The big news from this week was my term paper in psychology Research Methods. (Not really, but that's what took the most energy.) I vaguely recall writing something last weekend about having spent much of the previous days sleeping a lot. Well, I needed it, because I stayed up all night to write my term paper. It's stupid. I'm too old for this shit. I've known about the paper since the beginning of the semester, and have had ample opportunity to work on it for the last two months or so. I didn't even read the source articles until Sunday. After class Tuesday I came home and began writing. I wrote and wrote and wrote until about 8:00 a.m. I got the sucker done.
Oh, somewhere in there I also studied for an exam in that class. Not the final, mind you. That happens this Tuesday. There are 4 exams plus the cumulative final exam. Each exam increases in difficulty through the 4th. The final is actually much easier, so says the prof. We shall see on Tuesday.
Of course I want to make a good grade on the paper, but that's a double-edged sword. If I get a good grade on the damn thing it's likely to reinforce my tendency to procrastinate. Though it's possible that having to stay up all night might mitigate that reinforcement. Hard to say.
The paper was due on Wednesday afternoon, but at the last minute the prof extended the deadline to Thursday morning. Most everyone had the paper done by Wednesday afternoon, so having that extra day just pissed us off. One of my classmates was uber-pissed. I was mildly annoyed. Maybe it's my age, maybe my experience, but I don't usually get angry about shit like that. It is what it is, and getting angry just wastes energy. By mid-morning Wednesday I didn't have the extra energy to expend in getting angry.
But since I had the sucker finished, I had the prof look it over. I told him that if it needed major revision I probably wouldn't rewrite. I was exhausted. He skimmed through it and made a couple of very simple formatting suggestions. That was cool. He said I had obviously read and understood the source articles (HA! Yeah, two days before the paper was due!) and it all looked pretty good.
There was a bit of amusement in the discussion. He looked at my abstract in which I briefly stated the results. (Yes! I was brief! amazing, really.) He said my results were incorrect, that our data showed that group 2 responses were in the other direction from that of group 1. Huh? No it wasn't. Group 1 had a much stronger response, and group 2's response was statistically insignificant, but it was in the same direction. Then he looked at my graphs to prove me wrong, and was instead proved wrong himself. Hee hee hee. He used this same study when he taught this class over the summer, but had used a different set of data. He was thinking about the data from the summer session. So he was wrong and I was right. That tickles me.
As I mentioned, I took exam 4 on Tuesday. He posted the grades Wednesday evening. I made a 96! I'm thrilled. Thrilled, I tell you! He hasn't posted the grades for the paper yet. I just checked.
On Thursday I took my final exam in the theater and film class. It was insultingly easy, and the instructor admitted as much. Oh well, it's an easy A, and I enjoyed the class. I learned a lot of interesting things, so it's all good.
I had no classes on Friday, but had to go to school for a meeting. I was inducted into the Psi Chi honor society, the international psychology honor society. That was cool. It will look good on my grad school applications. I even got a lapel pin. Perhaps I should get a suit with lapels so I can wear it, huh?
I have an article review to write for the Research Methods class. It's so much less significant than the other paper, and as long as I work on it this weekend and don't procrastinate, I'll be fine. And I need to study for the final exam. As I say, it shouldn't be overly difficult, but there are a lot of details I need to recall (or stuff into my brain again). I have the last exam in my Abnormal Psychology class on Wednesday. There again, some details I need to be able to regurgitate on the exam. (Sounds messy)
There's more non-academic stuff, but I'll save that for the next post.
