Semester punch

My semester is kicking my ass, charbroiling it, and handing it back to me on a platter. I am being served. Every week I go through a roller-coaster on the confidence-incompetence scale in which just before stats class (say, on Sunday and Monday) I feel royally incompetent. I feel dim-witted, thick-headed, and lost in translation. About mid-way through class on Monday, we have a break, and I go out in the hallway and have a "WTF was that all about" conversation with twelve or so other people and realize that I am not falling behind, I am on par with the rest of the class. I feel better. We can't all be in the bottom one percent of the class. I think, so long as I'm level, I'll be okay. This must just be the learning process for this class.

By the time Sunday comes around again, and I've been working it on my own for awhile, I'm back to the belief that I need to drop the class before I fail it and get kicked out of school because they didn't realize how stupid I was when they first accepted me.

Have I ever mentioned how confident I am in my ability to figure things out? I learned at some point that me not having done something before is not indication at all as to whether or not I can do that thing. If I want to figure something out, I generally can. And if I feel like doing it well, I can generally do that too. And I did well in undergrad statistics even though I had feared it and put if off until the last possible moment. I even enjoyed it. I'm not enjoying this. I'm not handling this feeling of mortal incompetence very well at all. Lucky for me, I know I'll be feeling much better tonight.

Even still, I haven't entirely convinced myself that I'll be able to stay in this class until the end. You really can't fail in grad school. I may have to a) take another class first to build up my stats foundation, or b) find another class to fill this requirement. Blech. I hate the idea of dropping. I want to figure it out, damn it.

Besides stats, I have Qualitative Methods, which is an awesome class actually. I am highly enjoying it, it is highly relevant to my field of work, and I have already learned a lot. I have already applied a lot of this knowledge toward my thesis work. The downside of this class is that it is a lot of work. Five or six books, plus articles, PLUS two research projects. Cool research projects though. Our job is to go out into the field and data gather like we were doing real-live research. One observation study. One interview study. Up to 25 page papers for each.

I can't help it. As overwhelmed as I am by the sheer amount of time and energy necessary for this class, I'm so excited by the idea of doing this stuff. I came up with a really cool theme for my observation study. I worked hard putting it together. I even worked hard to get it through IRB so that I could publish and people wouldn't have to worry about me having experimented improperly on human people. But then it collapsed.

I was going to do an observation study on customer and employee rudeness at fast food restaurants. I have this whole theory in my head-- "the Fast Food Model of How and Why the World Works the Way it Does", involving power imbalances, responsibility without control, and the ability for some people (customers) to carry on like assholes while other people "cashiers" cannot fight back because they'll get fired. I was going to observe and record actual interaction and maybe develop my Model into something workable and researchable. But then I went to pick up Michael from work. And...

It's too friggin noisy in fast food restaurants to observe and record quiet or nuanced interaction without basically invading people's personal space. And if I'm standing three feet away from you (the asshole), and I'm scribbling furiously in a notebook while staring at you, I will be influencing the way people behave with my oddity. I'll probably become the focus of interaction, so that people will not behave normally. I toured 12 fast food restaurants and a mall food court looking for a good place to observe. It apparently doesn't exist.

I'm so bummed.

I had so much energy around that study.

Ah well, Michael and I thought up something fun, that's not as interesting, but is kind of interesting, and is low-key, low-stress, and possibly entertaining. I'm going to observe tourists/vacationers in their natural habitat. That is to say, I'm going to observe people who are out of their normal home context to see if they really do seem to suspend their regular rules for operation. There are so many stories of tourists running into people, ignoring traffic laws, etc., because they are in an oblivious state of vacation bliss. They don't behave like regular people. My idea is that it is because they are outside of their day-to-day, so they stop applying day-to-day standards to their daily function. So they don't look for other people on a crowded sidewalk, or wait for the white person to replace the red hand. So I'll go watch this down in Waikiki to see what I can see.

Fun, yeah? But not exciting, and certainly not publish worthy. But that's cool. One less pressure, I guess.

My job is cool, but it's a lot of work. And on the one hand, it doesn't matter that it's a lot of work because it's really cool. I have a lot of interaction with very smart people who really care about what they are doing. I get to do and to learn really neat how-to-do-research things in an applied setting. This is learning on my feet, and I really, really, really love learning on my feet. The "lot of work" part only bothers me on the other hand, when I have homework and especially statistics. It's a lot to put into a day, and it makes me tired. Still, I don't think I would trade it. No, definitely not. I would totally trade statistics. In a heartbeat. I really like my job.

My thesis is coming along. I have to crunch a bit this week in order to maintain my relaxed schedule. That does make sense, trust me. It's actually not that much crunching, too, because I've gotten a lot of it done already. I need to sit down for... I think in four hours I could be done if they were four straight hours. When do I have four straight hours this week? Hmmmmm... I'll find it.

And of course, right now, I have a conference to prepare for. I'm in this inter-cultural seminar that meets on Mondays. Topics vary, presenters vary, it's really cool. I enjoyed it all last year and so far, I'm enjoying it again this year. I've been told it's a good place to practice things for conferences or for thesis defense, etc. It's a bunch of people from a bunch of disciplines who are knowledgeable about cultural topics and interested in learning from each other so as to understand different perspectives. I'm going to "pilot" my conference talk to them on Monday next week, and hopefully get some really good feedback so that I can give the best talk ever next weekend. Wow, that's really soon.

I've nearly finished putting my presentation together. Then I have to practice it a lot to make sure I can do it in the allotted time. I think it's a really good presentation, actually. I'd listen through it.

So, that's all the stuff that's going on with me right now. And that is why this semester is beating me to a bloody pulp. Well, for today. Just wait until after Statistics class. I'll be feeling much more positive and confident about everything then. :)

It is exciting times, these. And you know how I hate being bored.