Week One Down: "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger"

This may or may not be a futile attempt to supplement the phone calls, cards, and e-mails that update on personal lives with actual information about what the heck I'm doing out here. I feel like I've done a really poor job of keeping everyone posted on such things. I just want to be clear that I wouldn't trade the personal info for anything, though. It always makes my day (and a lot of times my week) to hear from people back home - good or bad - happy or sad - for hours or just a few minutes. So please don't let those stop...

So, my third year of (this) graduate school has officially begun. It sounds pretty weak, but I actually felt like I needed a long weekend already. I'm tryin to acclimate to a full course load, my thesis work, and putting a significant number of hours in in two labs. Clearly, I should be investing right now in some Airborne because I'll be needing any and all not-get-sick tricks that Western Society has to offer.

The actual work has been more tedious than grueling. I've noticed that overall, this is the way that research tends to be, but that it is made totally worth it by the 15 seconds you sometimes get - once in a while - where you come across something really interesting and exciting. I'm getting ready for a variety of things that will hopefully come to a head this spring. There are two conferences that I'm hoping to attend. One will be the International Conference on Infant Studies (ICIS) hosted in Vancouver and the other is the Gender Development Research Conference in San Francisco. I'm submitting an application to present 2 posters at ICIS and 1 at the GDRC. Right now, I'm coding video tapes that will provide the preliminary data for my ICIS projects. Essentially, I need enough data to convince people that I'm asking interesting questions and have the information and ability to answer them. Submissions are due at the end of September and then I'll have until March to finish coding data, run analyses, and turn everything into an eye-catching and informative poster. I imagine things will run in much the same way for the GDRC. I'm just less worried about that right now because those submissions are not due until January.

In addition to that, I'm running the beginnings of my analyses for my master's thesis. Hopefully, I'll be defending that in the spring and start signing all my e-mails "Rebecca Brooker, M.A." or will I be an M.S.? I think M.A. I think it's maybe a bad sign that I don't know....

The goals I've set for myself this year are to improve my writing skills. Technical writing is really tricky, particularly when you have to work in enough details to be convincing and accurate, but not so many that you're dry and wordy. I've talked to both Kristin (my primary advisor, Dr. Kristin Buss) and Sheri (my secondary advisor, Dr. Sheri Berenbaum) about things I can do with them to make that happen. I've just got to continue to be very intentional about it, I think.

The other bit of good news is twofold. 1) we moved into our new office space. Amy (no, not my sister Amy, unfortunately) and I will still share an office, but it is much bigger and we both have nicer chairs. we now have a window. truth be told, it looks out into the hallway, but we've decided that we'll take what we can get. and 2) college football season has started and this makes me very happy. i've traded away my notre dame ticket, which i think is a cardinal sin here, but i would much rather see robby than charlie weis, so it seems like a good trade to me.

Okay, that seems like a lot for now considering that I'm not sure how this is going to work and I'm also not sure anyone will get all the way throught that post :)