pretty easily. She seemed happy to see me, invited me in, let me stroke and play with the more friendly of the two ferrets, and gave me a tour. She has this giant pink stuff thing that you can launch yourself into, go fwoof, and just have it form-fold around you. It was ultra-comfy. I was digging the atmosphere and the hospitality.

Even if I was working on readings and she was working on her cog. neuro. paper, we sat around and talked for an hour. I was surprised that she was slightly older than the other first year grads. She'd gotten her M.A. and done clinical interventions of those with severe mental disorders for awhile. It was fascinating to listen to, gave me a perspective that wasn't just experimental-based. She really wanted to get into a more biological orientation, but her advisor seems hard-nosed about accomodating her.

She also related a now familiar story re: me...which was basically that when she was giving a bio-oriented lecture for our class, she was hoping against hope I wouldn't launch in and get all Mr. bad-ass on her. This amused the shit out of me, not in a condescending way, just that I'd be perceived as being a molecular biology expert. I'm not. I'm competent, but ever since I gave my own class presentation on the stuff, I think I kinda impressed/wowed people into thinking I totally knew that shit. That and I wore a sports coat while doing my thang, hm. She'd even told Brad, our prof., about not wanting me to say anything. Apparently he laughed at that one. I guess I've picked up more stuff second-hand than I thought.

Any case, after we talked she went back to working on her paper and I sat around reading articles. I went through the muchly sought after canon paper first..then started reading the rest of the others. Occasionally we'd interrupt one another with some conversation. On toward 11:30 I decided to go. I mean the place was great and she's a fabulous host, but I had to re-re-re-re-edit my revised paper for the same class.

I'd been that fucking busy. Seriously.

So we bid goodbyes, she said we should study again some time, and I was all 'yo'. Yo = Yeah sounds cool.

And of course I stayed up 'til 4 or 5am editing my paper. And when I woke up at 8:15, I felt...fine. It was damned strange. I should have been a mental slug, but I got up, read through my paper, made some final additions, printed it, printed the reference section, realized I'd collated different editions (which differed by 5 words), re-printed while brushing my teeth, and ran my ass to class with the completed spiel.

I managed to sound intelligent through the papers I did and didn't read. Funny thing is, Brad (the prof) prompts a lot of questions after giving you all the info you need, or after a student has presented one of the target papers to the class. So I was on-par pimptastic off 3 hours of sleep. Turning in the paper felt mostly blah, but that was as good as it'd get.

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On that paper topic, fast-forwarded a week later, I was running around trying to do Teaching Assistant stuff. I was hurting for some lunch. I decided to check my department mailbox before then...and sure enough the thing was in there. I read the first page. There was a line alongside most of the introduction. All it said alongside it was 'Nice.' I just couldn't look at the thing, not on an empty stomach. So I headed to the newly discovered Chinese Buffet. I mean I'd walked past the bastard often enough, but I'd never discovered its wonders. Come to think about it, this entire journal has been threaded through a series of chinese buffets.

I had some of my usuals, headed back to the psych building, and read through the paper. I got one minor comment, followed by what I hadn't really expected. An 'A'. See, I'd gotten a 'C' on the initial paper...and I knew Brad was a major hard-ass in terms of grading. He wanted to push you that extra distance, give you a challenge to work toward. And I'd apparently met and exceeded his expectations. His comments were short (and I paraphrase): "Very nice. I hope you appreciate the difference between the 'before' and 'after' versions as much as I do." This is not light praise if you knew how hardcore Brad is.

Just this past wednesday, for our final class meeting, Brad seemed to want to make sure that I appreciated just how damn good the final product was. I'd anticipated this, but I was really, really tired that morning. I've been to go by his office hours and thank him for pushing me. No one else in grad school really has. I don't count the insane fucking madness of learning how to be a researcher in a monkey lab.

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There's a hell of a lot more to come.

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