On voice neurocognitive psychologists and diagrams

On Tuesday, my sort of supervisor showed me what she'd done to my data the other day to put in her own paper. It was this intelligent and beautiful rainbow spectrum of a graph, all blue, red and yellow, and where data overlapped it became purple and orange... it was preeetty! And it was the data that I'd collected! Sadly I won't be using it for my own project cos that would feel too much like cheating. Turned out she wasn't the only working on pretty diagrams. That same morning, one of the other francophones in the lab also showed me his crazy complex multiple graph diagrams that he'd been creating. And then yesterday (after a right cuffufle of forgetting the right usb stick with the version of my project that I'd been intensively working on over the last couple of days) I got some highly useful feedback from my actual supervisor.
At least half of what he said could be condensed into this:-
- "Put in some cool diagrams here and here and here and here"
(it may have been a summary of what he said but I assure you, the word "cool" made an appearance on several occasions). So I had a go at some "cool" diagrams today. I made a reasonable effort I think, but none of them come even close to the rainbow spectrum graph I saw on Tuesday :( siiiigh...

Lessons for the week:
- Programming matlab is a useful skill to learn
- Voice neurocognitive psychologists like "cool" diagrams
- Never put your usb stick in your jeans pocket so you don't lose it. You will inevitably forget to take it out the next day

Man am I becoming geeky... see what final year is doing to me!

lab life

I have spent many hours in the Voice Neurocognition lab in the last month and a half... and now the end is nigh, I can't help but reminisce (in bullet-point form) of my toe-dip into the world of psychology research

Highlights have to include:
- my supervisor (bizzarely similar to my dear friend Loik), what with her delightfully dry french sense of humour and her curses and pffffts and groans (primarily aimed at computers)
- getting to do everything bilingual styleee :)
- the laid-back-ness of the lab
- getting to see people I like for a little bit every day because they have to come in to do my experiment :)

The less so fun moments include:
- getting a mouth full of cigarette fumes every time I enter the building (seems psychology academics like to smoke A lOT)
- the fact that everything took much longer than I expected it to, it's slightly disconcerting that my experiment was so based on the ability of other people
- running up the steep hill to the dept which always warms me up sufficiently in this freezing cold, and then overheating the minute I step into the stiffling air of the dept
- the laid-back-ness of the lab (only the phD students are ever in before 10) which causes problems when one has a subject booked in for 9 and no one who has the keys is in yet

Just 8 hours left this week and I have all my data, woop woop!!

on being a samaritan and sniffling

Today was my first shift as part of the international welcome programme. I feel like a double agent with a double agenda! On the one hand I'm trying to be a good paid university employee, on the other, I'm trying to be a Jesus loving "good Samaritan" i.e. going out of my way to help my neighbour (the international student in need of friends). I'm loving the fact that I can basically do both at the same time! I sooo want a job that allows me to do that after I graduate!

In other news, I spent last week camping on what rapidly became a swamp (as seen in this photo--->) on the Welsh border at the national CU Leaders conference Forum... much much banter was had, mud, frugal but funny meals, more mud, severe weather warnings, getting our cars stuck in the ditch on an escapade to the pub, laughter and some excellente chances to get fed and taught and trained! I especially recommend these talks here which you can listen to online. "Eye-opening" is probably how best to describe them. After a week of wet socks, I think we're all sniffling now...

summer begins...

hmmm summers... not sure what I think of them really! Nearly all of my summers, except perhaps the last one have involved lots of waiting and trusting till I reach the end of my tether. This summer has been no different. I have been trying and applying and trying and applying to go away on mission abroad this summer and nothing has suited or fitted or worked out. I was supposed to go to Romania with Africa Inland Mission and now (because I was the only confirmed accepted member of the team) I'm not, clearly God has other plans! There was a jury citation sticking out like a sore thumb this week but I didn't get picked for that. So I've been job-hunting and recording an album and going to what has seemed like a million birthday parties (which have included...

a trip to Dumfries, a surprise for the flatmate, about 20 bouquets of flowers in our kitchen, seeing people I haven't seen for ages in a nice pub and an international food/fancy dress soiree) and hanging out with folk and cooking a lot and eating icecream and going to the park and catching up on sleep and saying goodbye to internationals (a post devoted to that will follow), hmm maybe (with the exception of goodbyes and mega uncertainty) I do like summers... :)

blue sky patches in the cloud that is exam-time

Sunshine, wearing flipflops, jamming/studying/wandering in the park (of which I do have pretty photos, but these are on my flatmates computer which is currently down in London with her fiancee, doh!), heartbreaking news, playing in the pitchdark planeterium with the band, new beginnings, giggles, silly late nights, scrabulous, getting fed, plenty banter, bonding over exam pains, fluishness forcing me to have a day off when I needed it so much, hearing and being freshed by the gospel yet again at one of those leader days run by them, sunshine, good jazz (both live and on lastfm.com)...

And I finally finally saw Once! Bizarrely realistic! :- from that first jamming encounter where everything just clicks, band practices in tiny bedrooms, the jamming dinner party... and all so beeeeyooootiful!

And the cloud ends (at least for me) on Thursday afternoon.... oh yeah :)

the joys of january

And it's fast becoming a late night in the GU Library writing up the spoon-fed project we did, testing whether Dweck's Entity Theory can be applied to our level 3 psychology class... It's due in tomorrow. I also have 3 hours of exams on Monday and a french essay and translation to hand in on Wednesday...

meh