I thought that "clean your shit" would be appropriate but too crude...
Tuesday, 20 November 2007
What to do when you don't feel like writing a proposal for a linguistics paper?
A product of today's burst of creativity and of the "fed-up'ness" with language acquisition literature:
I thought that "clean your shit" would be appropriate but too crude...
I thought that "clean your shit" would be appropriate but too crude...
Sunday, 18 November 2007
Thesis stuff
I decided to sacrifice today on the altar of thesis work already 3 weeks ago. There was simply no time on any other days... Yay to planning!
After a short start, I'll have to do an extra-fast finish. Today I'll program the first four experiments for the first testing day. They are in theory almost the same - but "in theory" still means an extra half an hour of work on the last three after I'm done with the blueprint. Anyway, I'm feeling smart today and I'll work till it's done, no matter how long it will take. The way I can get the program do what I want is already figured out, but unfortunately, this is not the convenient copy-paste type of file that you can make in half an hour. I already spent three full hours on measuring where "did too"-s and "who was"-s occur in sentences, and I'll still have to do that for the fillers.
The only thing I don't understand is why Frank insists on 40 participants. Ok, so I have 4 experiments, which are structurally different, and right, in one cell you should have at least 10 people, but it still doesn't make sense. The four lists differ only in the order of condition presentation. So, eventually everybody gets to be tested in all conditions, everything is tested within and not between subjects. In fact, there is almost as much difference between the testing of two people who get the same lists as between two people who get different lists, due to the effect of randomization. All in all, I don't think that the four lists really represent four conditions, they only alleviate the need to display the same sentence to the same person several times. Whatever, I can't do more than what I can do anyway, so I'll test as many people as I can find this semester, and that's it. If I tested 24, I can analyse my data, write up the paper, hand it in to the %!/+=@& administration and test another 16 next semester, if needed, then re-analyse the data, and re-write the paper. Then, everybody is going to be happy. The administration gets their paper. I get to do everything properly. Frank will get his data.
Did I already say anything about how frustrating I find the stubornness of the administration with the stupid deadlines? For a term paper, allright. But this is actually supposed to be something of high quality, real academic work, and actually, for my own pleasure. And then I get this e-mail of "don't even think of asking for extensions, because you won't get it"... And then I think "____ ___".
Back to work now.
After a short start, I'll have to do an extra-fast finish. Today I'll program the first four experiments for the first testing day. They are in theory almost the same - but "in theory" still means an extra half an hour of work on the last three after I'm done with the blueprint. Anyway, I'm feeling smart today and I'll work till it's done, no matter how long it will take. The way I can get the program do what I want is already figured out, but unfortunately, this is not the convenient copy-paste type of file that you can make in half an hour. I already spent three full hours on measuring where "did too"-s and "who was"-s occur in sentences, and I'll still have to do that for the fillers.
The only thing I don't understand is why Frank insists on 40 participants. Ok, so I have 4 experiments, which are structurally different, and right, in one cell you should have at least 10 people, but it still doesn't make sense. The four lists differ only in the order of condition presentation. So, eventually everybody gets to be tested in all conditions, everything is tested within and not between subjects. In fact, there is almost as much difference between the testing of two people who get the same lists as between two people who get different lists, due to the effect of randomization. All in all, I don't think that the four lists really represent four conditions, they only alleviate the need to display the same sentence to the same person several times. Whatever, I can't do more than what I can do anyway, so I'll test as many people as I can find this semester, and that's it. If I tested 24, I can analyse my data, write up the paper, hand it in to the %!/+=@& administration and test another 16 next semester, if needed, then re-analyse the data, and re-write the paper. Then, everybody is going to be happy. The administration gets their paper. I get to do everything properly. Frank will get his data.
Did I already say anything about how frustrating I find the stubornness of the administration with the stupid deadlines? For a term paper, allright. But this is actually supposed to be something of high quality, real academic work, and actually, for my own pleasure. And then I get this e-mail of "don't even think of asking for extensions, because you won't get it"... And then I think "____ ___".
Back to work now.
Thursday, 15 November 2007
GRE experiences
I survived!
It was a good idea to go there a bit early because I didn't find the testing centre very easily. The supervisor girl was very sweet and smiled continuously - she's probably used to anxious exam takers. She took my passport and took a picture of me. I had 20 minutes to sit around, drink an energy drink, eat some chocolate and pretend to read The Economist. The moment I had to enter the testing room, I became very conscious of the whole situation. I decided to go through the tutorials and actually read what they say, to fight my anxiety. The "how to use a mouse" section was my favorite :) At the end of the tutorials, a screen indicated that from that point onward things were going to get serious. The "Proceed" button looked like the sign above the door of hell in Dante's La Divina Commedia: it could just as well have said "Ki itt belépsz, hagyj fel minden reménnyel". Haha, but then, what else can you do?
It's really exhausting to sit the GREs. You can't manipulate the order of the questions and you cannot go back once you had confirmed an answer. You sit there for 4 hours. You are under severe time pressure. Really, it's not very pleasant.
So, the first section I got was the analytical writing one and I chose the lesser evil of the two topics. The statement was something like "If the goal is worthy, any means to attain it are justifiable." 2 minutes of complete blackout, 2 minutes of regaining consciousness and 2 minutes of scribbling down random words on the piece of pink paper that the testing centre provided. I wrote about Communism in Russia, animal experiments in the field of medical science and the beauty industry, and global warming. The last five minutes I spent by re-reading what I had written. Time's up. Next section - argumetation analysis. Easy as pie. 30 minutes, the text is full of fallacies, wrong conclusions: there's enough to write about. Time's up. 10 minutes of break. Maths. 60 seconds of break. English. It was ridiculously hard. No wonder - it's supposed to be hard for native speakers...
During the instructions, you see a screen that says that you may have to complete an experimental section, which is just like one of the proper sections, but you won't know which one is the real one. So, I was just about to stand up as I finished the verbal section when a new maths section came up. It was like "sh*t, this cannot be true..." But it was, so I ran out and asked for more paper and started solving the problems. By then I was completely exhausted. I didn't know whether this or the previous maths section was the real one and that made me anxious again. Ah, I hated that exam so much!
But then, it was over.
And the results? Tatatatam!
My English score is a total joke. It's very bad. But my quantitative score is pretty good: 720 out of 800. After all, practising was not in vain. All I wanted was something acceptable, so that the universities I'm applying to wouldn't just throw away my application after the first glance. And 720 is pretty competitive. They will just have to believe that I do speak English.
It was a good idea to go there a bit early because I didn't find the testing centre very easily. The supervisor girl was very sweet and smiled continuously - she's probably used to anxious exam takers. She took my passport and took a picture of me. I had 20 minutes to sit around, drink an energy drink, eat some chocolate and pretend to read The Economist. The moment I had to enter the testing room, I became very conscious of the whole situation. I decided to go through the tutorials and actually read what they say, to fight my anxiety. The "how to use a mouse" section was my favorite :) At the end of the tutorials, a screen indicated that from that point onward things were going to get serious. The "Proceed" button looked like the sign above the door of hell in Dante's La Divina Commedia: it could just as well have said "Ki itt belépsz, hagyj fel minden reménnyel". Haha, but then, what else can you do?
It's really exhausting to sit the GREs. You can't manipulate the order of the questions and you cannot go back once you had confirmed an answer. You sit there for 4 hours. You are under severe time pressure. Really, it's not very pleasant.
So, the first section I got was the analytical writing one and I chose the lesser evil of the two topics. The statement was something like "If the goal is worthy, any means to attain it are justifiable." 2 minutes of complete blackout, 2 minutes of regaining consciousness and 2 minutes of scribbling down random words on the piece of pink paper that the testing centre provided. I wrote about Communism in Russia, animal experiments in the field of medical science and the beauty industry, and global warming. The last five minutes I spent by re-reading what I had written. Time's up. Next section - argumetation analysis. Easy as pie. 30 minutes, the text is full of fallacies, wrong conclusions: there's enough to write about. Time's up. 10 minutes of break. Maths. 60 seconds of break. English. It was ridiculously hard. No wonder - it's supposed to be hard for native speakers...
During the instructions, you see a screen that says that you may have to complete an experimental section, which is just like one of the proper sections, but you won't know which one is the real one. So, I was just about to stand up as I finished the verbal section when a new maths section came up. It was like "sh*t, this cannot be true..." But it was, so I ran out and asked for more paper and started solving the problems. By then I was completely exhausted. I didn't know whether this or the previous maths section was the real one and that made me anxious again. Ah, I hated that exam so much!
But then, it was over.
And the results? Tatatatam!
My English score is a total joke. It's very bad. But my quantitative score is pretty good: 720 out of 800. After all, practising was not in vain. All I wanted was something acceptable, so that the universities I'm applying to wouldn't just throw away my application after the first glance. And 720 is pretty competitive. They will just have to believe that I do speak English.
Tuesday, 13 November 2007
Pre-GRE meditation
My 100th post is a day before one of the most important exams in my life. Ok, let's not overdramatize the situation :) After all, it will only decide whether I'll spend the next 4 years on this side of the Atlantic or on the other :))
Oh dear, can you feel that I'm anxious? Before the SATs, we had such a nice atmosphere in Sunley. I was one of those people who didn't do sh*t, just got a book the night before the exam, joined the quiet room crowd, enjoyed some lively conversations and very casually walked into the library to sit the exam in the morning. Now I've been practising quite extensively for the quantitative part, there is no one around (not close by, at least), and eventually I'll go to bed early so that I can wake up fresh and alert (this hasn't happened in the last few days). I even cut my nails so that I could type easier! They feel quite weird but I do type faster this way.
I'm trying to convince myself that there's nothing to be scared of. I'm an exam-taking machine, I cannot prepare any better in the remaining time, and so I'll just go there and do my best. And if it's not good enough? It's not the end of the world. And I can always, of course, discuss how stupid it is to measure your abilities with a test on how you can solve maths problems under time pressure and with a test on how big is your never-to-use-or-even-to-encounter-words vocabulary.
I shaved my legs, I have nice underwear to wear - these are to improve my feelings of confidence. I have chocolate and energy drink tablets in my bag. My passport and ID on the table.
I can do it! And if not... cognitive dissonance will solve it all :)
Oh dear, can you feel that I'm anxious? Before the SATs, we had such a nice atmosphere in Sunley. I was one of those people who didn't do sh*t, just got a book the night before the exam, joined the quiet room crowd, enjoyed some lively conversations and very casually walked into the library to sit the exam in the morning. Now I've been practising quite extensively for the quantitative part, there is no one around (not close by, at least), and eventually I'll go to bed early so that I can wake up fresh and alert (this hasn't happened in the last few days). I even cut my nails so that I could type easier! They feel quite weird but I do type faster this way.
I'm trying to convince myself that there's nothing to be scared of. I'm an exam-taking machine, I cannot prepare any better in the remaining time, and so I'll just go there and do my best. And if it's not good enough? It's not the end of the world. And I can always, of course, discuss how stupid it is to measure your abilities with a test on how you can solve maths problems under time pressure and with a test on how big is your never-to-use-or-even-to-encounter-words vocabulary.
I shaved my legs, I have nice underwear to wear - these are to improve my feelings of confidence. I have chocolate and energy drink tablets in my bag. My passport and ID on the table.
I can do it! And if not... cognitive dissonance will solve it all :)
Monday, 12 November 2007
Play and help!
I found this site today:
If things worked well, you can click on the picture above and it will take you to www.freerice.com. If not, you can just enter the address to your browser and check out the site. You can play and enrich your English vocabulary, and in the meantime, with every correct answer you will donate 10 grains of rice to fight hunger. It's a lovely idea, isn't it?
GREs on Wednesday...
Saturday, 10 November 2007
Sunley update
I wish a day had more hours or I needed less sleep. This is my update to Sunley, my co-years in my house in Wales. This is all I can offer for now:
"Dearest Sunley,
It’s hard to decide what to start with. A lot of positive things happened in my life since June. Most importantly, I started dancing again! I explored the salsa/latin dance scene in Utrecht and these days I go out to salsa parties in town 2-3 times per week. (Or I would, was I not so busy most of the time, but I hope to return to this routine soon.) I got to know a lot of Latinos and Carribbean people and it turned out that after all, there is life outside campus!
Haha, I also lost 11 kilos, which I badly needed. Life is so much lighter now; I can fit into the jeans I was wearing in AC :)
I’ve been indulging myself in the life of the campus bar. This year I’m in the board of the bar as HR manager, and my task is to make sure that all the shifts are covered. An unpleasant side effect is that since it is impossible to make everybody happy with the shift distribution, people bitch about it, but I learnt to take that lightly. Pleasant side effects are cheap drinks – the first advice I got when I joined the board was “watch your liver” – a lot of dancing and a great group of people to work with.
I’m still working on the EU-funded project on the standardization of spoken commands for speech driven ICT devices. Not extremely exciting, but the research group flew me to Nice (France) in the summer for a meeting, and I was at the Interspeech 2007 conference in Antwerp (Belgium) to present a poster, so it’s worth it.
It is my last year at uni – yes, I’m graduating in May – and this means that I’m pretty busy with schoolwork. I’m doing my research on the reconstruction of VP ellipsis (for all those psycholinguistically minded people, if any), it’s killing me but I’m sure I’ll be happy with it once I manage to get the data (Cross Lexical Priming paradigm) and once I get a paper out of it.
I started filling out the online applications to a couple of programs in the US. I’m applying to doctoral programs in clinical psychology and cognitive neuroscience. I couldn’t decide which one I’d like better, so I’ll just see whether I’ll be accepted anywhere. I’m taking the GREs this Wednesday, which stresses me out a bit, but by the time you read this I probably will have survived them. I’ll hear from the unis in March, and I’ll of course update you on whether I was successful in getting into any good programs.
I’m also planning to apply to Edinburgh, but that’s a bit more complicated, and I’m trying to transfer to a university in Budapest as my back-up option, but that requires a very bureaucratic procedure. In the worst case, I’ll stay in Budapest for a year, live in my own flat, take some courses at the psychology department, find a small job, get my drivers’ license, learn to speak Spanish, and try again next year.
As for short-term plans, I’ll be in the Netherlands till the middle of December and I’ll spend the Christmas holidays in Budapest. I’ll be going on a skitrip to France in January, which I am very much looking forward to, because the whole bar board is going and that is guarantee for a lot of fun and indecency. :) Then, I’ll be in the Netherlands again till graduation and even longer, because I’ll help out with a summer course in June. So, let me know if you feel like dropping by.
Love & kusje,
Dia
PS: You must read A short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson!"
"Dearest Sunley,
It’s hard to decide what to start with. A lot of positive things happened in my life since June. Most importantly, I started dancing again! I explored the salsa/latin dance scene in Utrecht and these days I go out to salsa parties in town 2-3 times per week. (Or I would, was I not so busy most of the time, but I hope to return to this routine soon.) I got to know a lot of Latinos and Carribbean people and it turned out that after all, there is life outside campus!
Haha, I also lost 11 kilos, which I badly needed. Life is so much lighter now; I can fit into the jeans I was wearing in AC :)
I’ve been indulging myself in the life of the campus bar. This year I’m in the board of the bar as HR manager, and my task is to make sure that all the shifts are covered. An unpleasant side effect is that since it is impossible to make everybody happy with the shift distribution, people bitch about it, but I learnt to take that lightly. Pleasant side effects are cheap drinks – the first advice I got when I joined the board was “watch your liver” – a lot of dancing and a great group of people to work with.
I’m still working on the EU-funded project on the standardization of spoken commands for speech driven ICT devices. Not extremely exciting, but the research group flew me to Nice (France) in the summer for a meeting, and I was at the Interspeech 2007 conference in Antwerp (Belgium) to present a poster, so it’s worth it.
It is my last year at uni – yes, I’m graduating in May – and this means that I’m pretty busy with schoolwork. I’m doing my research on the reconstruction of VP ellipsis (for all those psycholinguistically minded people, if any), it’s killing me but I’m sure I’ll be happy with it once I manage to get the data (Cross Lexical Priming paradigm) and once I get a paper out of it.
I started filling out the online applications to a couple of programs in the US. I’m applying to doctoral programs in clinical psychology and cognitive neuroscience. I couldn’t decide which one I’d like better, so I’ll just see whether I’ll be accepted anywhere. I’m taking the GREs this Wednesday, which stresses me out a bit, but by the time you read this I probably will have survived them. I’ll hear from the unis in March, and I’ll of course update you on whether I was successful in getting into any good programs.
I’m also planning to apply to Edinburgh, but that’s a bit more complicated, and I’m trying to transfer to a university in Budapest as my back-up option, but that requires a very bureaucratic procedure. In the worst case, I’ll stay in Budapest for a year, live in my own flat, take some courses at the psychology department, find a small job, get my drivers’ license, learn to speak Spanish, and try again next year.
As for short-term plans, I’ll be in the Netherlands till the middle of December and I’ll spend the Christmas holidays in Budapest. I’ll be going on a skitrip to France in January, which I am very much looking forward to, because the whole bar board is going and that is guarantee for a lot of fun and indecency. :) Then, I’ll be in the Netherlands again till graduation and even longer, because I’ll help out with a summer course in June. So, let me know if you feel like dropping by.
Love & kusje,
Dia
PS: You must read A short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson!"
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