First Grade of Grad School

What exciting times. I get a new tooth, I get midterms, I get grades. Things are really starting to happen here, let me tell you.

I have three classes this semester, although "class" is kind of a stretch for one of them. It's an independent research credit, and I'm fulfilling it this semester by reading background lit in Cultural Community Psychology and meeting with Cliff and his other advisee Andrew every week for a short "how're things" talk. Then, I have Methodology, which I ultimately enjoy even though some of the readings drive me nuts and a lot of times I'm not entirely sure how much of the class applies to me. It's quantitative methodology, and I'll likely be doing mostly qualitative work. Still, it's dead useful to know this stuff at least for reading other studies in the field if not for my own future research, and my professor, Yiyuan Xu, is really good at explaining it all even when I've spent a week going nuts over incomprehensible readings.

I'm currently (like, I'm taking a break in order to post this) finishing up my midterm for that class. I'm writing a detailed critique of the study of my choosing. I chose a study about population density because population density really affects poor communities. But this study isn't about poor communities. It studies monkeys. Because everything is better with monkeys. I've been slowly working on this for weeks now. It's due Wednesday, so now is the big cinch. But it's good, and again I'm realizing how much I've learned this semester.

I say, "again I'm realizing how much I've learned this semester," because I went through that process last week with my Cultural Community Psychology class take-home midterm. It was comprised of four out of five essay questions that did a right good job pulling the class's copious readings together. Recapping, making connections between what we talked about in the second and eighth classes... I learned a lot from taking that midterm, or rather, really thought about all that I'd learned. And plus, I got an A+ as I've just found out. And because my class participation, discussion, and presentation have been "excellent", I have an A+ for the class so far. Which makes me very happy. Because it had been five years since I wrote an academic essay (or four) and I wasn't sure I still had it in me. I was a little worried there for a minute.

But now? Quite pleased. And you know, I like being quite pleased.