And so it is...

I just finished reading Jael's new post and it was so nice to hear that she's doing so well. It made me feel rested and peaceful just to read her post. Just like Jael, I realize I haven't posted much of anything positive. So in response I thought I'd try to post something nice, too. However, I don't think I can quite pull of the same conveyance of peacefulness as she does.

It's been two weeks since school has started, but strangely enough, it feels like it's been forever, like as if I haven't been on break from school for the past month. At least I seem to have hit the ground running this semester. Things are still up in the air, though. I'm waiting for the new RA to start, probably not until March. I dropped two of my classes and replaced them with dissertation hours and directed study so that I can open up my time for writing. Teaching is going well. I have an amazing group of students this semester and I hope I can keep up the feelings of goodwill permeating the classroom. I found out that I can have six members on my dissertation committee. So now I can add on that sixth member who will obtain a dataset for me to work on. I also recently heard back from the neuropsychologist who supervised my externship. He revised a letter of intent for a grant that had been in the works for months. I had some fun reading over it and revising it. It seemed to come so much more easily than writing papers. Which reminds me, I have been able to find time to do some lit searching, reading, and note-taking for my directed study, which is going to become one of my comps now.

By the way, in my lit searching, I ran across an article on why it is not possible to tickle yourself. Seriously, the researchers had done neuroimaging studies on this topic and had come to the conclusion that the sensorimotor area sets up an expectation of sensation which blocks the effectiveness of self-tickling. Isn't that one of those no brainers? And secondly, how in the world did they obtain funding to conduct high-level research on that topic?!?! But, hey, I don't knock it. Sitting around and trying to tickle yourself seems like a rather entertaining research endeavor, especially if you are getting paid to research and write about "tickliness."