Happy 200th Post-iversary!

I didn't even notice that my last post was my 200th post on this here blog.  And to think that in the beginning I didn't even know if I'd keep it up!  It turns out I quite like blogging, so I think this thing will be around for a while.

Well, I made some good progress on the ol' dissertation this week, but I'm at a bit of a standstill.  The problem is my data set is so, so small that I don't really know how to do statistics on it.  I had what seems to me to be a decent idea just now, but I don't want to take it too seriously and type up all of my results based on this slightly wacky idea, just in case my advisors won't let it fly.  When you're doing your stats is not the time to get creative with your dissertation writing.  It takes a while just to do the stats, and then it takes way longer to write it up, and I don't want to sink a bunch of time into something that's just going to get shot down.  So thankfully, I am already meeting with one of my advisors tomorrow, and I'm going to run this idea by her and see what she thinks.

What this means for me is that I'm already very slightly behind on my self-imposed schedule, I think.  Sort of.  But I also think it'll be okay.  My plan is to spend three weeks on each of my three chapters, and then I will have one month to write up my introduction and conclusion before I start teaching my class in July.  Well, this is the end of my third week for this chapter, and it's not really done yet.  I've made pretty good progress on it, but I don't know if I'm going to make it by Sunday night.  We'll see.

I think it's okay because the data analysis shouldn't take as long for this next chapter.  I think.  Then again, I always think that, and then it takes way longer than I anticipated.  But I can start analyzing data for the next chapter while I finish writing the current chapter, and then I'll sort of be working on two different things at the same time, and that will probably actually be better than just working on one thing.  It is really daunting knowing you only have one thing to work on!  It just stares you in the face all day long, and if you don't want to do it, there's nothing else you can do to procrastinate, and you just feel guilty.  And you gotta watch out for that guilt spiral!

But now I don't know what to do with myself.  I need to start reading books or something.

ch-ch-ch-ch changes

Holy moly...

I mailed in a check for a security deposit on a townhouse in State College, PA today.  It is real.  I am moving there in August, and I even know exactly what my address will be.  And dudes, this place is ca-yute.

Speaking of real, I'm working on a presentation for our lab meeting on Monday, where I tell people what I think is happening with my dissertation data.  (Good timing, considering I just mailed away several hundred dollars, the need for which is predicated on me saying something intelligent about these very data.)  I am struck by how much more real my data seem when I put them in a Power Point presentation.  Maybe it sounds silly, but when I'm staring at graphs and numbers on my computer, or in my notebook, I feel like I'm kind of faking it.  But when I make a nice presentation with an intro and a conclusion and everything, I almost start to believe myself.  When you take random graphs and numbers and structure them into a reasonable story, with predictions and results and citations, it starts to become within the realm of possibility that I may have done or found something interesting.

(from xkcd)

checkmark for Friday!

I'm done!  I just submitted my first research grant!!!!!!

I'm done!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't even care if I get the stupid thing at this point.  I'm just glad I don't have to think about it and re-write things anymore.  And now I am totally going for a run.

whine whine whine

I don't wanna write any more documents for this research grant, I don't wanna.

At least it will be over by Tuesday.  :-/

On Being Home (reprise)

Here I am, at my mom's house in Illinois.  Every time I come back for a visit, I find myself driving aimlessly around C-U for a bit, just sort of... trying it on for size.  I'm back in town for my 10 year high school reunion, and I also find myself thinking about all of the things I've done in the past 10 years.  In a way, high school seems so recent.  I remember it so vividly, just like it was yesterday.  And in another way, it seems like an eternity ago.  10 years ago, I had probably just decided for sure that I was going to the U of I for college.  Since then, I've graduated from college, spent a year of my life in France, gotten married, moved to California, spent 5 years of my life in California, nearly completed my Ph.D., gotten divorced, and now am fairly certain that I am moving to the other side of the country in just 5 months.  And what's truly mind blowing is all the people I've met along the way.  When I think back on all the wonderful people who have become such an important part of my life, to think that I didn't even know that they existed 10 years ago is just astounding.  People who have touched my life and my heart, who have changed me as a person, who have made me grow and think and feel things I never would have imagined.  And just think - it's probably going to happen again in the next 10 years.  How many people are out there that I haven't met yet, just waiting to come into my life and make me forget that I ever could have existed without them?

This is what's weird about being back in C-U: it doesn't change.  It's essentially exactly the same as it always has been, and yet it feels so, so different than it did 10 years ago.  But the strange part is realizing that the reason it feels so different is because I'm different.  I look at it through very different eyes than I did 10 years ago, and to know that I feel the same on the inside, but I'm demonstrably quite a different person is very weird.  It's hard to remember what I was like 10 years ago.  I've always been a little bit too old for my age, so it's not like I was completely immature, but within the past year or two I've really started to feel like my age suits me for the first time in my life.  I feel like 28 is about right, because I finally feel like a real adult.  A young adult, certainly, but I've really been growing in to my own skin recently, and I feel like 28 suits me.

So where does this leave "home"?  I always feel wistful when I come back here, and it does always feel like home.  But now that I'm here with the knowledge that I'm about to move away from California, I'm surprised to find myself feeling a bit reticent.  When I moved to California nearly 5 years ago, I never thought it would grow on me as much as it has.  And now, 5 years later, driving around Champaign on a cold Wednesday night, I've been psychologically "trying on" life in a small college town again.  How would I feel if I were moving back here?  Would I actually want to do that?  Because I'm moving to a very similar place in a very short amount of time, and I'm mentally preparing myself for some reverse culture shock.  Berkeley has gotten into my bones in a way I didn't expect, to the extent that it's much more difficult than I anticipated imagining myself living in a small college town again.  I am still so, so thrilled and excited about it, and I think it will feel really right once I've actually moved and settled in.  But realizing that there are things about life here that are annoying or foreign to me now is a very strange realization.

It will be really nice to see everyone from high school, too.  I'm looking forward to a very nice but very strange week!

Henry W. Coe State Park

It's Spring Break!  Jevon and I had been talking for a while about going camping over Spring Break, but there's still snow in Yosemite, and we didn't want to be gone for too too long anyway, so we opted to explore a park in our own backyard: we packed up the tent on Sunday morning and drove down to Henry W. Coe State Park, which is around 90 minutes southeast of here.  I had no idea what to expect going in, but it was really beautiful, and we had a great time.  We went for a long-ish hike after we arrived yesterday afternoon, ate a camp food dinner (apples, peanut butter, cheese, hardboiled eggs, and a few hunks of bread), and then read until the sun went down, at which point we promptly crashed.

Then we woke up this morning, ate more camp food, and went for another short hike before packing up and driving back.  It was a great little trip!

There's our little orange tent, on the left.  What a campsite!

The barn by the Visitors' Center.

Looking down the Visitors' Center steps on the fog this morning.

More morning fog.

California poppies on our hike.

Cool tree!

Beautiful weather yesterday.

Look at this huge turkey!!

Parked at the campsite.

Morning fog, and Jevon sitting at the picnic table.

The fact that I'm leaving California soon makes it all the easier to appreciate trips like this.  This is a beautiful state, and I am so happy to have called it home for a time.

But it's time to see my other (real) home soon - I'm leaving for Illinois on Wednesday, and I hear a small mountain of snow awaits me!  See you all soon, my Illinois loves!

well would you look at that, Part II

Pssssst.  I think something may actually have happened in my dissertation experiment.  Maybe not - it's too early to tell - but I made some graphs today, and it looks like something interesting might be going on.

I'm whispering because I am not getting my hopes up yet.  Instead, I am going to go back to labeling sound files so that I have more data.  And then I will come back and try again for real sometime next week.

In other good news, my grant proposal is also trucking along.  I did the biosketch (including the personal statement, grumble grumble... what am I, applying to college or something?) and I finished up the project summary today.  Progress, progress!  And a Skype meeting with my sponsor tomorrow, who will hopefully have nice and helpful things to say, and then I'm headed down to Stanford to see a very dear friend defend her dissertation tomorrow afternoon.

Go go go!

well would you look at that

I've been putting many hours lately into writing up a grant proposal that would give me three years of my very own funding.  It would be my first big grant, and I'm really, really hoping I get it.  (I'm keeping my hopes squarely in check, though, partially because of this crap.  Don't get me started on how angry this makes me.)  The writing itself has been taking a very long time.  I've been writing for a few hours a day, at least a few days a week.  Most days it actually goes pretty smoothly, but there were two or three days last week that were just like pulling teeth.  Write, erase, write, read, write, erase, read, erase, etc.  For three days in a row.  That was kind of rough.

Anyway, I have the bulk of the research proposal finished now, and I think it's getting close to its final form.  But it just occurred to me this morning why it's felt like so much work; they ask for 11 point font, single spaced, with half inch margins.  So even though it's "only seven pages", I just realized that that's actually a ton a text.  Just for fun, and to feel like I've actually accomplished something in the past few weeks, I plugged the text into a new document and made it 12 point font, one inch margins, double spaced, like most papers are.  And this thing is 20 pages long!  I've been working on a 20 page paper, and I didn't even know it!

(As a sidenote, it's been interesting realizing that this is what my life is going to be like for the next few months.  Roll out of bed, make some breakfast, and sit at my desk and write and analyze data for a few hours.  I've taken to going for a run in the evening, to clear my mind and to get out of the house for a bit, and all told, it's actually not a bad life at all.)

There are so many pieces left.  I have to write up a "biosketch" of who I am and all my qualifications, with a personal statement about why I'm qualified to conduct this research.  And some stuff about why Penn State is a good sponsoring institution to conduct this research, what their facilities are like, and what my on-the-ground support will be like.  Thankfully, my sponsors have done this before and have a lot of that language ready for me (especially since I've never actually been to Penn State, and the only stuff I know about their facilities is what I've gleaned from their website, and what they've told me).

So there's a lot left to do, but the big, hard part is almost done now, and I just have all the niggling little bits and pieces to pull together.

Today, I am giving my workshop on R again, and I need to keep working on analyzing my dissertation data, and then I'm getting Ethiopian food with friends tonight.  It's going to be a good day!

brain freeze (but not from ice cream :( )

I am SO TIRED of working on this research proposal.

Blah!!!!!

feeling like a big ol' dork

So far today I have finished my Skype meeting with my potential post doc advisors, begun stewing a very delicious smelling rabbit (because hey, why not? I've never cooked a rabbit before), and played the piano for a good long while.  Now I am munching on baby carrots and sitting around in my new Huckin' Wugs t-shirt (see photo) and not really knowing what to do with myself until our frisbee game tonight.

What a huge dork.  I mean, seriously.

... How weird is it if I read a statistics book?  I have this thing lately where when I don't know what else to do with myself, I just work.  But I'm enjoying my work a lot right now, so I think it's okay.  And one can always stand to learn some more about regression models, right? ...

On the very bright side, there are currently 13 people signed up for my summer course on language acquisition!  And my Skype meeting went very well, and I'm very excited about my potential post doc project.  I will be quite disappointed if I don't get to pursue it, at this point.

So things are looking pretty good.  Busy, and up-in-the-air feeling, but good.