The Laursonian Institute

Day got a bit better then I was expecting this morning.  It’s good to have your day surprise you.  I took the bus to school cause I was feeling really uninspired, so I ended up getting to class late.  I’m never late to class, but it turned out not to be much of a big deal since we were still in the midst of settling down when I got in.  Quechua went very well, though it was pretty chaotic.  I will be glad when that class is over, and I wish I weren’t.  It’s just not really my bag.

Anyway, I followed it up with a great meeting with the professor I TA for to prep for grading the midterm, and then another great meeting with my paper advisor.  He told me my work was really good, and he thought I was doing a very nice job, and all was not lost on my paper.  It was really relieving to hear he’s got high hopes for my paper still, cause I’ve been feeling very lost on it.   So good news there.

The only downside for my day was I finally sat down and put everything I needed to do in the next few weeks and the list is very much daunting.   But in a week… I’ll be past all the worst of what the semester has left, I think.  All my semantics homeworks will be in, my presentation over, and my last pre-final neuroscience quiz.  Phew.  Besides, I got everything done I needed to do today.  It’s just gonna be a long week!

February 18th, 2009 | Tags: list, paper, quechua, stressed, work | Category: school | Comments Off

I can’t remember the last time I spent a whole afternoon making optimality theory tableaux.  I think it was 2004.  And I think they were on syllabification in Nuxalk.  The next summer I found a Nuxalk dictionary in a speciality bookshop near MIT while Lewis and I were hanging out at the 2005 LSA summer institute.  I don’t know if I’ll ever really have use for a Nuxalk dictionary, but it’s one of my more cherished silly books.  Doing OT is amusing, though much of the time spent doing the work is making the tableaux, which is just asking for everything that could possibly go wrong with word processing software to do so.  Turns out I have two Linux-related OT problems:  a) OpenOffice doesn’t permit dashed lines in tables (!) so I can’t show my unranked constraints properly, and b) the bomb symbol isn’t in unicode!  At least I finally found my pointing hand.  For a minute there, it felt like OT was going to demand Microsoft Word, and that just seems like a ridiculous presupposition for a phonological theory.

But speaking of the LSA… what am I going to do this year?  In more prosperous times (read: no rent to pay) I would have been there in a flash.  The institute is at Berkeley this year, commutable from home, which makes it seem a bit like an opportunity I couldn’t possibly pass up.  On the other hand, committing 6 weeks of my 12 week summer to commuting to Berkeley every day and not having a job seems like a pretty poor idea.  Coupled with the fact that I could only go if I got a fellowship to cover tuition (admittedly a not-unlikely prospect) and that students with fellowships are required to attend all six weeks instead of one of the two three-week sessions generally open to the linguisty public and furthermore that there aren’t really 8 classes I want to take… makes me wonder if it’s worth going.  I need letters of rec and transcripts as well as a personal statement to apply for the fellowship before next week, and I’m really feeling uninspired and unsure about my summer.  My graduate advisor reaaaally wants me to go (and wants to write one of my letters of rec)… but meh.  Money is a pain in the ass.  On the other hand, infinite time and means seems like a bit much to ask.

I made saurkraut-y cabbage tonight.  It wasn’t intended to be kraut-esque; I used the Chez Panisse recipe for warm cabbage, apple, and onion salad.  But it sure was good, at any rate.  Had dinner over one of my favorite new public television related activities – watching Huell Howser.  When I was in LA, he really used to get under my skin.  Though Pinks did have a hotdog named after him, which should have been a tip-off of his potential greatness.  Anyway, for some reason his boundless enthusiasm and child-like irrepressability warms my heart at the end of a long day.  Who couldn’t use a few more handy facts about out-of-the-way California towns?  Today we learned about Smallsville and Timbuctoo.  High quality.

February 10th, 2009 | Tags: cabbage, cooking, dictionary, huell howser, linux, LSA, money, nuxalk, openoffice, OT | Category: life, school | Comments Off

Quechua midterm this morning.  Went well, I think. Oral portion was pretty decent, I only mussed a question up because my professor had just told me how to say “linguistics” in Quechua (which I do not remember, of course) and then asked if I study Quechua (“Imata Quechua yachashanki?”) but I thought she asked me what I studied in Quechua to test my new knowledge (“Imata Quechuapi yachashanki”).  Oh well!

Afternoon was pretty productive.  Got a mat put down under our slippery rug in the TA office, registered for classes, and met Lewis for lunch on a nice sunny bench on the bike path.  Had my neuroimaging class which was great per usual, though the professor ran over time by 20 whole minutes!  The subject matter was interesting so nobody minded, but it was pretty funny.

Sadly,  I spent the whole rest of the night reading and grading papers.  I was hoping to get some sewing or some cooking or even some ironing done tonight, but I guess things are settling in to that middle-of-the-term grind.  Oh well.  I’ll come out the other side soon enough, and then I’ll have a whole week or two off for my leisure.  Life is grand!

February 9th, 2009 | Tags: midterm, quechua, studying | Category: life, school | Comments Off

Almost had a nosedive of a day, but Lewis saved it at the very end by taking me out for dinner and a pint at our little German braupub, Sudwerk.  The rest of my day was one of those head-against-wall work days.  I got up early (for a sleep in day, I guess) to finish grading papers, and was nearly done by the time Lewis got up to make his tasty cinnamon rolls (and they were tasty!).  Spent the rest of the morning / afternoon reviewing for my Quechua midterm, and reading the next chapter in my structuralist semantics book.  I’ve got a presentation on the semantics of european structuralists next week, and I’m really not sure what to do yet.  Thankfully the book I’m reading is going way better than the last one, and I’m sure I can come up with something interesting to say.  After that though, I was just completely spent… so thank goodness Lewis took me out.   Now… I guess I’m off to bed, so I can get a decent sleep and maybe get up early to do a short-term-memory filling before the midterm in the morning.

February 8th, 2009 | Tags: midterm, out, pub, quechua, semantics | Category: life, school | Comments Off

I think a good metaphor for my grumpy and uncomfortable position lately might be “life vertigo”.  I got to this place I always wanted to be, and now I’ve got no hand holds, no railings, and no one to follow.  This surely isn’t a good thing, it just seems to be freaking me out.  I never really planned ahead for being where I am.  A bit like always playing the lotto and then one day winning, and having no idea what to do with yourself any more.

I got invited to give a talk to a student-run forum of phonologists and phoneticists at Berkeley and I’m not sure what at all to do with that.  On one hand, I don’t have any phonology research of the empiricle bent to present to these students in the next few months.  On the other hand, I’m deep in the murky depths of this theoretical phonology paper, and that might be interesting to share.  Provided I have some conclusion hammered out before that point.  Which is part of what’s making me so cranky this week… I’m definitely at an impass on my QP research and feeling fairly overlooked by the professor who is supposed to be overseeing that.  But I think a little distance and some time to think about it will do me some good.  Anyway, not sure what I’m going to tell Berkl folks at the moment, but it’s an interesting opportunity, and I’ve been invited to attend the ongoing events.  So if nothing of my own presentation happens, I could at least attempt to make some connections and see what folks are up to over there.  Unfortunately their meetings are at a really inconvenient time, at least for me to be in Berkeley.  *shrug*

Other less exciting things happened today.  I went to the dentist and got a thumbs up from everyone.  I went to my morning neuroscience class and felt pretty uninspired, but I partially (or perhaps even mostly?) blame that on my neuroscience midterm ennui from yesterday and my professor’s lack of preparation or enthusiasm this morning (he had just flown in from San Diego before class).  Made it through that, and I had intended to catch the very-much-seeming-important colloquia on “the functional anatomy of auditory processing” but I failed on that count.  It’s information I can gather elsewhere, and my mind was too burned out and unfocused for it to have done me much good.  Besides, it was the only chunk of time I had to get lunch before the dentist.   And goodness, getting to the dentist was a mess.  Sacramento isn’t really made for rain squalls… the freeway just about whited out and started flooding almost immediately.  I was really glad I only had a few miles left to go, and escaped the majority of the hard rain on the way home as well.

So I came home, made brownies, and watched movies on TV all night.  I just didn’t have it in me to be doing any more work.  I’m really just about at the end of my wick for whatever reason.  It feels like my restful night was already beneficial, if I may judge by my current state of relative complacency.   I think that’s a sure sign that I need to take it easy this weekend and prepare myself for my last midterm, and second half of this quarter.  Phew.  I’m ready for summer vacation already.. but I suppose I can at least look forward to spring break.  5 more weeks?

February 7th, 2009 | Tags: brownies, class, dentist, introspective, rain | Category: life, school | Comments Off

I don’t know if it’s because it’s midterms week, or if I’m just getting lazy and taciturn, but I haven’t been doing a great job at the nightly blogging lately.  I really just don’t feel like I’ve got much to say.  But I guess a few things have happened.  Better go list format.

The Good:

• I got new glasses today!
• Had a nice post-lunch lunch with my sweetie
• Got my performance reviews from my students last quarter, and they’re fantastic
• Think I have my classes figured out for next quarter
• Had a dream I was helping Eddie Vedder garden?
• Also had a dream Hilary Clinton was my mom and we were moving into the white house?
• Only missed half a point on my neuroimaging midterm
• Managed to cook a bit, vacuumed, and ironed!

The Other-than-Good:

• Feeling really grumpy lately
• Had a crap meeting with my research advisor wherein he didn’t listen to anything I said and tried to solve the problem I presented him with by using my exact same non-working solution and apparently not noticing…
• Dentist appointment tomorrow
• Quechua midterm on Monday…
• Semantics presentation coming up which I’m pretty nervous about (as in, I know nothing about the subject I’m presenting on and the readings suggested are aggrivatingly quatralingual (read: incomprehensible))
• Spent a thousand years trying to figure out what courses to take; still waiting for a professor to return my email…
• Mostly just grumpiness!

Yeah, so… that’s life.  Rambling along like usual, feeling like I’m stuck in slow motion and I’m not getting anything done.  I’m getting pleanty done.  I think last quarter was way more work than perhaps your average quarter, and thus I am now feeling aimless and deflated and underworked.  It seems ridiculous that being in grad school could be underworking me, but there you go.

February 5th, 2009 | Tags: absent, grumpy, list | Category: life, school | Comments Off

I don’t really watch sports (exceptions made for the Olympics, which I absolutely adore!), but I’m always down for the big time-of-most-importance for any event.  So I did watch the game with Lewis’ parents, while simultaneously grading the rest of the homeworks for this week.  Good times.  Made lots of delicious cheese and bean dip and such, and snacked the night away.

As an added bonus, I also got a bunch of work done this morning.   It’s funny, the more of this neuroimaging stuff I do, the more I want to do.  I’m so jazzed!  On the other hand… Quechua is interesting, but I’m also looking forward to being done with it!  It’s a bit of an exercise in side stepping around ill-planned classroom exercises and doing homework I don’t really ever feel like I understood.  Oh well!

February 1st, 2009 | Tags: neuro, quechua, sports | Category: life, school | Comments Off

It’s been a sort of deflated day after I had such a great one yesterday.

Lots of things happened yesterday, but they all feel fairly trumped by the lightening strike of inspiration I had in the middle of my neuroimaging class.  I don’t want to get into any of the details, though I’m sure they’ll divulge themselves soon enough on the old blog.  Suffice it to say I feel like I put together a bunch of clues I felt like my own brain was leaving me, and I think I’ve picked the direction I want to go for my thesis (as in, the big one, not the QPs).  My professor was up lecturing and I really couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying because I’d keep thinking of more imporatnt stuff I wanted to remember about my plan.  I scribbled it all down in a notebook I had with me, so all is safe.  It’s odd, I feel like the sky opened up and I was handed a purpose.  Neat!

Anyway, besides being completely preoccupied by my own plans, I had lunch at the Delta with Lewis and his friend Rebecca, Emily, and Andrew.  The Delta is such a lovely place to hang out on a nice toasty afternoon.  Came home, got a bunch of work done, and then went out to dinner with the Lawyers and the Coupins (Symposium!).  Went back to Casa de Lawyer after dinner and watched cute old family videos and played Chinese checkers.  Never played Chinese checkers before, but it was a lot of fun!

Today was a little more of a struggle.  Got all my work done, which is always bonus, but I felt like my brain never really woke up.  Probably my fault for starting my work day with my semantics homework.  I only got one problem done but it took me hours and doing truth tables is really draining.  Did make it to the store to get some basic supplies and pick up the fixins for superbowl business tomorrow!  I wasn’t really intending to watch or cook for the superbowl until yesterday, but heck.. why not.  It’s always a good time.  And I’m always ready to make ridiculous nacho-based foods!

Durp.  This feels like one of those entries that plodded along because I’m completely unable to concentrate.  Murg.

February 1st, 2009 | Tags: cooking, durp, family, super bowl, thesis | Category: life, school | Comments Off

Deep breath, Laurie, deep breath.

It was a wonderful day.  I’ve been inordinately cheerful lately, a most unusual occurance in my normally staid life.   I liken it to the rush of endorphins you get when you spend the proper time eating well and exercising.  Instead of my body being filled with energy (though that too is true) it’s as though my mind is getting all the mental nutrient and exercise required and it’s just ready to go, all the time.  This is a good thing.  I just can’t help but feel really optimistic about my life and my studies.  That post this morning about job prospects was meant to be more tongue-in-cheek than it came off.  To be honest, I just can’t bring myself to care much about the job market.  I like what I do, I’m going to keep doing it, and I’ll work better under my own direction and with fewer outside pressures than I would work with an eye on the future.   Like I said, I think linguists just like to talk about how doomed we are!

It’s almost awkward to write about what a cheerful day I had when I find myself so exhausted at the end of the day.  Unlike the last few entries, tonight is one of those nights where the body is awake and the mind started dragging its feet and snipping tiredly hours ago.  This is entirely due to having slogged through a massive neuroscience paper I just finished reading.  My brain is now completely done.  I couldn’t do more work if I wanted.  I can barely speak English.

Other great things that happened today.  Had a fantastic semantics class.  I really, really enjoy computing truth conditions and mussing with the combinatoric denotations.  By gum, I’m even a little jazzed about this Boolean alegebra business.  It’s not often you hear the word “septuple” in a linguistics class, let alone get to talk about this much math.  I like math.  I think that’s the only academic thing I got done today, actually, besides this triumphant finishing of neuro paper.

It seems quite distant now, but I also took several long walks and got a lot of life-administrata done today.  Saw the doctor for a general check-up; all is well.  I’m feeling like I’ve just been tuned up, having been to the eye doctor last week, and the doctor doctor this week.  I’ve even got a dentist appointment next week!  I’ll be in ship shape.  Better than new.  Anyway, speaking of optometrist, I also picked out my new frames with help of Lewis today, and had a grand time at Dr. Guerreri’s office per usual.  It’s so handy to have family friends who are doctors and dentists.  And as a special treat, Lewis took me to get some delicious frozen yogurt after we made it through all our chores.  Lovely day to sit in central park and have a little chocolate-peanut butter frozen yogurt.  Mmm.

Ever since then I’ve been sitting here, in my desk chair, ticking things off my Tasque list.  And lo, that list is done.  It must be time to retire.

January 29th, 2009 | Tags: career, doctor, future, glasses, neuro, tired, yogurt | Category: life, school | Comments Off