This year is going to be amazing!

So I had my introduction to the course yesterday. There is so much to do already, but I have so many ideas, I can get right to work!

Firstly, there are only 12 students on my course (there was about a 25% acceptance rate if you were wondering, so it is a lot more competitive than any undergraduate program, but definitely nowhere close to the competitiveness of a PhD program, which is about a 3-5% acceptance rate). We seem to get along nicely as small courses tend to do. As usual, over the duration of the briefing, I seemed to be the least timid in asking questions. While the mood of the majority tended to be slightly confused and fearful throughout, I realized I had a distinct advantage having contacted potential advisers before the course started, and I do seem to be quite a bit more on top of things than the others.

The professor who runs the course will do the majority of the teaching, which will be only one day per week, leaving us to concentrate on our independent studies. The design of the course is very very practical, something I not only appreciate but am totally excited by! The prof said not to think of the course as a typical Masters program, getting those As, etc, but more like a helpful trajectory toward publication. Actually, the classes are all geared toward shaping our interests, reading a LOT, and ultimately writing two mondo papers: the dissertation (of course), and a literature review based on related materials. The prof expects us to publish both. So, we'll see how that pans out! Very excited.

Our tasks for this week (until we meet again) are as follows: come up with an idea for a psychometric test (to be used on guinea pig undergrads toward the middle of the semester), come up with a few topics for the literature review (to be written by the end of the semester), and choose a topic for the thesis. These things I have already done, so I feel really on the ball here. The prof wants to meet with me on Monday, probably to discuss my ideas, but he said he liked the way everything looks from my end and commended my organization (he he).

Oh, so you want to know the status of 'the big question' from the last post? I have been tirelessly trying to work it out through hours and hours of grueling (but definitely fun lol) scholarly research, and I think I'm on to something. The adviser asked me to find a gap in the research, something that is missing. Well, here is what I found:

When people study the effects of neglect, whether it be for covert vs overt attention, exogenous vs endogenous orienting, frames of references, object-oriented vs spatial-oriented attention or what have you (you don't need to know what these are to keep reading)-- all of this research has a certain amount of variance... some say it's because of testing strategies, etc... I say, small sample sizes and individual error-- when 10 people have neglect, there could be 10 different brain regions affected. And it's very hard to find people with neglect, so an entire sample could consist of two people. So how are those comparable? Not directly comparable, at any rate. In using normal subjects, and administering TMS (a stimulation machine that can confuse the normal brain into thinking certain parts of it have been 'knocked out'), you can have a more directly controlled comparison. Also, using behavioral measures, such as presenting a cue predominantly on one side of space for a long period of time, might also induce neglect, for a short period of time, in much less spread-out brain regions than actual neglect. So the proposition of using normals to induce neglect, rather than patients with actual neglect, might have its advantages after all. And not many studies have done something like this. As far as I know, none!

So that might be something to point out. I have e-mailed the adviser twice now with different ideas and he did not think those were 'big question'. Maybe this is it? It might still be too soon to tell. I didn't come into this program with a huge reading base on the subject... I probably could have prepared sooner, but oh well. I am optimistic that multiple hours per day in a library can bring me up to speed fairly quickly though, and all the other first-year MSc students are in the same boat, if not a slightly less-buoyant boat if I do say so myself, since I got the impression I was already at an advantage... I want to be the best-- do you blame me? I might have delusions of grandeur, but at least that does something to boost my confidence and enthusiam. Boy am I enthusiastic! And there's nothing like an enthusiastic idiot bound to spring at every obstacle until he pounds it down with his psycho-energy. That is the enthusiastic idiot btw.

On another note, I just received word that my student loans have been processed, and I will get all the money in my bank account within 5-10 working days-- yippee-hooray! I already have £800 available, so I am good to go for the rest of the month solely on those funds. Well, it took long enough- but everything is finally coming together. I just feel bad for this other American (yes, there is one other) on my course, who just arrived on Saturday and is living in a hotel. Why didn't she reserve a room beforehand? Why didn't she do the International Student Welcome Program? Nobody knows. At least I don't. But I do feel bad for all the trials she must go through over the next couple of weeks, on top of her studies. I told her about the university's private acommodations for postgraduates and away I went.

The weather is supposed to be nice for the marathon on Sunday, by the way! Yes, I am still running in that derned thing, half-marathon 13.1 miles. Wish me luck, everybody!

Oh, and by the way-- I am ashamed at all of you who are not e-mailing me at darogasrainydaae@gmail.com! I don't want to think that this is like a second-life, here. If I was all by myself I'd have offed myself by now, so you all know. So I am going to name names here-- Laura!!! Matt!! Give me a shout, preferably something short since I receive the e-mails on my phone, even if it's just 'Hi how's your day going' or 'Work stunk today' or whatever. Ha ha. Love you guys.

Boy, I'm hungry... and cold, deep in the throes of the psycho ward-- I mean, department. I got my security ID today and was like WTF this thing stinks. Jana got this fancy ID badge with swipe-access and lanyard included, I got some hastily-thrown-together cut-and-paste-lamination job fit for a high school project someone didn't try very hard on. My picture is cut all jagged, and it's not even straight. I don't get swipe access, so I got trapped in a stairwell cos everything is so SECURE in this damn building, so I had to use the fire escape which thankfully did NOT make an alarm go off, at least not that I know of.

Jeez.

Oh, reflectively, I noticed something today on my run. Two years ago, while studying at Leicester last time, I took a picture of the tops of hundreds of brown-red houses from the top of the hill the university sits. I wasn't thinking anything of it, I just thought the rows and rows of chimneys looked cool. Now guess where I live? Ha ha, you guessed it! In one of those houses. I noticed this while running past the exact location from which I took the original picture. Funny to think I took a picture of my house from afar, years before I dreamed I might live in it?

Peace. :)