Sunday, April 14, 2013

Ramblings

Tonight I was able to take a wonderful stroll down the road to the Handy Andy (aka gas station/convenience store) with my visiting mom and sister, as well as my awesome housemate Megan. It was so good to a) walk outside and not be freezing and b) share some laughs with my sister and mom.

I have to admit, it's kind of like having two worlds clash with them here. No one from my 'other life' has as yet been to visit me in Indiana. Sometimes I don't know what to do with myself. Or them. That said, they've only been here since yesterday, so I think I have some time to adjust.

In other news, I've nearly proposed my thesis. I submitted it to my supervisor last weekend, and have received two of three thumbs up! I should be able to submit to IRB this week, and start some serious work the following! I can't believe it's actually happened. Whew.

I feel like this will be a somewhat rambling post, so my apologies. I sat down and felt all artistic and wanted to write a great post, but then....well, I keep getting distracted. :)

So I suppose my ramble will just continue. In about five weeks I am once again packing up my life, putting it in a storage unit, and becoming a nomad for approximately two months. I thought that this time around, I would finally be able to leave my things unpacked and in order. That I would be able to come home, or stay home, and not have my whole life packed into boxes only to be unpacked again. I am beyond excited to get married this summer, but I wish there was some way to avoid all the hassle of moving in the interim. I just can't come up with anything. So, pack it up I will. Again.

Hmm...I suppose that's all for tonight. Just wanted to give a little update. My life is pretty low key. Finishing off the semester. Enjoying the EPIC thunderstorms of this state. Getting married soon. The end.

Nat

Monday, April 8, 2013

Onward with the thesis.

Sorry for taking soo long to write, yet again. At this rate, I'm never going to get a consistent following. *sigh* Anyway, I promised an update regarding my thesis, so here it is!

I spent most of spring break and the majority of my waking hours last week preparing my thesis for proposal. At this point, this mostly meant formatting the whole thing, and writing my methodology (chapter 3). They tell you the methodology is super easy, I mean, it's only 3 pages. But I think this has been the hardest part of the project for me to date. This is mostly because I'm a little ahead of the curve, so a lot of the stats lingo (multiple regressions? convenience sample? ANOVA?) is way out of my league. However, I was finally able to meet with my methodologist, which was super helpful. He explained everything in a way that made total sense, and even reawakened my slumbering inner chemist (that's right. I have an inner chemist).

All this to say: I have proposed. Woohooo! I have yet to hear if my supervisor has approved it/sent it on to my committee, or if my committee approves, but it's a serious step in the right direction! I am way ahead of the game here, which is wonderful. Now it's just a waiting game, then I'll submit to the Institutional Review Board, to make sure I'm not harming people with my research and such.

So, to fill you all in on my research a bit. There's a big debate right now about this idea of the 'co-curriculum' or the 'intercurriculum' or whatever you choose to call it. Essentially, a lot of the literature says that "Man, things students do outside of class are super conducive to their learning overall." I wanted to do some quantitative research that is not self-report, that would give credibility to this statement. By being quantitative and not self-report, I'm able to avoid the whole "well, I think I learned a lot through these things" and actually look at the data for a statistical correlation. Do these things actually relate? I'm hopeful they do, but we'll see. :)

That's where I'm at. Just waitin' for my dearie, and happy am I...I mean, my approval. (Bonus points if you caught that reference...).

Thanks for tuning in. Life is good. Ready to be a monster with this last semester, and come home to finally get hitched!

Nat