Totally Shot Down

Ouch! I put my research needs out there and I get shot down by a certain prof, heretofore titled "Really Mean Prof." As a researcher who's trying to gather data outside of the normal intro psych pool, I'm really dependent on the kindness of instructors to allow me to test their students. But, I'm even more dependent on instructors to provide extra credit so that students have an incentive to participate in my research. If I had grant money, I could just offer monetary incentives and tell the instructors not to worry about it. But, alas, no such luck. I'd have to be at some other university for such luck to be bestowed upon me, but I probably would have less freedom to conduct my own studies.

I asked politely, if a little presumptuously, that Really Mean Prof let me test her students (with a little nudging about extra credit). Really Mean Prof emailed me back with a curt response, informing me that she doesn't give extra credit because students go to all the effort of doing extra work that does not fulfill her learning objectives. Then she wished me luck with my research.

Ooooh! She did not even bother being kind about the rejection. It was almost as if she was insulted by my request. So I reworded my request to sound more conciliatory and suck-up-ish and sent the email off to two other profs.

Sigh! Really Mean Prof has no chance of being on my life-altering dissertation committee anymore. Take that, Really Mean Prof!!!

Back from the Best Conference Ever

Seriously, that was an amazing conference. I loved everything about the experience. I flew into San Antonio last Tuesday as my parents drove into town to pick me up at the airport. We made it to the hotel and it was a beautiful historic hotel. I loved the gorgeous antiques. It was so unique. My room opened out into an inner courtyard surrounded with lush tropical plants. My room was on the end and separated from the other rooms by a non-used fire escape stairwell. It was so quiet and private. The beds and pillows were amazingly comfortable, and again, it was furnished with antiques. There was a separate sitting area that lead to a hall with the bathroom and on towards the bedroom. It felt like home.

The next morning we checked out the free breakfast and to our delight, we feasted on eggs, bacon, hashbrowns, fruit, orange juice, and coffee. We walked to the conference an hour early because I forgot to print out the schedule. So we wandered around the Rivercenter, which was a shopping mall next to the hotel and riverwalk. My parents explored the riverwalk, art galleries and shopped while I sat in on two, three-hour sessions a day. I had a whole hour and a half for lunch and we would grab food and sit on the patio right on the river, surrounded by music and lush plants, followed by leisurely walks or shopping.

The first presentation that I went to changed my whole life. Perhaps I'm exaggerating a little, but I discovered that someone was using IRT to develop neuropsychological tests and examine the effects of ethnicity, language, and reading to test bias. It was riveting. And now I have a direction for my dissertation. I'm going to see if I can gather data from my new neuropsych externship and apply IRT and SEM to neuropsychological results of different populations (e.g., dementia, comorbid psychiatric patients, TBI). The results also showed that controlling for reading level significantly attenuated the differences in performance for ethnic groups, which supports my idea that reading instruction has an impact on cognitive development.

The other talks were not as life-altering, but still good. I spent the late afternoons with my parents, who were having the time of their lives as well. Overall, it was an amazing trip. I loved San Antonio and I actually think I'd love to live there at some point in my life. The Riverwalk was a delight, the sights and sounds were exciting and invigorating, the food was fabulous and there was such a nice feel to that place. I hope there will be another conference in San Antonio sometime soon.

Aaaaargh!

Argh! It's taking so long to program this task in Superlab! Hey, you Superlab people! The design of your program is not conducive to my particular paradigm!!!!!!!!!!

E-prime, I miss you so much. You were so beautifully put together. It would have been so easy to use your program. Why don't you accept string input?!?! Why don't you offer such a sweet deal for student purchasers?!?!

Sigh......

Yep, this is the beginning of the end (of the semester, that is...)

This has been an absolutely crazy week. Perhaps I was unconsciously putting off starting my research projects because it just takes up so much time. TIME!!! I like my time, very much so. But, things have some how twisted around in a weird fate that may allow me to get out of testing completely if all goes according to plan. (Wait! "Fate" and "plan" do not go together in the same sentence very well. Huh! I guess I'm sleepy...)

I just heard back from the Neuropsychologist about the extern position. He would like me to take the position. Unfortunately, I had gotten myself into a situation with research such that I had to overbook myself in order to accommodate all of the participants I was going to test. I thought that it might take awhile to get the position going and by that time I could just request a slightly later start date. But, today, the Department Chair chatted with me in the hall and asked if I had any new news to report. I was completely confused about what he was referring to until he mentioned being in contact with the Neuropsychologist. "Ohhh! Yeah....that....uhhhh..." So when I finally made it back home today, I had a message waiting for me from the Neuropsychologist. He even wanted to invite me to a seminar that he is giving to the interns. Ugh! I booked myself to test participants for the rest of the semester!

So I took drastic measures and wrote up a snazzy, enticing email to send to the first-year master's students, hoping they'll take the bait and do my testing for me. Oh, pleeeease work! Because after the Department Chair's warm expectation that I'll receive that externship, to the Neuropsychologist inviting me to a seminar before even starting (how kind to include me with the interns), I just feel like I can't beg to start five weeks later.

In other news, I've been inundated with uplifting experiences in the last few days. I asked a new temporary prof if I could test his classes and went to all 5 of his classes to give a little spiel. In between his classes all day, we chatted up a storm. He has very similar interests as I and a similar background in cognitive neuroscience, also the same teaching style and attitude towards students (all positive). He thinks on the same wavelength as I do. I enjoyed picking his brain and delving into deep topics. It was such an exhilarating, intellectual experience! Plus he's teaching a graduate seminar next semester and I'm excited beyond belief to take it, especially when I felt out interest among other grad students and discovered that my whole cohort is probably going to take the seminar and my favorite non-traditional grad student is going to take it is well. She is absolutely brilliant and really contributes such richness to the discussions.

Furthermore, I found out today that he does reaction time, stimulus presentation software, research on normals and was hoping to collect some data. My advisor was considering getting Superlab for the whole computer lab and it would be a perfect set-up for him. But, my advisor fizzed out on the idea. So I'm going to try to convince her to move ahead with it now that we have another person with definite interest in using the software.

Wow! And I ended up talking to my previous thesis committee member for 45 minutes, and again, I felt exhilarated. He is absolutely brilliant! I just love talking to brilliant people. And finally, one of the other new profs, the tenure track one, back from a visiting stint at Harvard, gave me the ultimate compliment. He saw me coming down the hall and motioned me over, saying he wanted to get ahold of me since last week when I had helped his grad student prep for a presentation. He just wanted to tell me that I was smart. At which point, my eyes bugged out and I became all flustered in massive embarrassment. He's been around enough grad students to be able to spot the sharp ones, he said. My voice became all high pitched as I avoided eye contact and thanked him profusely as if I'd never been called smart before. But, I tell you, I've never been called smart by a prof before. So I was completely caught off guard. I hemmed and hawed that it could be due to the fact that I've been in grad school wayyyy tooo looong, trying to humbly attribute my smartness to environmental factors. The expression on his face told me that he didn't buy it.

But, alas, I'm my own worst critic and I unfortunately believe my own disparaging thoughts towards myself. But, this last week has certainly worked to build me up a bit.

"But, I wasn't intentionally trying to steal her identity, officer."

"It just happened accidentally." You know, it's never a good idea to pretend to be someone else, because this might happen to you.....

I recently changed my house phone number and must have picked a...how you say..."fresh" number. Because now I'm getting a bazillion solicitor calls for Mary Allen**. As I was busy reading my chapters and articles for tomorrow's class, I received four or five calls from the same mortgage company, looking for Mary Allen. I tried selecting the option for "this is the incorrect household," but the automated system refused to accept my bid for peace.

Finally, the last time the automated system called to tell Mary Allen to stay on the line for an important call, I decided on a lark to pretend I was Mary Allen:

Automated System: "Please press 'one' if you are Mary Allen."

Me: "Sure, I'm Mary Allen." Presses 'one.'

Automated System: "As confirmation, please enter the five digits of your zip code."

Me: Thinking to myself: "Hey, last time a solicitor called for Mary Allen, they actually said her address to confirm that they had the wrong number. So I know that Mary Allen lives in the same town as me." Presses the five digit zipcode for the town I live in.

Automated System: "To confirm your identity, please press the last four digits of your Social Security Number."

Me: Thinking to myself: "Oops! This is not going to work, but here goes..." Presses the last four digits of my Social Security Number.

Automated System: "I'm sorry that is incorrect. Please press the last four digits of your Social Security Number."

Me: Thinking futilely to myself: "Hmm...maybe if I do nothing, they'll think I'm having problems and transfer me to an operator so I can tell them to stop calling me."

Four seconds later.....

Automated System: "Please press the last four digits of your Social Security Number."

Me: No response

Four seconds later....

Automated System: "Please press the last four digits of your Social Security Number."

Me: "Fine!" Randomly presses four numbers.

Automated System: "Thank you. Please hold while I connect you with a customer representative. This call may be recorded and monitored to ensure the quality of your service."

Me: "Oh my God! I actually pressed Mary Allen's social security number! What are the odds of that happening? Like a million to one??"

Automated System: "I'm sorry. All our offices are closed. Please call back during normal business hours, which are.....and on Sunday from 10:00am to 6:30pm Eastern Standard Time."

Me: Looking at the clock: 7:00pm. "But, you are the ones who called me at this time!!!" Oh, wait! Maybe it is a good thing I didn't end up talking to a customer representative, because I would have had a lot of explaining to do....

So Mary Allen!! You are on notice!! Not only do I know your address, but I now have the last four digits of your Social Security Number!!

Now if only I could guess her mother's maiden name.

**Names have been changed to protect the identity of the persons involved. (Not that I haven't already compromised said identity.)

Where did all my time go? Part II

Okay, phew! The research assistant called me back and was prepared to make this schedule work. Good. Good.

But, I can say that this heralds the beginning of the end-of-the-semester crunch. I'm not sure if I should be happy that this should be the kick-in-the-butt that I need or sad that all my time is going to be sucked in the vortex of testing. And three weeks down the line I'm going to be kicking myself for not preparing my papers ahead of time. Hmm...I know myself so well that I can predict my future behavior and feelings, but can't seem to change the present behavior that leads to such.

Where did all my time go?

I just realized that there is very little time left in the semester and I still have three research projects to initiate. Sigh! Testing participants is going to take up all my time. Plus, if I get this externship, I'll have even less time to test participants. I wish those participants would test themselves. I'm having some difficulty with one of the research assistants who is signed up for field experience to do research with us, which means that she needs to get a certain amount of hours completed. The problem is that she doesn't respond to my emails and when I try to call her, she hedges, saying she can't take out huge chunks of time from her job. Then when I try to re-confirm with her, she doesn't answer her phone. I'm almost afraid that by the time we actually start testing participants, she won't show up for her testing sessions. Argh! Where are all the good research assistants?!?!?!

In which I try to become as interdisciplinary as possible

An amazing opportunity fell into my lap a couple weeks ago. An alum decided to create a neuropsychology externship for a grad student in the psych department. So I put it my curriculum vitae, as did one other grad student. Because there was two of us who expressed interest, the Neuropsychologist from the Hospital had to interview us both. The other grad student interviewed last week and she told me that she didn't really want the position, it's too much of a time commitment. So I interviewed today and it went okay. He seemed to indicate at the end that he still needed to find out if the position would be accepted by the administrators and then he would let me know. Since I don't know business-speak very well, I'm assuming that means he decided I fit the position better (which I do, the other grad student was just looking for any old practicum because it's a requirement for the Ph.D.).

For some reason, I don't think I'm as excited as I would have been years ago. Long ago in a land far, far away I made a difficult decision between Cognitive Neuroscience and Clinical Neuropsychology. I chose the former and I feel like it is a little unusual to have this opportunity to see what I would have missed out on. In fact, this opportunity is almost impossible to come by, I actually tried to apply for a neuropsych technician job after leaving my previous program, but I didn't get the job because my master's was not clinical. I'm almost a little hesitant about the position. What if I like it so much that I begin to regret my choice of NOT getting my Ph.D. in Clinical Neuropscyhology? Yech!

Therefore, I'm going to believe the title of this post. My education is pretty diversified: Experimental Neuropsychology master's, some Cognitive Neuroscience with fMRI thrown in, as well as Educational Psychology filled to the brim with philosophy and measurement theory. I've already had a chance to find out what it is like to be a project coordinator of a major research grant in a Research Center. Now I get to check out what it is like to be a neuropsych technician.

By the end of all this, I'll probably decide that being a prof is where it's at. Yep!

Relief! Today was much better

Phew! I'm feeling much better today. It's funny how I grumble when by myself, but the instant I'm around other students and profs, I perk right up.

Today in class my prof was going to do a demonstration on the data I sent him on my strategy assessment questionnaire (hmm, I think I need to change that title). This short survey assesses a person's strategies that they develop while doing the Tower of Hanoi task.

The purpose of the task is to get all the disks from peg A to peg C following a set of rules. Only one disk can be moved at a time and a larger disk cannot be placed on top of a smaller disk (but the reverse is true, a smaller disk can be placed on top of a larger disk).

The prof did an item analysis on the survey and found that the survey violated some assumptions of classical test theory. Yessss!!! (I'm sorry if you don't know what I'm talking about, just smile and nod.) So now that means that my pitiful cronbach's alpha of .52 is is not an appropriate measure of the task's reliability (Yes! Throw that alpha in the trash can!). But, unfortunately the items had correlated error terms (No! Say it ain't so!!) and the survey didn't appear to be unidimensional (Nooooooooooooo!!!!!!).

But, the prof told me after class that by throwing out a couple of the items, he found that the survey fit a Mokkon scale (Beautiful, I think I'm going to cry tears of joy). A Mokken scale is a special case of IRT in which the items are ordered from least to most difficult, but the items do not have a meaningful interval between them (i.e, can't say that one item is twice as difficult as another).

So all is right with the world...

I'm frustrated, among other things

I am really bothered about something that happened in class today. Now, I know it shouldn't matter, but it does. We were taking turns talking about our self-chosen articles and one person talked about an article by Ferrerah (sp?), Brown, and Campione. I really admire these researchers and they are very big in the field, which sets the stage for my subsequent reaction. So this student explained how the authors were studying the size of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) (which is the amount one can accomplish beyond one's current capabilities with assistance from a more capable peer). Any time a student needed help, the researchers would prompt with a suggestion that began as very abstract and progressively became more concrete as the student needed more prompting.

For some reason, which does not fully make sense to me, the instructor had a problem with the methodology, preferring that the authors start closer to the child's zone of proximal development. Then all, I mean ALL, of the other grad students chimed in and started denigrating the study. And I'm sitting here thinking to myself, "What the heck is the problem? I don't even UNDERSTAND the problem!" The only way this could possibly make sense is if everyone thought that by starting at a different point, you somehow modulate the size of the ZPD. If you start closer to the ZPD, the ZPD will get bigger???? No, sorry, that doesn't make any sense.

So right after the prof joked about how we were tearing apart their paper without having read it, I stated that I thought the linear, ordered nature of the prompt from abstract to concrete sounds appropriate for establishing the intellectual development of the child. If you start at an abstract level that is higher than all of the children's capabilities, then you can objectively determine the size of the ZPD as you get closer to each child's capability. The capability level should be constant regardless of what difficulty level you initially present to the child (of course, I didn't say it quite so eloquently on the spot).

But, anyways, for some reason this episode really grated on my nerves. I'm not sure if I still just don't understand their perspective, or if I'm annoyed that they slandered researchers I hold in high esteem, or if I'm being intolerant towards what I see as a lack of intelligence on their part (especially in comparison to said researchers who know their stuff). Sigh...I think it's the latter.

Anyways, the other thing that bothered me about today was the fact that the other grad students in my research group failed to show up for a meeting. One of them asked the other if we were meeting and the other thought were weren't. Neither of them thought to ask me. Grrrr!!!! Why didn't they include me? Hello, the appropriate action here is to send an email out to everyone in the group if you have a question about the meeting. Which is exactly what I should have done last night to remind everyone of the meeting. But, I didn't because I'm trying not to be the task master of the group. Though now I realize that every group needs a leader and I better resume acting like one.

Which leads into another reason for my angst...I'm still having trouble getting into the swing of things this semester and its affecting more than just me. The Ed Psych society hasn't gotten off to a good start this semester either and I think it's partly because I've abdicated my role as behind-the-scenes leader (I'm not actually the president). I've been leaving the initiation of things up to other people in the group and last week we had confusion about whether we were meeting, as well. All three of my research groups are suffering in productivity because I'm dropping the ball and they are not picking it up.

Sigh...something's got to change and that something is me.

Sigh...North Korea is at it again...

It has been reported that North Korea has successfully tested a nuclear weapon in an underground explosion. No radiation leaks, at least we hope.
I just don't understand how North Korea thinks that by imposing an economic sanction on them a year ago as punishment for counterfeiting US money that the US somehow poses a military threat to them. The US has not made any movement towards invading North Korea, nor expressed any interest in doing so. The US doesn't want to meet with them individually, but continues to call for a return to 6-party talks. It's clear that North Korea is developing this nuclear weapons program to put pressure on the US, but we shall see how the US responds. All I know is that I can see this thing continue to escalate. And it wouldn't surprise me if North Korea chose to use their bombs proactively rather than retroactively once testing and development were complete.

Blogging: The Ultimate Sleep Inducer

Well, for me anyways. I sometimes find that I am unable to fall asleep late at night because my mind is churning with thoughts. Eventually, the thoughts form themselves into a blog post and I decide to jump out of bed, turn on one bedside lamp, and lug my huge laptop upstairs and curl up in front of it on my bed. You know that whole archaic notion of curling up with a good book? Well, I curl up with my laptop, propping it up on a cushion of bed covers. Ahhh, there's nothing better in life than a good laptop.

But, I digress. I've found that writing my thoughts at 3:30am will help me sleep. But, tonight it is merely 1:15am. So I shall try, but it may be far too early to sleep, even with the aid of blogging. ( I will NOT read other blogs until 3am!) You see? My thoughts are still intelligible, so this experiment in sleep-inducing blogging may not work. But, here's hoping.

Now on to some randomness...what could be more random than my decision today to register for a conference that is only two-and-a-half weeks away. Hah! I had thought about this conference a month ago, but placed the registration information on the table and proceeded to accumulate piles of articles and other assorted paper-products on top of it. I made an attempt to clean today and rediscovered the conference. So here goes! Merely two weeks away and I'm blissfully registered for a National Academy of Neuropsychology continuing education conference. As if I don't have enough education to start out with...but the conference is going to be held in San Antonio, Texas, which is pretty close to my parents. So my parents are going to come spend a couple days with me in the hotel and we are going to exlpore the Riverwalk and otherwise have much fun. I'm quite excited to visit San Antonio. I've heard good things about the city from my two older siblings who went to Trinity University in San Antonio for undergrad. I'm excited about learning new things at the conference, too, of course. Here's a list of the titles of the seminars I'll be attending:

1) Language, Culture, and Neuropsychological Assessment: Separating Brain Effects from Measurement Bias

2) Psychopharmacology for Neuropsychologists

3) Development of Executive Function: Planning for the Future

4) The Neurobehavioral Functioning Inventory: An Evaluation and Treatment Outcome Measures

Mmmm! I don't know about you guys, but it gives me the warm fuzzies inside just thinking about these talks.

In other randomness...I told my Mom that I realize I don't enjoy my classes unless I talk in them...a lot. She laughed for about three minutes straight. But, really! This is a huge change for me. I used to be the quiet girl who sat in the back and avoided all eye contact if the instructor made any motions toward getting students to discuss materials. Sometime into my second year in grad school I had one class that I started talking in because we were getting graded on participation and the instructor was actually keeping track. Then I moved onto another program in which I didn't talk much either. But, upon entering this program, I soon felt completely at home and now you can't get me to shut up in class. In fact, I become bored to tears if I can't entertain myself by voicing my thoughts and inciting a little lighthearted controversy and drama. I used to think that classes were an annoying waste of time that could be better spent establishing my research program (Wait a second! Must remind myself that I'm still a grad student!.....Okay, I'm good.) But, now I think that I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I didn't have classes to enjoy and foster my intellectual development. No three-hour segments of my time joyfully spent engaging in cerebral interactions? Jeez! I better get started on my dissertation so that I don't have to spend a whole year focusing on that without any classes!!

Class was awesome today...

I basically took over class today. We were talking about the philosophy of science and how stucturalism differs from logical positivism. It was bizarre because I really couldn't get into the article last night (yes, I "sometimes" wait until the night before to read; I'm trying to keep the info fresh in my mind, people!). I agonized and kept shifting to other projects. I even fell asleep in the early evening trying to read this article! But, somehow today I remembered even specific passages in the article and kept bringing up concepts from the article like as if I had deeply read it (cough! cough!).

So the prof (not to be confused with fav prof in the posts below) asked if we had any questions about the terms or anything else and that pretty much let loose a barrage of questions from me. We spent about an hour and a half bantering back and forth. I think one other grad student said something before I took over again and I tried to get another grad student to talk because I knew she had specialized knowledge on systems theory and I wanted to know more.

Is it just impossible to get a word in edgewise with me or am I the only one who is willing to ask questions? (Luckily, I don't think my questions are stupid, because as my research buddy declared, there IS such a thing as a stupid question, he, he.) Not only am I willing to ask questions, but the questions keep coming and we ended up having a pretty fascinating discussion.

Now here comes the part where I applaud myself...I talked with one of the other grad students afterwards and she said the she really enjoyed class and got a lot out of our discussion. Later I sent out an email to let everyone know that they could pick up the next article for class and the aforementioned grad student with specialized knowledge emailed me back. I don't think I should paste her words without her permission, but she said something to the effect of how much she enjoyed listening to ME. She thought I had a good grasp of philosophy issues and that the questions I asked helped to clarify things for everyone else. Then she said "WAY TO GO!" Like, I'm about to cry here people. It means so much to me to get this kind of positive feedback from other grad students.

Now Superlab is kicking my butt...

It is a week of software issues. I've been trying to program my powerpoint task into Superlab, a stimulus presentation software. But, since the background is black, the screen flashes bright for a split second before presenting the next stimulus. It's driving me nuts! I even posted a question on the Superlab support forum. However, I realized half-an-hour later that this is probably just due to the refresh rate on my screen. Actually, I'm using an LCD monitor, so the refresh rate does not apply. So now I may have to drag my old CRT monitor into the lab and set it up because the computer in the lab is also hooked up to an LCD monitor. Then I'll have to adjust the refresh rate of the screen to refresh very quickly because my stimulus is being presented on the order of milliseconds and an LCD monitor probably can't handle that speed. Yeah, this is the one time when advancements in technology (i.e., from CRT to LCD) is actually detrimental.

I really hope that's the problem, because I don't want to have to switch to a white background. It's never a good idea to make radical changes like that to a task at the same time as you make other modifications, because then you don't know if the results are due to your intended modifications or to unintentional modifications (like changing the background color).

Argh!

As Lisrel kicks my butt...

My coolness factor keeps riding roller coaster highs and lows. I stayed after class last week to talk to my fav prof about the measurement issues I was having. This week, my fav prof asked me to stay after class because he wanted to show me a Lisrel output that related to some of the questions I asked last week. Most assuredly! I'm so cool that the prof singles me out to provide additional information that is unnecessary for the rest of the class to hear about. Then he qualifies everything by apologizing about how he has to keep the material at a certain level to match the class, otherwise eyes either glaze over or get the "deer in the headlights" look. I understood; but, I don't want to be bored either!! I like when we talk about high-level conceptual stuff in class.

So as I was saying, I'm pretty cool. Let the narcissism roll in...

But then, of course, I download Lisrel and attempt to test the assumptions of my survey on my own. I managed to import my SPPS file and that was about it. So yeah, I'm not actually that cool, it appears. Now I must ask said fav prof to give me a tutorial on Lisrel. Gah! I like being able to figure things out on my own and not having to ask for help! Alas, I'm just not quite cool enough...

A day in the life of kiki

In addition to just plain being a "Monday," my Mondays are typically filled to the brim with stuff to do. I met with my deception research group at 11am. We met for an hour and I pretty much bluffed my way through (the days of solid preparation for research meetings are long gone). But, I think my undergrad research assistants are afraid of me. Perhaps I'm being too intense during the meeting, but these kids are just not talkative or jovial (as soon as I arrive on scene, that is). It makes me not want to be jovial, either. Or perhaps it was because I responded with a somewhat stern tone after introductory emails in which the students seemed to want me to cater to them. So, yeah, now meetings with them are not so much fun.

Then I traveled to the nearest McDonald's for lunch to go. Yum! I get a lot of flack for being a McDonald's junkie, but I'm pretty much hooked. I squeezed my way into a colleague's office during her office hours and proceeded to have a scholarly discussion about the recent trend that colleges are making towards replacing the SATs with some other predictive measure of student success as I munched on Chicken McNuggets.

I then headed into the computer lab to "work" as a consultant for the next couple of hours. I mercilessly teased the other consultant and managed to embarrass myself when I couldn't figure out how to eject a CD from a Mac. Oh, the pain! "I'm not a Mac person," I proclaim as I shrink down in my leather "computer consultant" chair. Soon the other consultant arrives and I spend an hour helping her with her opinion paper on women in the media. Ahh! Other people's homework is so much more interesting than mine.

After work I headed over to the Seattle's coffee stand in the library in order to get my caffeine shot of the day. I came back and participated in yet one more research meeting with my other cognitive research group (composed of two other grad students). We were certainly more jovial and just barely managed to get some actual work done before class started at 4pm.

Class lasted until a quarter to 7pm and we had fun talking about the biological "metaphor" (whatever that means) of intelligence. Of course, now I must relay the other embarrassing moment of the day. The teacher understood that I had an interest in cognition and that I hail from the cognitive neuroscience background, so she put me on the spot when we talked about event related potentials and whatnot. All was fine until we got to the next chapter on Piaget. Just prior to the class I had jokingly complained to one of my research buddies that I was not interested in Piaget and didn't like reading the chapter on it. Then I joked that he had better not tell anyone about it.

Now that you've guessed the ending of this episode in embarrassment, during the class one of the grad students told a story about how her students said to her, "You really like Piaget, don't you." She tried to explain how important it was to understand his theory to compare it to others. She then appealed to the other students, saying "Wouldn't it seem like all of you like Piaget, too." At which point, my research buddy pipes up and points at me, "Everyone except Kiki. She doesn't like Piaget." I respond, "What! I told you not to tell anyone!"

After the laughter subsided...now everyone knows that I'm not a real educational psychologist because I'm not obsessed with Piaget! My heart belongs to another field!

Crazy day at church today

Crazy as in I realized that I can't hide things from God. Hah! That sounds obvious, but I guess I thought it wouldn't matter to God that I had stopped tithing. Apparently, my Pastor thought it strange that God wanted him to teach on tithing because our church is very generous and good with their tithing. But, since I usually give anonymous cash donations, I'm sure Pastor wouldn't have known that I had actually stopped tithing recently. I stopped because I was incredibly stressed out about my finances and my family's finances.

But, I got a double dose of my paycheck and financial aid last Friday and for some reason, I actually felt compelled to go clothes shopping. Don't get me wrong, I'm not the type of person to buy stuff whenever I get paid. Quite the contrary, I don't think I've bought anything for myself in about a year. And clothing is actually a "need," not a "want." I felt that perhaps God was encouraging me to go.

And then this morning, I felt compelled to bring my checkbook so that I could tithe. But, I resisted; I thought that I couldn't pay anything out of the account that wasn't dedicated towards bills because I wanted to give all the surplus to my sister.

But, God has promised to open the windows of heaven and pour out blessings on those who bring their tithes and offerings to the storehouse and I believe he wants to bless me if I will stay faithful to tithe even when times are tough.

Pastor prayed to break generational curses of poverty over the congregation, which definitely includes me. I'm just going to stand on that promise that I'm freed from the poverty that runs on both sides of my family as far back as I can remember.