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!!