The Laursonian Institute

Ah, Monday nights.  Monday nights are my slow n’ easy yoga nights.  So round about now, I’m feeling all relaxed and ready to crawl into bed for a restful sleep.  It’s always somewhat difficult coming home and trying to decide what to do with myself in these last few hours, but tonight I think bed might win out.  Bed and some enjoyable (though still school) reading.  It’s the first time I’ve really read science papers outside my discipline, and it’s funny now how relaxing the old structural linguistics books are.  These cognitive neuroimaging papers are going to be the death of me!

Today was a nice and abbreviated day.  The reading group I thought we had finished setting up apparently didn’t fit enough schedules to go through with, so it’s sort of indefinitely on hold.  That’s just fine with me, the short day was nice.  CogNeuro was a little troublesome this morning because I hadn’t realized we were supposed to read the papers other people were presenting on in advance and come prepared with questions and all that.  So I don’t think I got any participation points, and it bothers me somewhat that it appears my professor writes down the name of everyone who talks in class thus somewhat obliging everyone to have something to say all the time.  I understand it’s supposed to make us critical thinkers, but I feel so far out of my domain on these cognitive neuroscience topics, especially the vision research we’re talking about right now, that I seem to either have no questions at all, or they sound dumb to me.  Oh well.  I’m running through my “options” mantra and reminding myself that ones days worth of performance is nothing that needs to reflect on me generally, and I’ve got all quarter to get myself going on this.  Not to mention, I’m feeling a bit pleased with myself for understanding any of what’s going on, and if my deficit reflects itself in an absence of participation… that’s fine.

So I spent the whole rest of my day reading cogneuro papers, and preparing myself for reading more neuroling papers soon.  I got that all squared away pretty early, so I still had time to pin and cut Lewis’ jammies!  It’ll all be coming together before I know it.  I just hope they fit.  The material is really comfortable, so I’m not too worried about them being cozy, but it would be nice if they fit in some rational way.  Then I took myself off to yoga, and sort of failed to get in “the zone” cause the room was rather crowded and the lady next to me was quite distracting. At the end, though perhaps not feeling all centered, I am at least feeling all stretched.  I’d go so far as to even call myself relaxed!  And as I said before, that’s my only gym goal.  So hurrah, another success.

Now I think Roman Jakobson and I have a study date!

April 13th, 2009 | Tags: cogneuro, papers, reading group, relaxed, sewing, yoga | Category: Uncategorized | Comments Off

I’m feeling stressed out.  And disappointed in myself for being stressed out.

It was sort of a rough day, though Lewis made me a lovely waffle breakfast with strawberries this morning.   Spent the rest of the day wrestling with some rolls I was making for easter dinner with the Lawyers.  Probably should have used a recipe I’ve tried before, but I’m always game to get to try something new, especially when it’s something sort of time consuming I don’t usually get a chance to try.  Stupidly it took an hour longer than I was hoping, and they didn’t even turn out very well.  I shouldn’t have stressed out about it.

Through the stress fog, some good things went on.  I got a nice walk this morning to get some ingredients, and the dinner at this evening was very nice.  I also got all the laundry done.  And did some reading outside, where I got a small sunburn.  I was going to hit up the gym today, but it was closed for the hoilday.  I do think it would have helped chill me out.  I wish I knew some more immediate way to alleviate my anxiety, it really ruins my days.  Or at least sucks the life out of them.

Tomorrow is a new day.   I slept off my stress last night and woke up feeling well this morning.  I can do it again.

April 12th, 2009 | Tags: baking, dinner, easter, stress, sunshine | Category: life | Comments Off

Good day, but sadly I must admit my first stressed out day this quarter.  Ever since my awkward office hours with that kid yesterday I’ve had the same stupid elephant-on-chest heart-scared-of-breathing lungs-full-of-flan feeling I had all last month.  Makes me feel distracted and grouchy spending every minute waiting for my heart to start some crazy death spiral.

Despite this, I think I had a pretty good day.  Got work done this morning after making a delicious breakfast scramble.  Made chili in the slow cooker for dinner, and spent a good few hours slowly biking around town and visiting the dairy cows on campus and having frozen yogurt.  So really, I don’t know what my problem is.  But right now I just want to go to bed and wake up and have it seem likeone of the clear, open-ended, wonderful days I’ve been so lucky to wake up to lately.  Sigh.

April 11th, 2009 | Tags: cooking, cows, heart, stress, yogurt | Category: life | Comments Off

Pretty good day today, but mighty long.   Had a lovely surprise evening with our friends Heather and Kevin who kept me company (and took me to Sudwerk!) while Lewis was out with his padre tasting some tasty cheese and beers in SF.

Section this morning was great!  I skipped the stuff that I thought was crappy from the earlier section, and went straight to the exercises and group work.  I think it went really well, and there was a great vibe with the students.  I’m feeling quite good about both sections this quarter, and I hope I can keep that feeling rolling for a while.  Had office hours after that, which was kind of a disaster.  I only had one kid come in, sort of at the end of my time, and I spent a full 90 minutes with him.  Arg.  I don’t know quite what to do with this kid, but I’ve never seen anyone completely lacking in any kind of linguistic intuition before.  I never even got to the point where he could tell a consonant from a vowel.

I feel bad, cause I know he’s really struggling with his phonetics homework, but I just don’t know what to do to teach him this stuff that should theoretically be intuitive.  He keeps blaming it on being a second language learner, but I’ve had tons of esl kids before, and that’s really not a valid excuse.  As a linguist, I think I’m more atuned to the difficulties language learners face since we spend so much time talking about SLA and bilingualism.  This really turns me around in application though – it’s impossible to know when you’re being too hard and when you’re not being sympathetic enough.  I don’t think asking people to memorize the IPA and the position of your articulators.  I think there’s a leap of faith you need to take as an ESL student that what we’re saying isn’t some kind of crazy conception of how the English language should be done.  [t] is the most common sound cross-linguistically, the least marked if nothing else, so asking an ESL student to decompose a [t] into it’s phonetic parts isn’t ridiculous – they should be the same parameters in their native language as they are in English, more or less.  I have a lot more sympathy for the vowels, because I know English has a middling-to-terrible vowel system.   Urgh.  I’m doing my best, but by the time I explained what the questions on his homework were supposed to be asking (and spending 90 minutes doing that…) I was just so totally drained.  I want to help him, but I really can’t keep this level up all quarter.

Thankfully, my afternoon class was great.  Lots of interesting discussion on typology, and I got my assignment for the presentation I’m giving for that class.  Got the paper (book?) I wanted, and I’m looking forward to getting my one presentation out of the way early (I’m going the first day) since I’ve got my cogneuro presentation on the last day of class.  It’s probably time to start thinking about paper topics, I suppose.  The quarter system is rough that way – it’s just the end of the second week, and it’s already time to start hammering out final papers.  It’s at least good to get your topic started so you don’t get blindsided later when you’re completely lacking in time to do research.  My topics for both classes are completely open, so it’s almost more difficult to start thinking about whether I can work these papers into the thesis-y master plan.  Or something like that.

April 10th, 2009 | Tags: class, friends, papers, section, taing | Category: school | Comments Off

Yoga. So tired. Sadly more grumpy than relaxed. Going to bed now. Section tomorrow at 9. Then a long, but hopefully relaxing day?

April 9th, 2009 | Tags: grumpy, tired, yoga | Category: Uncategorized | Comments Off

It’s 8:30, and I can barely keep my eyes open.  I didn’t get up particularly early or any such thing, but I guess it’s been sort of a long day.

I had my first section this morning at 9.  It both went well and sort of crap, which seems to be how section always goes.  The atmosphere was really great.  The kids asked a bunch of questions, some clarification, some curious, and I had good participation in all the questions I asked of them.  That’s the good.  The bad… my computer wouldn’t work with the projection system for some reason, so I couldn’t use all the web resouces I had prepared.  But we didn’t even end up getting that far, because we spent so long on the really basic (and reallllly boring) consonant chart.  It’s good if it was helpful, and it seemed to be so, but I definitely felt like I wasn’t quite on my game, and couldn’t entertain the kids like I wanted.  We’ll see if I can’t spice it up next week.  And hopefully I can think of some way to improve Friday’s section so they don’t get stuck with this same boring task!

Skipped over to the Center to get into my cogneuro class (late, since my section conflicts) which had a guest lecturer today.  I got there only about 35 minutes late, which was good, but the lecturer didn’t seem to know how long our class was.  We got out about 45 minutes early, which means I didn’t get much of the matieral at all!  It is, however, always a nice treat to get out early.  Walked home with Lewis (sans bike), recombobulated myself here, and then headed out to the Center again to meet with my fMRI partner from yesterday.  She was too busy to discuss data or anything, and our lab professor is in Hawaii, so there really wasn’t anything to do.  Thankfully the Center is right next to the gym, so it wasn’t out of the way to drop by.

Gym was good.  It’s ridiculous how easy it is to get my heart rate up to near max, so I always try and make sure I’m staying at a reasonable rate and not working too hard.  I’ve been trying to aim for something like the suggested 30-minutes of vigorous activity a day, and that’s pretty managable.  I’ve never worked out regularly before, but I’m really surprised how big of a difference it makes in my stress levels.  I was chuckling to myself in the lockroom today when I realized that I’m one of the lucky people there who achieves their goal every day.  Very easy when your goal is “do any exercise”, and not gaining strength or losing weight or learning to do stuff.  Whoohoo!  I’d like to think the regular de-stressing exercise has something to do with my lack of migraines so far this month… and I’m still major palipitation free since spring break too!

April 8th, 2009 | Tags: center, gym, section, stress, taing, tired | Category: life, school | Comments Off

Blurg.  Too tired to post, per usual.

It’s Tuesday.  It’s our first day back from San Diego.  The trip was wonderful, the train trip back home was fantastic, and I’m exhausted.   Tomorrow’s my first of my worst days – Wednesdays I teach section at 9 am, and then I have to jet myself over to the CMB for my CogNeuro class, which inconventiently starts at 9:30.  I’m really not looking forward to missing the first 45 or so minutes of class every week, but it’s only one day a week, and I’m trying not to stress about it.

I’ve been good about the stress level lately.  Went to the gym this morning and worked out for a while, which seems to leave me feeling more able to cope than days when I don’t work out.  I have no idea why that is, but I’ll take what I can get.  I also skipped my only class today (Ling 1 lecture) so I could get some sleep, cause 9 am was feeling way too early after getting in so late last night.  I also got my first trip to the Imaging Center to shadow an fMRI run-through.  It was neat, and useful, but not quite as exciting as I was anticipating.  Maybe I’m just tired.  I did get some good advice from the girl running the study, who also has worked in our lab for the last few years.

There’s a lot more I’ve missed out on blogging… but right now I’m just nervous and ready for bed so I can get through my big day (morning?) tomorrow.  I’m sure it’ll all work out fine – I’ve got a million things planned.  Fingers crossed.

April 7th, 2009 | Tags: family, fmri, lab, section, taing, tired, train, trip | Category: life, school | Comments Off

I should be going to bed already, since I have a 6 am train to catch.  I guess it’s another list?

• no section or office hours this morning = sleeping in!
• got myself some decent gym shoes
• had the first session of my last class.  it’s good!
• spent all night getting stuff ready for san diego trip

And now… to bed.

April 3rd, 2009 | Tags: class, list | Category: life, school | Comments Off

I don’t like how much I’m relying on lists these days.  But I’m just so busy, and so tired by the time I get to my poor blog!  With resignation, I give you today’s list:

• Ling 1 this morning was very amusing!
• Did some laundry in prep for the upcoming San Diego trip
• Decided at the last moment to hit up the corpus linguistics group meeting
• Ran out at the end to hit the gym – good yoga today, but fast and intense.  Chatted the teacher up after class and she was very nice.  Nicer than anticipated given her class demeanor!
• Made it home just in time to meet Heather and Kevin for a dinner out to celebrate good news for them!
• Got an email from research professor setting up my first fMRI shadowing adventure for next Tues.  I’m really excited!

I’m looking forward to my last day of classes here… but dang, it’s been a long week.  And it’s going to be a pretty crazy weekend.  Phew.

April 2nd, 2009 | Tags: chores, classes, fmri, gym, meeting, yoga | Category: school | Comments Off