That is all.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Welcome to My Time to Say Inappropriate Things WITHOUT Actually Saying Them
On that note...here are some pictures I found that may or may not come close to portraying my feelings on grad school right now (like I said...not actually saying it)
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Conference!
This past weekend I attended my first conference as a graduate student! I was super excited when I heard I got accepted and finally felt like some of my work was validated.
The conference was called No Limits! Beyond Violence: Dare to Speak and was in Omaha Nebraska. For anyone keeping track, I currently live in Michigan (I don't actually know if I mentioned that before) and I'm from Pennsylvania. It just so happened that the conference was scheduled for March 2nd and 3rd, which was right near then end of our "winter recess/spring break".
So here's how my "break" played out:
1. Drive from Michigan to Pennsylvania (approx. 9 hours).
2. Chill out at my dad's house (aka sleep for a few hours)
3. Drive to my mom's new house (30 minutes + getting lost time)
4. Hang out there for a few days (included panicking about my presentation)
5. Take my car back to dad's to get checked out (1 & 1/2 days + major stress of needing major repairs)
6. Drive to Philly (3 hours there and back) for 3 hours of hanging out with friends
7. Build a computer desk for my mom when I'm supposed to be working on presentation (5 hours)
7. Drive back to Michigan (9hours again)
8. Nap
9. Drive to Nebraska overnight (11 hours)
10. Straight from 11 hour drive to conference (8 hours)
11. Check-in at hotel and frantically put together presentation (4 hours)
12. Sleep (5 hours)
13. Present paper (20 minutes)
14. Rest of conference (9 hours)
15. Drive back to Michigan overnight (11 hours)
For anyone that's counting that's 47 hours of driving (over 20 hours of driving for a 20 minute presentation) Insanity? Maybe. Worth it? Definitely
The conference turned out to be great! I presented a paper titled "Internalized Homophobia in Lesbians: Unique Factors in Intimate Partner Violence", which I am also using as the spring board to my thesis. The presentation went really well and afterwards I was approached by a professor from UNO (University of Nebraska at Omaha) who was interested in some of the research I used, so we shared some idea and I got to meet some great people through her. Another woman approached me afterwards and here's were the really exciting stuff happened. She gave me her card and said she was the Executive Director of the Domestic Violence Coordinating Council in Omaha and that she's currently working on writing a grant for funds to do research on the prevalence of IPV (Intimate Partner Violence) in same-sex couples in Omaha. She asked me to e-mail her with my contact information because she thought my presentation was excellent and she would be interested in having me help out with the grant and future research for the council! SO STOKED!
So, all of the driving, insane scrambling and general anxiety about the conference turned out to be totally worth it. I made some great contacts, got offered a chance for research experience and got my work out there. I'd say that's as good a day as you can get in grad school!
The conference was called No Limits! Beyond Violence: Dare to Speak and was in Omaha Nebraska. For anyone keeping track, I currently live in Michigan (I don't actually know if I mentioned that before) and I'm from Pennsylvania. It just so happened that the conference was scheduled for March 2nd and 3rd, which was right near then end of our "winter recess/spring break".
So here's how my "break" played out:
1. Drive from Michigan to Pennsylvania (approx. 9 hours).
2. Chill out at my dad's house (aka sleep for a few hours)
3. Drive to my mom's new house (30 minutes + getting lost time)
4. Hang out there for a few days (included panicking about my presentation)
5. Take my car back to dad's to get checked out (1 & 1/2 days + major stress of needing major repairs)
6. Drive to Philly (3 hours there and back) for 3 hours of hanging out with friends
7. Build a computer desk for my mom when I'm supposed to be working on presentation (5 hours)
7. Drive back to Michigan (9hours again)
8. Nap
9. Drive to Nebraska overnight (11 hours)
10. Straight from 11 hour drive to conference (8 hours)
11. Check-in at hotel and frantically put together presentation (4 hours)
12. Sleep (5 hours)
13. Present paper (20 minutes)
14. Rest of conference (9 hours)
15. Drive back to Michigan overnight (11 hours)
For anyone that's counting that's 47 hours of driving (over 20 hours of driving for a 20 minute presentation) Insanity? Maybe. Worth it? Definitely
The conference turned out to be great! I presented a paper titled "Internalized Homophobia in Lesbians: Unique Factors in Intimate Partner Violence", which I am also using as the spring board to my thesis. The presentation went really well and afterwards I was approached by a professor from UNO (University of Nebraska at Omaha) who was interested in some of the research I used, so we shared some idea and I got to meet some great people through her. Another woman approached me afterwards and here's were the really exciting stuff happened. She gave me her card and said she was the Executive Director of the Domestic Violence Coordinating Council in Omaha and that she's currently working on writing a grant for funds to do research on the prevalence of IPV (Intimate Partner Violence) in same-sex couples in Omaha. She asked me to e-mail her with my contact information because she thought my presentation was excellent and she would be interested in having me help out with the grant and future research for the council! SO STOKED!
So, all of the driving, insane scrambling and general anxiety about the conference turned out to be totally worth it. I made some great contacts, got offered a chance for research experience and got my work out there. I'd say that's as good a day as you can get in grad school!
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
So it's been a while...
Yeah, it's been a while since my last post. Weird seeing as I have OhSoMuch free time! (I couldn't even type that without chuckling a bit).
The last post I made was right at the beginning of winter break. During the break I spent my time looking for (more) conferences to submit my work to. I'm happy to report that all that work of looking up conferences and building the conference page into my blog actually paid off! I submitted proposals to two conferences and the Graduate Research Fair here at EMU and I got accepted to one conference and the grad fair! Woot!
Break seems like so long ago and I really don't know what I did with the rest of my time. Did you ever feel like there is just so much going on that what happened last week seems like a month ago? Well break was 2 months ago so, you can imagine how long ago it feels like.
Since getting back I've started my second semester as a grad student. I'm in all psychology classes this semester after a major disappointing cancellation of what looked like a truly awesome WGST class that my prof from Feminist Thought was teaching. So I'm in Social Pysch and Psych Stats 2. Stats 2 has been the bane of my existence this semester. If I thought Fem Thought was difficult last semester (and it definitely was challenging!) then stats is...well, hell. I haven't taken a stats class in a few years and this is my first grad level stats class. I really should have thought twice about it upon seeing the "2", realizing that I should probably take "1" before skipping ahead. Yeah that would have been a better plan.
Social Psych, however, makes everything seem OK again. The prof is just awesome and we connected pretty much from the beginning. Being at a much bigger university than my undergrad, I was really missing that community feel that I used to have. I feel like I've regained some of that with this professor. When we were all going through the motions of introducing ourselves the first week and talking about research interests and such, she said that my research sounded interesting and that we should set up a meeting sometime to talk about it. So we did. We've been meeting (kind of) regularly since then and it looks like if everything goes as planned she'll be my thesis advisor, which is kind of (REALLY!!!) exciting.
Well I guess that's all for now. I'm going to make a real effort to post more...it'll serve as my break from the insanity :)
The last post I made was right at the beginning of winter break. During the break I spent my time looking for (more) conferences to submit my work to. I'm happy to report that all that work of looking up conferences and building the conference page into my blog actually paid off! I submitted proposals to two conferences and the Graduate Research Fair here at EMU and I got accepted to one conference and the grad fair! Woot!
Break seems like so long ago and I really don't know what I did with the rest of my time. Did you ever feel like there is just so much going on that what happened last week seems like a month ago? Well break was 2 months ago so, you can imagine how long ago it feels like.
Since getting back I've started my second semester as a grad student. I'm in all psychology classes this semester after a major disappointing cancellation of what looked like a truly awesome WGST class that my prof from Feminist Thought was teaching. So I'm in Social Pysch and Psych Stats 2. Stats 2 has been the bane of my existence this semester. If I thought Fem Thought was difficult last semester (and it definitely was challenging!) then stats is...well, hell. I haven't taken a stats class in a few years and this is my first grad level stats class. I really should have thought twice about it upon seeing the "2", realizing that I should probably take "1" before skipping ahead. Yeah that would have been a better plan.
Social Psych, however, makes everything seem OK again. The prof is just awesome and we connected pretty much from the beginning. Being at a much bigger university than my undergrad, I was really missing that community feel that I used to have. I feel like I've regained some of that with this professor. When we were all going through the motions of introducing ourselves the first week and talking about research interests and such, she said that my research sounded interesting and that we should set up a meeting sometime to talk about it. So we did. We've been meeting (kind of) regularly since then and it looks like if everything goes as planned she'll be my thesis advisor, which is kind of (REALLY!!!) exciting.
Well I guess that's all for now. I'm going to make a real effort to post more...it'll serve as my break from the insanity :)
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