Happies
Yay! So now I have a place to live in Vancouver next semester. I’d show you pictures, but the listing has been taken down.
Now to get that stupid student visa taken care of…
You know what I’m really tempted to do?
So…
ETS, the company I want to work for when I’m done with all this school business, has a position open right now that would be absolutely PERFECT for me. It’s like my freaking dream job, listen to this:
Arrange for and perform routine statistical analysis and data-processing tasks using GENASYS, user-oriented computer packages, and statistical software packages. Create datasets, enter computer job control information, code parameters, and submit programs for execution. Draft standard statistical reports and assist in the preparation of complex reports. Prepare and check critical information for score reporting, tables, and figures for statistical procedures, documentation, and reports. Update textual material for such documents. Update and run routine statistical analyses using SAS. Perform a wide variety of statistical calculations (e.g., mean, percentiles, standard error of measurement, and reliability estimates).
I DON’T CARE HOW BORING THIS SOUNDS, THIS IS WHAT I WANT MY LIFE TO BE.
So I applied just on a whim…If I get the job, I’m outta here. Screw grad school for a few years. If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.
Though I don’t think they’ll take me though, ‘cause I think they’ll think I’m too far away to relocate “ASAP.”
Blog #976: 2009 Resolutions
Well, 2008 has come to a close. Thank god. So here I am with another set of New Year’s resolutions (and the results from the last set):
Last year’s:
-Keep the 4.0.
Status: check, thank GOD.
-Go to the rec center three times a week.
Status: hahahaha.
-Keep a journal of my weird, weird dreams.
Status: nope, didn’t happen.
-Actually start studying for the GRE sometime before I have to take it.
Status: technically I did this…but only by like two days.
-Make at least one decent Flash animation.
Status: does The Wrath of Xbar count?
This year’s:
-For once, I’m going to try and NOT worry about keeping a 4.0. Sure, I’ll try, but I’m also taking Linear Algebra.
-Get into grad school.
-Get better at R.
-Get better at Flash.
-Keep blogging, regardless of MySpace’s stupidity! (2-years-later edit: hahahahaha)
And…that’s about it.
Are you serious?
GOD DAMMIT. AGAIN.
The company that I have to get into and through graduate school to work for is the very company whose test will probably be reason schools will turn me down. If it didn’t suck so horribly, I’d be laughing at the irony.
I’ve done an average of 26.6 credits per semester, with a couple of those done over the summer. I have a 4.0. I’m graduating in 37 days with my psychology degree. I have almost enough statistics background for a minor and almost enough philosophy background for a major, both of which I’m getting next semester. I have research experience. I’m co-author of an article that’s under review for publication. I have worked my ass off for the past year and a half, cramming eight semester’s worth of work into five. Why? Because I am so ready to go into the career I want that I’m willing to sacrifice everything—down time, time to hang out with friends, non-school related extracurricular activities, even my sanity (flashbacks to last semester’s finals week)—to get to a point where they’ll finally let me to the job I want to do so badly.
So what will my GRE scores tell the grad schools to which I’m applying?
They’ll tell them that I don’t know what 9 raised to the 14th power is (this was an actual question. Seriously. What is the practicality of knowing this??).
They’ll tell them that I can’t find an antonym of the word “panegyric” given a list of five words.
They’ll tell them that I can’t remember the formula for the area of a cylinder.
But you know what it won’t tell them?
That standardized tests have never once predicted my performance in academia (with my SAT scores, my undergrad GPA should apparently be about a 2.6).
That I understand statistics and enjoy them.
That I have such a passion for psychometrics that it’s all I can ever see myself doing with my life.
That I am probably the most motivated person they’ll ever meet.
It’s just very, very depressing to think of the fact that regardless of all this hard work I’ve put into my education, regardless of the stress, regardless of how desperately I want to be a psychometrician and carry out what I think is my life calling, no school will give me a second glance because I cannot perform well on a standardized test.
Fuck it.
Plan
You know what I’m going to do someday?
Teach myself to be left-handed.
Just FYI.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
Okay. Now there’s sort of a light at the end of this never-ending tunnel of depression that I’m going through at the moment. Apparently, my dad knows one of the ladies who works over at the school district, and he got into a conversation with her in which was mentioned my future career goals. Well, this lady, according to my dad, does basically for the school district what I want to do, and she was very interested in meeting me. So I called her and we’re setting up a meeting for next week.
An internship is a possibility.
Sweet.
Yes, my blogs are short. I still feel like crap. Deal with it.
Tra-la-la! Life is great in No Pants Land!
Remember how I said I was conflicted over majors a couple of weeks ago?
Yeah, that’s not happening anymore. Philosophy is freaking AMAZING, don’t get me wrong. But when I’m removed from the philosophy stimuli, I’m right back to the “Psychometrics is the way to go, totally” case.
Of course, I’ll probably be conflicted even more than I was last semester when Metaphysics starts up in the fall.
Yay.
So many more things to do…
Remember that schedule for next fall I said that I had figured out? If you thought I wouldn’t be able to hold on to that schedule for the whole semester without changing it…
Well, you’d be right.
So here’s the thing: I don’t need to take Buddhism in the fall due to the fact that I’m taking it this summer in the late session (any jokes like “aren’t you going to drop it like you dropped Linear Algebra?” will not be a good idea), and I don’t really need to take Fiction, even though I really, really want to. So I’ve decided to be a good student and take a class that actually pertains to one of my majors (or minors…who knows, it’s all twisted at the moment). I’m dropping Fiction and replacing it with Philosophy of Science, which certainly sounds interesting, but is at 8:00-9:15 in the morning on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Oh, and I’m also going to try to persuade several people (Torrey, Dr. Craig, the CASP department, and the Psychometrics teacher) to let me audit Marching Band and take the Psychometrics class offered for five Tuesdays up in Coeur d’Alene. I’m so desperate to take that class.
Sigh.
ZOMG!
Guys, I think hell just froze over…the U of I is actually doing something conducive to the implementation of my plans!
Yes, that’s right! I went up to the philosophy department today to speak to an advisor (who will also be my teacher for Metaphysics next semester) about my plan for fall/spring.
Have I told you this plan? Probably, but I’ll explain it again: my plan is to graduate in the fall with my psych degree (and philosophy minor and statistics emphasis), right? Well, since grad school programs (assuming I get into one) don’t start until the fall, so I’ve essentially a semester where I won’t be doing anything. So I figured, why not do something productive and get a philosophy degree then, since with the minor I’ll only need 4 classes anyway. Well, the thing is, a philosophy major also requires 20 additional credits from another “approved field.” My question was this: could I use 20 of the credits I earned getting my psychology degree to fulfill this requirement (keep in mind I’d have already graduated with these)?
So today I get in there and explain my situation, and he said something to the effect of, “as long as the Registrar doesn’t have any restrictions, it will work fine.”
I checked with the Registrar. They don’t have any restrictions.
Translation: yes, I CAN graduate in the fall, and I CAN come back and get my second B.S. in the spring.
How incredibly awesome is that?
It nearly almost trumps my incredible worrying over the results of my two tests today.
Optimism restored!
Woohoo!
So remember how I was complaining about the fact that Belief and Reality, a class I’d have to take to get a philosophy degree, appears to be offered every four years or so, thus significantly reducing my odds of getting my degree next spring due to the fact that it’s being offered now?
Well, I went in to talk to my logic teacher today (damn you, biconditionals!) and we got to talking about my plans. Turns out, he’s actually teaching that class in the spring, which means that I can totally get the philosophy degree!
YAY! Optimism regarding school has reemerged!
Plus, I think I’m finally getting a handle on these proofs.
Is the logic lightbulb on?
No.
Is it flickering?
Yes.
Now to read some Leibniz!
Plan:
Did you know…
…that there are 97,978 waiting list candidates waiting for an organ donation?
…that the average waiting time for a kidney is 1,121 days (which is a longer wait than for any other major organs, hearts and lungs included)?
…that Sacred Heart Medical Center up in Spokane does kidney transplants?
Conclusion: I want to donate one of my kidneys to someone in need of one. When? No idea. But I want to. New goal in life.
“Crazy,” you say? Hell, somebody out there—many people out there—need a new kidney to survive. Why not do my part?
Okay, I’ll shut up now.
Goodbye, 2007 (or, as I’m calling it, Year of the WTF JUST HAPPENED!?”)
(why “Year of the WTF JUST HAPPENED?!”? Because it was a freaking rollercoaster, that’s why.)
Wee! Last day of 2007. Overall, I’d give it a 6.1 out of 10. Some parts rocked. Some parts downright sucked. So here we go with another obligatory end of the year ritual: the status of goals set last New Year’s, plus new goals for next year!
Last Year’s Goals
~Keep a 4.0: check
~Go to the rec center three times a week: fail
~Get a date: check!
~Get a life: fail. Fail, fail, fail.
Bonus Goals Tacked On at the Last Minute
~Watched Futurama incessantly until all episodes were committed to memory: check
~Acquired dozens of pieces of crap from eBay: check
~Realized that I don’t need a “life” to be awesome: check
~Developed many emotional attachments to many dead or fictional people: check
New Year’s Resolutions
~Keep the 4.0
~Go to the rec center three times a week
~Keep a journal (on my blogs, of course) of my weird, weird dreams
~Actually start studying for the GRE sometime before I have to take it
~Make at least one decent Flash animation.
Is it sad that that’s all I can think of right now? I think it’s sad.
I’ll add more later.
Love and Flash
We’re on the “loving and relationships” chapter in my social psychology class and it’s sooooo depressing.
But on a lighter note, I shall give you a preview/summary/sentence of each Flash I plan on creating next week/finals week/over break. Go!
Manifest Destiny
Yeah, this is the little preview that I was working on the night before the band trip. Yeah, it’s still not finished. Give me a break! 22 credits! Plus I made that other one, you know, the other Millard Fillmore one with Zach Taylor.
The Entire History of the United States Presidencies in Seven Minutes Flat
Just what it sounds like. Set to Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever.” It’s going to be epic.
The Declaration of Independence: The Movie
George Washington gets a camcorder. He tapes the day(s) of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Hilarity ensues.
The Hypothetical Date
Involving a date with Millard Fillmore. Maybe I’ll do this one in little sections and make it one of those “make your own adventure” things, what do you think of that?
Yeah. It’s going to be one (un)productive break.
Ah, to be away from Idaho…
New goals, people!
I have discovered that it is possible for me to get all my needed credits and psychology courses for the psychology major next fall instead of the following spring. If I can do this, I can get my B.S. and graduate in December and then declare a “minor only” enrollment for spring to get my minors done. However, if I can do this, I may bypass spring semester here (we’re talking ’09, not next spring) and go on exchange somewhere!
That’s right, it’s my new mania. I want to go overseas for school.
Although I doubt classes will work out so that it would be to my advantage…I’ll probably end up here until spring ’09 and try to go overseas this coming summer.
Wouldn’t that rock? I think so.
Oh, and one of my fish died already. Why does everything I love die?! WHYYYYYYY?!
Love, thy name is z-score
Now I’m not one to cuss much, but goddamn FUCK I love my Tests and Measurements class!!
I know I’ve blogged about this like five times, but I’m so freaking excited about it! I have found my true calling in life. If people are meant to have a sole purpose, I’m 99.99999% sure mine is to be a psychometrician and to make my change in the world through that. It’s a glorious thing to know something with such certainty.
As willing as I am to work my butt off for every single class I have, I’m 500% more willing to work for Tests and Measurements.
More determined than ever. Watch the hell out.
BUT…
Here’s the thing. I think I’ve discovered another very strong passion of mine—philosophy. I’ve never used to like philosophy; it was the one thing I wanted to stay away from. But thanks to my Literature of Western Civilization II class last semester, I’ve discovered the wonderful world of the ancient thinkers. And the addition of my glorious History of Ancient/Medieval Philosophy class this semester makes me consider more than I probably should be considering at this point switching out my minors for a major in philosophy (plus a few classes in the Greek language). But I won’t, because that would be impractical.
Maybe I’ll get a second Bachelor’s in philosophy while working for my Master’s and PhD at whatever grad school I happen to go to.
And I’ve decided that if for some strange reason my getting out of here in three years is not possible (no idea why that would be, considering I could get my requirements for my Bachelor’s done by next semester), I’m saying “screw it” and getting a triple major in Psychology, Philosophy, and Statistics.
That’s right, I’m either in here for a short while or in here for a very long while
I’m probably boring you now.
…I need help, don’t I?
UPDATE: there are weirdoes out there like me! And they’re on Facebook!
If a sound falls in a tree and no one is around, does it make a forest?
These are my life goals at the moment. Let’s see how many of them I can accomplish. They are in no particular order.
-Write several award-winning books
-Win a Nobel Prize
-Go to Antarctica
-Get a tattoo
-Get into a good grad school
-Make a global impact regarding global warming
-Get a Ph.D
-Get a 4.0 straight through college
-Win a Pulitzer
-Complete my bachelor’s and three minors in three years
-Go skydiving
-Do research in Antarctica
-Get another one of my plays produced
-Create a new, more accurate I.Q. test (using my Super Awesome Quantitative and -Qualitative Psychometric Ph.D!)
-Be remembered by millions when I die
These are the ones I can think of now. I’ll update this later.
a+b=f and f=9, therefore a=693. Pure logic right there.
Piss on a stick! I’m screwed for grad school. My school of choice, the University of Minnesota (where they offer both a master’s AND a Ph.D in qualitative and quantitative psychology) had a total of 512 people submit applications last year. And guess how many got in? 40. I. Am. So. Screwed.
There are only a few schools in the United States that even offer a Ph.D in QQP, so now the possibilities are further opened for me, meaning I could go to:
-The University of Minnesota
-Ohio State University
-The University of Nebraska-Lincoln
-The University of Kansas
-The University of North Carolina
-The University of Georgia
Wee.
The Pitcher in the Sourdough
Hello people! Guess what I’m doing today with some money from my first paycheck? I’m starting an Antarctica fund. That’s right, I’m saving up to get my butt down to Terra Incognita.
Haha, yeah. Just thought you’d like to know. Plus, it’s late, I’m tired, and I don’t have anything else to write about. More tomorrow. Promise.
Kudos if you got the reference of the title…or rather, what the title is making fun of.
Precious, precious time…
Well, crap. If you’re all wondering, this is what I do with my time now and what I will probably be doing with my time M-F for most of the rest of summer.
10:00: wake up (don’t worry, the lateness is justified)
11:00-12:15-ish: rec center
1:30-3:30: English 208 (ends June 13)
5:00-12:00: work
3:00-10:00: sleep
That’s about it. And that’s why I check Facebook/MySpace/email so late at night and am really never online during the day. Ha!
Career-a-size Me, Cap’n!
Okay.
So I’ve decided, I think, what I specifically want to do in the field of psychology. I know the majority of people majoring in psychology want to do clinical work. I, on the other hand, want to stay as far away from it as possible.
I’ve always had a thing with data and statistics—I like to analyze data, check correlations, and find percentages (what a total nerd, eh?). So I figure I want to go into quantitative and psychometric psychology, which basically deals with the design, execution, and validity of tests and the data received from said tests (tests being IQ, personality, and achievement tests for the most part). It sounds like stuff I’d like to do. Plus the $200,000 a year salary sounds pretty good, too.
A collage of colleges
Dangit, I’m never going to get off the west coast! And I’m going to be up to my eyeballs in a $200,000 debt (optimistically) by the time I’m 24. At least if I go to the top school in terms of a psychology department.
So I did a little research today (I’ll probably do more later) and came across a list of schools ranked by their psychology Ph.D. programs. Here are the top contenders (at least according to one list):
1. Stanford
2. University of Michigan—Ann Arbor
3. Harvard University
So I went to the Stanford website today and checked out the tuition. I saw the number $11,000 (rounded, of course) and I thought, “oh, that’s not TOO terribly bad.” And then I noticed that they do their thing in QUARTERS, meaning not $22,000 a year but $44,000 a year. Frick. And I don’t think I can get my Ph.D. in a year.
Ah…I’m screwed.
And don’t even ask me about Michigan or Harvard’s tuitions.
[subject]
Bwahahaha! It’s time to change my plans again! So I figured out that getting a major and three minors will be faster than getting two majors, so here’s my new plan:
I’m sticking with my psychology major, cause I love, it, and switching my English major to an English minor while adding a philosophy minor and a history minor.
Yeah.
This is my new plan and I’m sticking with it. If I keep up this pace, I’ll be out of here in three years with a bachelor’s in psychology and three minors, and I think that’s pretty damn good.
Ambitious or insane? You be the judge.
No, wait.
I’ll be the judge.
You just sit there and look pretty.
I’m resolving to make some resolutions!
Huttah! New Year’s resolutions on Christmas Eve! Hey, why isn’t there a Christmas Adam?
Anyway, here are the few little resolution’s I’ve made:
1. Be myself. Yeah, yeah, I know I’ve always been myself, but I want to let it out there a little more. I’m too damn shy (some may debate that this shyness is part of who I am, but I don’t know). I’ve decided that—even more so than before—I’m not going to give a crap about what other people think about me. I’m one of those people who you either love or hate. If you hate me, screw you. I’m not going to change. If you love me, great! I’ll take off my pants at your request!
2. Go to the rec center every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday no matter what (unless I’m in the hospital/dead/on a date.
EDIT: broken on Jan. 5th. Loser.
3. Get a date. I need one, already.
4. Get a life. I need one, already.
ADDED: 5. Get laid. (Not Lay’s®, that’s different. )
That’s about it.
Decisions have been made!
Alrighty!
Today, I ordered a bunch of Lego people who should be arriving next Wednesday. I have also made my decisions for the books I will interpret through Lego movies:
~1984 by George Orwell
~20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
~The Crucible by Arthur Miller
~Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
~Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
~The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
~Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
~A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
~War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Yes, I’m going to torture myself by having to go through that damn book War and Peace again. Of course, I’m not going to read it again–my good friends at SparkNotes.com will help . Plus, I’m only doing books I’ve read, so I have a fairly good grasp on all of them already.
In addition to the books, I have decided to interpret a few classic movies as well. My choices so far:
~”Citizen Kane”
~”Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”
~”Jaws”
~”Ocean’s Eleven”
~”Titanic”
Hooray! Any suggestions? Sorry, E’raina, but “Team America” is too difficult. The choreography is just…it’s too difficult.
Eigenblogger 