The Hell Weeks

This is the end of the "no worries" period. Take a look at the following:

Miscalleneous:
- finish the transfer document for ASIC

- actually do the Speech project, so that we can present something about it in two days

- introduce Bram to the four Heads, which will be at least 4 hours (I might try to do this after the end of the semester)

- enter the Psychopathology data, run an analysis, look for literature and prepare the presentation

- have a meeting with Frank about my Research Project

- write my Research Project paper

- arrange my Honors Thesis by the last day of the semester

I'm a greedy little thing. I have to do it all. I have to have it all. Maybe it's time to put aside my pride and actually ask for an extension.

Quad, sun, relaxing...

Ladies and Gentlemen,

A nice day. I decided that I need a good rest before my Speech Production and Perception exam, so I slept for 6 hours, which is my daily normal anyway. I had almost 4 hours to go through my notes and the things that I didn't know (and not even Wikipedia did know) before the exam, which actually turned out to be very enjoyable with good questions. I wrote 6 pages, ate 6 pieces of the chocolate that Rosemary provided through the supervisor, Saskia, and left the classroom satisfied this time.

I also decided that I needed a break, so I searched for my sunglasses under the huge mess in my room, took a blanket and the thesis of some psycholinguist girl, and went outside to read on the Quad. Michael joined me just a bit later, and we were both interviewed by the Boomerang's (the UC magazine) Quad Queries team. They shoot short questions at random people crossing or hanging out at the Quad, so they asked what the sounds in my head were. I said "insanity" :) Of course, nothing worked out of the reading plan, because Michael and I kept on talking. A rather metrosexual friend joined as well and we proceeded to argue about whether vanity is a virtue (we said no, he said yes) and whether girls are really up for threesomes. Interesting conversations.

I'm glad I could enjoy the sun even if only for 2 hours. It was hot and apparently this is the longest dry period in the history of Dutch meteorology. I've never seen any dry patches on the grass at UC (or anywhere in the Netherlands), but now the grass is starting to get yellow everywhere. This good old friend of ours, the Sun, and the gases omitted by us have started to cook us slowly.

By the way, I realized that very busy people are less stressed than normally busy people. I see so many friends freaking out around me, and I assure you, they have less to do than I do. I guess that once you really get into the habit of doing your stuff, you get used to it and yet another upcoming meeting/presentation/paper does not upset you as much any more. (See the contrast with me a couple of months ago when I was trying to start my Psychopathology paper.) So now, I'm one of the lucky ones. At least right now...

The night of the Communist Party

Here I am, sitting in the ASIC office again, preparing for my first end of semester exam, which will take place on Thursday. I need to get an A, which does not stop me from writing because I just realized that I haven't even given an account of how the Communist Party was... Unforgiveable mistake. I need a second study break anyway (the first was helping out Iris with a DirectRT file)... :)

On the big day I had a nap in the afternoon. I tried to justify it with the fact that I'll have to remain awake for a while, but I don't think I could have stayed awake after Psychopathology. I visited Simone in the Commune, and laid down on the huge inflatable bed they have. By the time Simone had to go to a meeting, I was almost asleep, so I gave in to the sweet temptation after moving to my own room. In the evening, I put on my favourite hippyish skirt (over my trousers of course), celebrated the occasion with putting some mascara on and drawing a red star on my left arm with a lipliner (which proved to be too good and it's still there, giving Bernat the opportunity to ask why I haven't had a shower yet every time I see him).

I wanted to drop by Simone's place, so I passed in front of K20, my old unit, where a couple of friends including David seemed to have a very chilled out time in the living room. I knocked on the window and they let me in. I stayed there till half past 12, listening to music, dancing and just chatting to people. The atmosphere was great! We were playing music from our "youth", a lot of 90's hits, "Lemon tree", "Kiss me" etc. Finally an evening when working was out of question and I could just take my time to socialize.

We moved to the location of the CP more or less together, but I quickly lost everyone in the crowd, just to find other friends. The whole area behind Dining Hall and by the basketball court was taken over by the Communist Party. Two fires were constantly fed and were surrounded by the people competing for some warmth in the cold night. If you saw a familiar face, you just started to talk, and there were plenty of familiar faces around. I was thinking about how minimal the social pressure was here (and contemplating that the average might have remained the same across UC students with the other half of the student body in Amsterdam). Of course, I couldn't resist the music, so once in a while I joined the dancing people on the basketball court and then returned to the fire again to have some warm Chai tea and some wine.

I can't tell how many people were there, but subjectively, A LOT. The whole event had a very cosy feeling. It reminded me of the nights I spent by bonfires in summer camps, sitting and staring at the flames together, sometimes turning around to warm ourselves up from every angle, like roasted chicken on the pole. It was great that there was a place to be active and dance, a place to gather around the fire standing and talking and a place to crush next to another fire and on the couches. (My compliments to the organizers.) And there were good vibes and love everywhere. Share and care.

At 3.30 I went to the Bar. I decided to help out much earlier but I didn't want to get on the schedule because that would have been a definite commitment and I wasn't sure whether I could be sober in the morning. But I was, so I headed to the Bar and took my position behind the bar, alongside Karin and later all the first year Chiefs who had the pleasure of chiefing during the after party. Maybe within an hour and a half, the shift got very busy and we were running around, bumping into each other, serving as fast as we could. I was bought a drink by 2 alumni guys and they left around a coaster with the phone number of one of them, saying "Yo, babe, call me sometime". I took that as a compliment. (Not bad as ego-boosting, but did they really believe that I would call?)

I left the Bar at 6. Even though I hated to realize that it was already light and that all the birds felt they had to shout around signalling that it was already morning, I felt good. It was a great night! I threw my smoky clothes into the laundry, had a long shower and slept well.

(PS: If anyone wants to argue about whether or not to organize the CP during Prom, save your points till after the exams. You are wasting your and most importantly, my time if you start an argument before that.)

Working in the Tower of Babel

Do you ever have those thirty minutes when you think that in half an hour it's impossible to do anything substantial, so you rather do nothing? That's why I'm here now.

Yesterday was my second day in the Tower of Babel, in Descartes (one of the academic buildings at UC). You step in the computer area and you hear undecipherable bla-bla in 10 languages simultaneously. It's amazing. My job is more on the side of the organization although I'm conducting a couple of interviews too. I set up the programs that our NLAs (native language assistants) are using, I give them headsets, I sign them into Skype on our accounts, I save the data, I do troubleshooting and stuff like that. And I run up and down from the first floor 50 times because Bernat and I are the only ones whose Xs cards open the door during the weekend. I can actually feel it in my legs, which is nice because I need exercise anyways. I have 25 missed calls on my phone.

We should make a video of those people working there. They are very entertaining. Fede, an Italian first year is usually there from 9 am till the end (10 pm) and does not realize that you can have phone conversations without shouting. Dávid, the Hungarian first year is usually sitting in front of me, and yesterday we were conducting interviews simultaneously, at one point meeting at the same question, reading it out exactly at the same time. After a day, I started to randomly switch back and forth between English and Hungarian when talking to people who don't speak a word of Hungarian.

I still have 20 minutes till class... Maybe I'll read a paper that I should have read already. I wanted to have half of the Speech exam questions answered by tonight, but that seems like an unachievable dream now. Yes, I'll read.

Prom and Communist Party: a day of loss and joy

I'll have to get used to the idea of death. Yet another person of my age passed away. This time, from UC. He ended his own life this morning. May he rest in peace. I didn't know him at all, I probably just so him around and in the Bar. The announcement was made by the Director of Education at the Prom dinner, but I heard it earlier during the day already. Such news spreads quickly in a small community.

Am I too egoistic when this makes me think about what would have happened if I committed suicide in AC? We spent two weeks on depression and suicide in Psychopathology, and I was a bit surprised to hear that most suicidal people actually do give away their plan or at least the intention. We used to have a little notice board on the inner side of our dorm door. I remember the time when I wrote things like "This is a beautiful day. I'd like to die on a beautiful day." on our notice board. I was so bitter. Sometimes it just hurt to breathe. I wished I could just stop the ache in my chest and in my throat. When I cry, I just get this unbearable pain around my glottis. I wished I could stop it in any way. Things looked hopeless. I woke up in the middle of the night crying. I had to go out to the corridor so that I couldn't wake up my roommates.

So, what are the things that hold someone back? Believe it or not, very little, especially material things. For me, it was the fact that I knew that my mother couldn't go on without me. The fact that I knew that my national committee trusted me and that I felt that I would have thrown away a scholarship; something I didn't have the right to do so. (Interestingly, I never thought that I don't have the right to throw away my own life. I think I do have the right to do so.) The fact that he would have felt guilty for the rest of his life. At the end of my first year, Simon wrote into my yearbook that whenever things look desperate, just think "this too will pass". I think he had an idea of how bad it was. I remember the night when I went down to the seafront and I sat on a big rock on the shore. The tide was coming in. A big black mass of calm water, closer with every wave. I just sat there waiting for it to reach the rock. It looked so calm, so welcoming, making me think that I can just wait there till it creeps on my body and I can give in to it to take away all my pain.

But today is not the day to remember such wishes. Tonight is Prom and the Communist Party. It's funny that although the Communist Party was officially Christened to 4/20 party (international day of marijuana), everybody still refers to it as the Communist Party, probably due to the histrical roots. Traditionally, the Communist Party has been organized as an anti-Prom party, by students who - for one reason or another - didn't agree with the idea of Prom. This year we had a half a GA dedicated to the discussion whether the Communist Party could be an official UCSA event. I'm happy to say that the people at the GA voted for the Communist Party. I had a great time with Joram at the Prom last year, but let's face it, Prom is decadent. You pay 35 euros for entering a Party. You spend another 100 euros on a Prom dress, and 50 euros on shoes. This is, of course, above the 5800 euros that the UCSA assigned to the Prom team for the organization. That's one sixth of the yearly budget of the UCSA. For feeling that you are part of the "elite" for a night.

I think that especially when you have a position in one of the student boards, what you do is not only important for you, but also for the image of the board. When the Dean goes to a Primus party, he supports Primus, and indirectly, the establishment of fraternities and sororities on campus. When the next Vice Chair of ASIC is from a fraternity, he is immediately unable to represent the interests of the students in an unbiased manner. In my opinion, one of the main source of preblems on campus is the existence of fraternities and sororities. Tutors have to deal with several unit issues connected to frat guys simultaneously. How do you represent those students suffering from such issues if you, yourself, are from a fraternity? How do you represent students facing an omnipotent ruler, who himself supports fraternities? As for tonight, I rather see myself spending time with people drinking and smoking up on campus, than pay 35 euros to spend a couple of hours in Amsterdam with people in suits who think they are very high class.

Doing what I'm not supposed to do

Writing relaxes me. I can organize my thoughts, make plans or just switch off everything that was previously going on in my head and let my fingers type what they want to type. Now, I am in the "switch off" mode. I'm supposed to prepare a psychopathology presentation for tomorrow morning. But now I'm doing what I'm not supposed to do :) It's the perfect activity for before going to bed.

I had two cups of coffee tonight; enough to keep me awake for a while. I'm not a big coffee drinker so whenever I do drink it, it makes me feel very alert. It's effect has started to wear off by now, even though my heart is still racing. The first one I had with Fede and Iva in my unit after the chief meeting. = Pleasurable event #1. The second one I had with Simone in her room (= pleasurable event #3), after the phone conversation with Joram (= pleasurable event #2) and the instruction of my group on how to set up the experiment with DirectRT. Simone and I made peace after a day of relative bitchiness and confusion. I'm happy about that.

Tomorrow is the night of the Communist Party (and for others it's a night of Prom). I'll need to remain more or less sober to be able to help out with the after party shift in the Bar. I've seen some of the things bought for the Communist Party... Man, it's going to be an interesting event. I wonder how the alternative part of campus will mix with the "elite" from the Prom in the Bar at the end of the night. I should stay awake to see it :)

But now it's bedtime. I'll get up tomorrow to work on my presentation. Night-night.

To do list

I like lists. I hope you do too. If not, don't read on... it will just give you a headache. It gives me a headache too, but for a different reason.

DONE:
- figure out how to solve the problem of not being able to import foreign fonts into MediaLab
- send out e-mails about the ETSI research to my prospective participants
- call my former literature teacher and ask her to participate + friendly chat
- give a workshop on MediaLab (and find a huge problem with DirectRT)
- write an e-mail to Christel about the problem with DirectRT
- mop the Bar (with 2 people instead of 3)
- make a questionnaire for my psychopathology study
- send out an e-mail to my psychopathology class to ask for participants
- Skype with Rosemary to discuss what should happen to the MediaLab master files for the ETSI research
- 1/2 hour relaxing outside
- cleaning up the room (a bit)

CANCELLED:
- sunbathing
- movie tonight

TO BE DONE:
- come up with a way to make the stimuli for our cognitive neuroscience research
- make the new master file for the ETSI research
- finish my part of the transfer document for ASIC
- print out the articles to be read for my psychopathology research
- write an outline for the psychopathology research paper
- play around with the data from my research course a bit more, run new tests, write up the results section
- address letters to new ETSI participants
- read the statements of the Academic Advisor cadidates to be able to say smart things to them tomorrow evening

COMING UP in the next 3 days:
- 15 April: deadline for transfer document
- 15 April, 17.30: dinner with AA candidates
- 15 April, 19.00: MediaLab workshop
- 16 April, all day: working on the language master files for the ETSI project
- 16 April, 13.45-15.45: Speech Production and Perception
- 16 April, 18.30: ASIC meeting
- 17 April, 13.45-18.00: Psychopathology and Cognitive Neuroscience
- (17 April, evening: College Council meeting - I hope this is a mistake in my agenda)
- 17 April, 19.00: ASIC elections!

A day of evaluations

I was woken up by a phone call from Britt at 10.35. As soon as I gained consciousness, I felt the weight of reality. I missed the meeting that I organized for 9.00. Nicole actually suggested 10.00, but I said "no, it's not possible to get anything done within an hour".... So, I missed my own meeting. Evaluation #1: I suck. I couldn't do anything about it; my body simply betrayed me. I was chiefing the night before, and I didn't even stay up very late - I was in bed by 4.30. I set two alarm clocks and I managed to ignore them both.

I continued the day in a tense mood. Psychopathology: eating disorders. On the anonymous questionnaire, that we filled out at the beginning of the class, my answers were the extremes on the multiple choice questions. Britt and I left the class in half an hour to attend the closing session of the international accreditation, which was an evaluation session by the visiting team of experts. The Dutch criteria was completely met by UC, but the Americans find 2 weak points. (To be precise, "challanges" and not "weaknesses"... omg, how can you be so American?!) One of them was the lack of vision and preparation for the future, which is ironic, because the Dean always mentions that he has "vision". The other one was a very valid comment: the lack of engagement with the community outside the green gates and the lack of community service. Evaluation #2: UC is a blind bubble. The Americans will suggest their committee to send another visiting team in two years to see the improvements.

I spent the beginning of the afternoon with filling out the form for claiming my hours for the ETSI project. I made more money within a month than a teacher in Hungary; isn't this ridiculous? So, in the end, I'm not overworking myself for nothing. I reminded Joram that what does not kill you will make you stronger. He reminded me that what does not kill you, will take away years from your life. Fair enough :) Then I printed out my data analysis and headed to the city for a meeting with my supervisor. The weather was beautiful and I reached Trans 10 exactly on time. Evaluation #3: it's summer.

The meeting with Frans was fruitful. The data support our (well, originally his, but now mine too) hypothesis, but I'll have to play around with it and see what the non-parametric tests will say. Frans invited me to be his co-author!!! He's probably going to submit an article for a special edition of a scientific magazine, and if I manage to finish the project completely, i.e. do the second half of the study, correct the stimuli, and do the cross modal lexical priming experiment, the story will be complete. This means that I have a thesis! Wow. A lot of good news for a day... And even more: he encouraged me to stay in Utrecht, apply for Masters to the UU and work with him or Sergei in the field of psycholinguistics (if I get accepted, obviously). Isn't this great? Evaluation #4: I'm flattered. Let's start with the basics though and get this paper done by May 11th. I'll deal with the future plans later.

I didn't have a bike and I didn't mind walking today. I felt light as I stepped outside the building. I took a different road on the way home, one that I've never taken so far. It was a charming street, with a canal on one side leading to another canal. I walked down to the water and followed it to the bridge of the main road going through the city. I took my time to walk home. I took the other side of the lake in the Wilhelmina park this time, stopped for a while to stare at the ducks, the fountain and the people. I actually saw people touching. This might not sound striking to you if you don't know the Dutch, but they hardly ever seem to touch. I saw a couple hugging and another one kissing in a public area, and I was like wow, love is really in the air. Evaluation #5: even the Dutch touch.

I saw Anton and Guus de Krom (two tutors from UC) at Jan Primus (pub), who invited me to sit down and join their conversation. We discussed the international accreditation extensively and concluded that the visiting team overlooked a lot of important issues. We talked about Research Projects and the possible growth of the college. We talked about the Dean. I love how small this place is; you can sit outside a pub with some teachers and discuss school policies next to a beer, an orange juice and a piece of cheese. Evaluation #6: this place is fab!

ASIC was, ASIC is, ASIC will be

It's insane how fast time goes when I'm with Joram. It feels that he just arrived and already, I was walking to the bus stop with him this morning. He's soon on his plain. I feel good today though. I got up feeling fresh, energetic and happy after a good, 8-hour sleep. I gave my Xs card to Joram who went for breakfast while I was printing out the election statements of the candidates for next year's ASIC. I made a nice arrangement on our notice board, but I think we might need two surfaces at the end. It seems that we are outnumbering the UCSA with candidates (if everybody who said so will actually run).

The elections are next week and I'm probably more excited than some of the candidates. We'll probably have at least 2 candidates for every position, but for Academic Advisor we have 3 statements already. It's evil to say but it's funny to see how uninformed some people are about the way this college is run. I think our team was similarly smiled at when we started. Then, you slowly get to know the rules of the game, the restrictions, that a university is not run based on a democratic system and that the most important considerations involve money. Welcome to real life. I wish them good luck though.

This morning, I was considering running again. (What a crazy idea, isn't it?) Joram pointed it out that I wouldn't want to be in ASIC with the people running this year. And indeed, I wouldn't. Our ASIC consists of very "normal" people in the sense of no one is very wealthy, no one is cool in the elite circles, no one is a member of a fraternity or a sorority. Next year, this will change. What did we do to attract so many fraternity members? The ASIC two years ago was described as a group of chilled smokers. The one before us was a bunch of people similar to us, just average UC students. Will next year's ASIC be frat guys? It would be a big change...

Weekend relaxation

Eindelijk. Joram is here again. He's sitting in front of me, writing an sms to a girl named Francesca. I'm sitting in front of him, writing a post. Till now, I was just working on some stuff for the ETSI project. I'm already feeling bad that I don't do as much as Bernat, the guy I'm working with. I was planning to do the cathegorical perception graphs for Speech Production and Perception this afternoon, but the data didn't seem to be alright, so I have to delay that. I'm kind of stressed. I was answering a couple of e-mails from people using MediaLab and/or DirectRT, something I should have done a couple of days ago, but just couldn't jam it into my schedule. I started to translate a letter that I need to send to my ETSI interviewees in Hungary, but realized that a) I can't decide whether to use the "ön" or "te" form ("u" or "je", "usted" or "tú", "vous" or "tu" etc.), so I might end up with two vesions and b) that I just don't feel like it. In fact, I don't feel like anything. It would be nice if I could just disappear sometimes and diffuse into the air*.

*Una noche de resaca
al tratar de despertar
noté que por el ombligo
me empezaba a desinflar
que mi cuerpo se arrugaba
como un papel vegetal
e iba pasando, que curioso,
al estado gaseoso
y tras la metamorfosis
me sentí mucho mejor
era un aire gris oscuro
y con bastante polución
(Mecano)

Long distance relationships

They are tricky. (At this point of my boyfriend being on exchange I'd like to say "horrible", but let's just stick to tricky.) E-mailing and chatting just doesn't do it. I'm not even sure how it could be expected to be enough when so much within a relationship depends on personal contact. There are obvious things that you can think of, including sex for example, but I right now feel much more deprived of the smell of my boyfriend. For about a week, when Joram left, it was still lingering around in my room, but by now it's naturally totally absent. It has an association of cosiness and love and protection and is just generally very gezellig. Now it is I-don't-even-know-how-many miles away. And I'm missing it.

I wonder whether anyone has ever bothered to collect data on long distance relationships and the percentage of couples that stay together over time. Even though you hear stories about couples breaking up when in a long distance relationship, you always like to think that your relationship is special, and it's not going to happen to you. You wish. This is my fifth relationship that turned into a long distance relationship and probably you can deduce what happened to the rest. Let's see how all these ended:
#1: New environment, a lot of excitement, absorbing everything new, starting to belong there and cooling off all relations binding to home.
#2: Very complicated one, he had another girlfriend, it was emotionally very intense but he broke up after a month.
#3: Simply hopeless.
#4: I left, it worked pretty well, and then suddenly, I fell in love.

So, now comes the reason why this is different now, because of course, it is different. Now we know when being apart is going to end. At times, when you feel really bad and miss the other person, you can just hang onto the thought that it's going to end this summer and everything will be back to normal. It's only 3 more months. This must be the key.

It has to work out this time.