Midterms...almost done

So, I had Psychopathology midterm last night and Language and Thought midterm a night before. I don't think I did too well on either one of them and I'm bit disappointed with myself. To be honest, the questions were not that difficult but were hard to understand what they were really asking. I have to keep 3.8 GPA...otherwise, I will loose my fellowship. Too much pressure! I don't know what I would do if I loose fellowship. This fellowship covers full tuition, and there's no way I can pay out of my pocket. Hmmm...my negative thinking started again...Anyway, I have Social Psy midterm in 1.5 week, so I should study hard!

Other than midterms, not much is going on. I'm going to Columbus from Saturday to Monday--that's about it. I'm hoping to do some shopping, relaxing, drinking, and eating in Columbus :) Sunday is Halloween but I have no plan for dressing up this year. I would have liked to, though. Maybe I can wear my bunny ears on Halloween!

Alright, back to work now. No crazy NY episode today.

story about a graduate student

This is a story about a graduate student living in Queens. She was working diligently in her lab yesterday afternoon and didn't get a chance to eat lunch untill 5pm. Then, she decided to go get something to eat before her class starts at 8pm. But then, she realized that she only has $1. She could go to the bank right across the street to get some money, but it was raining hard, so she decided not to. Instead, she went to a vending machine to get some Sun Chips. However, the bag of chips got stuck in the machine! She kicked and punched the machine but the chips didn't come out. So, she ended up with an empty stomach and 25 cents. She was tempted to skip a class and to go home to have a warm meal. But she was a good student and decided to go to her class. When the class was over at 10pm, it was still raining heavily in NYC. She rushed to the subway station but she couldn't walk as fast because she had flip-flops on and she would have slipped and fell if she tried to walk fast. Soaking wet, she made it to the subway station! But her bad luck didn't end there. Due to the heavy rain, her train did not have service to Queens. Her train stopped at 59th street! Then, she had to manuver around on the subway system to find a way home. Luckly, 7 train had service to Queens! Yay! She took the 7 train to 69th St-Woodside and made it back to Queens. However, the train station was 10+ minute walk from her house. Only if she had money, she could have gotten something to eat and could have taken a cab home. With her empty stomach, she had to walk in a heavy rain. Finally, she made it to her house and had some food and slept on a comfy bed! The End.

I cut and pasted this story from an e-mail I sent to my friend about a month ago. Good story, isn't it? Of course, this grad student that I described in the story was me...

I'm studying for language and thought midterm. Although I only have little over 24 hours before the exam, I'm not too scared. This is bad! Whenever I feel relaxed about an exam, I usually do pretty bad. Maybe going to the TA session tonight will make me scared about the exam.

It's always hard to decide what to eat for lunch or dinner in Union Square area. There are so many places to eat (unlike Athens, OH), but all these places are soooo expensive. To me, expensive means over $5/meal, so it's almost impossible to find anything to eat! I've been going to Wendy's and Subway (they have $2.49 daily special for 6-inch sub) quite a bit. But I'm getting sick of eating fastfood. I want to eat warm and healthy stuff. :-( A cup of soup is $3 or more in this area. I definitely miss $1.25 (can't remember exact price) soup at Grover Center at OU.

Oh, speaking of OH, I'm excited about visiting Ohio this weekend! I didn't think I would be making this many trips to Ohio after moving to an exciting place like NYC...but hey, people are nicer in Ohio! :)

paid research participation = good

So, I got paid $200 today for participating on the experiment. Although it was very hard to get to Midtown by 8:30am every morning for the past four days, it was totally worth it. They told me that the compensation will depend on my performance on the task but I think they were gonna give $200 to everyone who participated. $200 for 4 hours = $50/hour. Wow, this is great! I wish I could make it as my career--participating on various experiments and get compensated. :) As a psychologist in training, I couldn't help myself but to guess the purpose of this experiment. Unlike other experiments I've participated, they didn't have consent form or debriefing session. So, I still don't know for sure what the experiment was all about. The only reason I can think of for them not following any of the human subject guidelines (e.g., consent form, debriefing, etc) is that this experiment will be used for commercial purpose. Apparently, this company that ran the experiment sells equipments for psychological experiments, and I think they will use our data to market their products. Well, at least this is what I speculate.

I got a catalogue from Victoria's Secret today. How can all these models on the catalogue be so sexy and beautiful. I wish I was at least half as sexy and beautiful as they are. :-p

I'm extremely tired and sleepy today...maybe I should go to bed earlier tonight. zzz...

Another chaos

I went to talk to a student advisor to find out how many credits can transfer from OU...I've been asking them about it since last April but they've been sort of putting that off untill yesterday. They were telling me like..."we'll do this once get all the grades in"..."we'll do this when you get to NY." then, once I got to NY, they told me, "we'll do this during the registration"...and so on. Now, it's almost time to register for the next semester, and one of the student advisors finally told me that only 1 class can transfer toward MA degree, which means that I can't apply for the Ph. D. program untill Spring, 2006. (and couple of other classes can transfer once I'm admitted to the Ph.D. program) So, this is what I was told yesterday, and of course I freaked out. The total of 3 years in MA program? The problem is, I can't take any clinical classes untill I get into the Ph.D. program. For the mean time, I have to keep taking general psychology courses. This is bunch of crap! After this conversation with the student advisor, I talked to Doris and explained to her about the situation. I was furious! I even thought about going back to Ohio after this semester so I won't be too behind in the program at OU. For many different reasons, I don't want to go back to Ohio, but I thought I can't risk something like this happening to me over and over. Who knows what would happen after this! Maybe they'll tell me that I can't get into the Ph.D. program after wasting two years in this program, or something screwy like this.

Then, Doris called me this afternoon to tell me that she talked with our clinical coordinator. He will talk to Student Affairs to see whether they will let me apply for the Ph.D. program this year. I don't know how well that will go but the situation is way better than how it was yesterday. I hope they will let me apply this year...I'm sick of taking classes with 70 other students who all want to get into the Ph.D. program.

blinking is important

So, I went to the experiment at 8:30 this morning. The task was to draw a line in the specified circles on the computer screen using the mouse-like pen (I don't know the correct name for this device). The experiment lasts for four days, and the first three days are practice sessions. Each session lasts for about an hour. Depending on how well I do on the fourth day on this task, I can get paid up to $200. I don't know if I will still get paid even if I did horrible on the task. If I did really bad on the fourth day and didn't get paid at all, that would be such a waste of time. This fear motivated me to put lots of effort into this task this morning even though the task itself was sooooooooooo boring. And, while I was in the session, I forgot to blink, and my contacts dried up on my eyes! As a (future) psychologist, I think that telling participants that the payment depends on their performance is their strategy to motivate them. (indeed, this strategy is working for me!) Otherwise, nobody will put any effort into this stupid task. anyway, I hope I will get paid something on Thursday.

weekend...too short!

I didn't go to Manhattan at all this weekend. Instead, stayed around in good ol' Queens for the entire weekend. It wasn't too bad staying in Queens. I got some work done (and still much more to do).

I had a bit of emotional chaos tonight. As the weekend approached to the end, I started thinking about all the stuff I have to do this week and how little I've done this weekend. And this very thought overwhelemed me and I started to freak out. Once I start thinking about bad thoughts, nothing can stop. Overanalyze things, think of the worst case scenario, etc. I can calm myself down easily after letting myself freak out for a bit (unless someone tells me that I'm freaking out over trivial stuff). Anyway, in the midst of my freak out episode, Dave called, and I ended up taking it all out on him (poor guy). But by the end of the phone conversation, I was feeling completely fine. :)

Trying to think if anything else happened this weekend...oh, my Ao-chan is finally fixed and came home from the body shop on Saturday. Ao-chan doesn't have a huge dent any more and looks nice and pretty. It'll be so sad when I have to say good-bye... :-( Other than that, I pretty much stayed home or hung out at Starbucks to catch up on readings.

Ok, I should go to sleep now...I have to be in midtown by 8:30am to participate on this memory study.

Columbus, OH and NYC can't get along

The cheapest roundtrip airfare between Columbus, OH and NYC is $270 and the roundtrip airfare between NYC and San Francisco is $216. How can I make sense out of this? It's cheaper to fly to SF than to Ohio??? How can it be? There are so many mysteries out there, and this is one of them. In fact, traveling between OH and NYC is not permitted? unethical?

It's finally Friday! On cold, rainy Friday night, the only thing I want to do is to drink hot tea and watch TV! (well, not too different from any other weekends) I was diligently reading social psychology articles untill 20 minutes ago but I started to fall asleep. Oh, well...it's Friday. I'm tired so I shoud just watch TV and let my brain cells die. Earlier tonight, I was feeling like going to a bar for some nice drink. Then I realized...1) I'm broke 2) no friend to go with 3) rainy and cold 4) tired.I got a free pot of plant today. Some lady posted online that she's giving away a few pots of plant, so I went up to her place on 110th street to pick one up. I already forgot what the name of the plant was but I like it very much. I put it in the living room because it's so empty there. Now I have to name the plant. I'm thinking..."midori-chan" I can name it with some guy's name and substitute it as a boyfriend...no, that's too sad.

Heater works!

I found out this morning that the heater at my apartment works!!! I was worried for a bit that it may not work at all. Anyway, itt was nice and warm when I got up because the heater was on. Yay! So excited! Since my bed was touching the heater, I decided to move it a bit so it won't catch on fire. As I was moving it...I found something I under the heater. At a first glance, it looked like a candy wrapper. As I was reaching out my hand to pick it up, I realized it wasn't a candy wrapper. Well, I don't want to even write it because it really grossed me out! Eeeeewwwwwwww!!!! It was something the girl who used to live here (and her boyfriend) forgot to throw away...Unlucky day for me.

Other than that, my day was quite uneventful. Got home from school around 10:50pm or so, after 6-10pm classes. By the way, I need a new computer! My laptop is freakin' slow and it is driving me craaaaazzzzyyyyy!!!!!! I wonder if there's anyone out there who wants to donate a nice laptop to me.

Lack of sleep = bad

Even though I was tired all day yesterday, I couldn't sleep until 3am last night and got up at 7:30am this morning. I felt OK for most of the day but I started to get bit disoriented later in the day. Hopefully, I can fall asleep tonight.

I made tuna sandwich for lunch. Tuna smells...ugh! Too fishy! I don't think canned tuna in Japan smelled this bad! After adding mayo, pepper, etc, it turned out OK.

I know there was something I wanted to write about for today's entry but I can't remember...see, sleep deprivation affects memory. I don't know how I used to survive with 5 hours of sleep/night when I was in undergrad. Is this a sign of aging? Ok, I really need some sleep!!!!!!!!

I cheated on...

therefore, I don't know why a bird (or whatever it was) slammed into my window this afternoon. As I was checking e-mail, a bird/flying squirrel/bat flew directly to the window in my room, and made a big "Bang!" noise, followed by "yeee!" (screaming in pain) noise. then, I saw feather flying around in the air. Poor thing! I looked out to see if there is any dead bird on the ground but I didn't see anything. I've seen a Windex commercial with birds slamming into window because Windex cleans well. But my windows are DIRTY!!! I haven't cleaned them ever since I moved to this apartment! It was sooo strange! I've been sleepy for the whole entire weekend. I had 9+ hours of sleep last night but I still had a hard time getting up and I had to force myself to get up this morning. It's not that I wasn't getting enough sleep for the last few days. In fact, I've been getting 8+ hours of sleep everyday. I was soooooo sleepy to the point where I felt bit dizzy and disoriented today. It may be because of the monthly hormonal imbalance thing. Who knows. Ok, back to watching Food Channel!

My window is not that clean

therefore, I don't know why a bird (or whatever it was) slammed into my window this afternoon. As I was checking e-mail, a bird/flying squirrel/bat flew directly to the window in my room, and made a big "Bang!" noise, followed by "yeee!" (screaming in pain) noise. then, I saw feather flying around in the air. Poor thing! I looked out to see if there is any dead bird on the ground but I didn't see anything. I've seen a Windex commercial with birds slamming into window because Windex cleans well. But my windows are DIRTY!!! I haven't cleaned them ever since I moved to this apartment! It was sooo strange! I

've been sleepy for the whole entire weekend. I had 9+ hours of sleep last night but I still had a hard time getting up and I had to force myself to get up this morning. It's not that I wasn't getting enough sleep for the last few days. In fact, I've been getting 8+ hours of sleep everyday. I was soooooo sleepy to the point where I felt bit dizzy and disoriented today. It may be because of the monthly hormonal imbalance thing. Who knows. Ok, back to watching Food Channel!

Looooooooong Day

Today was a super long day! I was at school for 12 hours. Here's what I did today...got to school at 10am. On the way to school from subway station, I treated myself with french vanilla coffee from Dunkin Donuts! yum! :) Then, I worked in the lab untill the meeting with Doris at 3:30pm. We had a great meeting...talked about the manuscript we are reviewing and the manuscript I'm working on....but who could imagine we were talking for 3 hours straight! When I left her office, it was already 6:40pm, and I was 40 minutes late for my 6pm class! I don't think I've ever been this late for class before (or I would have skipped it if the class met more than once a week!) by the time I got out from the 8-10pm class, I was so exhausted. I felt so good laying on the couch when I finally got home tonight. It's getting chilly in NYC. I had to wear a jacket...and my feet are cold!!!

First entry

I've been reading many of my friends' (and other random people's) blogs lately and thought it might be fun to create my own. Yes, I'm easily influenced by others :-p. It's only been 1.5 month since I moved to NYC, but so much has happened already! Yes, it's NYC...not like middle-of-nowhere Ohio.I was hoping to go to sleep earlier but this online assignment for Language and Thought class took forever to finish. Basically, we have to post at least two interesting discussion topics on our online discussion board. I thought this assignment would be easy but since some of my obsessive classmates put very sophisticated questions on the web, I feel pressured to write super good entries. Plus, I don't want to appear stupid because these postings will be viewed by everyone in my class. So, I ended up spending all day/night writing up a discussion topic--and I'm still not happy with it! I'm going to post it online tomorrow morning anyways. It's only 10% of the grade after all. I should go to bed now...because I spent all day on this assignment and haven't done anything for the meeting with my advisor tomorrow afternoon.