Double Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is a time for family. And there are all kinds of families -->
The family that you're born into, and the family that you form when you move away from the family you're born into.

Each of these families deserve a reunion around the holiday season, and several weeks ago our college "fam" got together to act like any other family does on Thanksgiving...

we raided the fridge

caught up with people we missed

debated important topics ending in fights

and posed for family photos

And since I was the one with the camera I wasn't in any of the pictures...so here's one I had to take of myself to prove that I was, in fact, there.

A week and a half later was real Thanksgiving, which I celebrated with my real family.

Here I am with my Grandma, Mom, sister, and 17 pounds of roasted turkey :)

Our Thanksgiving was a lot like Thanksgiving with my college family.... we caught up with people we missed

debated important topics

and posed for family photos

...we also played games :)

This picture is awesome and hilarious. We're playing Pente. The object of the game is to get five pieces in a row. It seems simple enough but depending on who you're playing with it can be mind-bender of strategy. Eric and Caroline played it first, and Eric kept winning this stupid game...until he divulged the secret of his success to my sister, who subsequently adopted it and became a Pente force to be reckoned with. Here I am, losing to Eric (unaware of this strategy) while my sister sits back and laughs at me for not seeing "obvious" moves.

The best thing about Thanksgiving is definitely the leftovers, and since it's time for lunch, it's about time for me to take advantage of some of the leftover turkey in my fridge. I'm thankful for a lot of things, not the least of which is the fact that I won't have to go grocery shopping for the next week :)

Milestone Moment: 1st Conference

As promised in the last Milestone Moment post, I fully intend on reporting every last detail of my very first conference. However, since going to my first conference essentially caused me to take about three days off regarding my responsibilities as a student and teaching assistant, I don't have a lot of time. Thus, this will be a somewhat condensed version of what was probably the best three days I've ever had...

As I've described before -- I'm currently working on graduate studies in cognitive psychology. Within the field of psychology, there are a number of sub-areas (cognitive, clinical, social, developmental, ect.) and many of these sub-areas have specialized conferences where fellow researchers and students in that area meet up and share their ideas and findings.

Perhaps the largest annual cognitive psychology conference took place this year in Minneapolis.

As a lowly first year grad student, I had the fortune of having second authorship on a project that was presented during a poster session at this conference. As a contributor on this project, I was given a coveted opportunity to attend the conference to help present this research, as well as go to talks and meet students and faculty members from other institutions.
This is a great way meet some of the best and brightest in this area of research (and ask them all the questions you can while you're there!), as well as meet other students who are working on projects similar to the work you're most interested in.

As soon as I knew that presenting in Minneapolis was an option, I leapt at the opportunity. However, I was not looking forward to paying for two 6 hour road trips of gas.

So I explored a new option....

It was only the price of one tank of gas to get to Minneapolis and back by Megabus (a luxurious double decker bus equip with reclining seats, individual temperature control, power outlets, and complementary wifi), and this way I didn't need to pay 20$ a night for city parking.

My bus left late Wednesday night at 11pm from Union Station in Chicago, and our journey took us through the night to a safe arrival in Minneapolis the next morning. I bought a small neck pillow thinking that I'd simply sleep on the bus on my way to Minneapolis.

but it was a little more like this

all in all, I got very few hours of sleep, and I'm not sure that I even finished a single REM cycle. But thankfully I was rested enough to realize that I definitely got dropped off by the bus ---in an interesting part of town....
And no, I don't have a picture. For very good reason, you're going to have to take my word for it.

Luckily a nice taxi driver picked me up right away, and whisked me off to my hotel, a grand total of 9 hours before I could check in.

Here's the part where I have to give a shout out to the most amazing hotel in the world. This week I stayed at the Millennium

The second I walked in, the overnight desk attendant welcomed me and asked if I had a reservation. As he was searching for my name in the computer he looked at my disheveled bus-sleeper appearance and felt the need to ask if I was "alright". I told him about the sleepless night on the bus.
Before I knew it, he was giving me a key to a hotel room (9 hours early!), and joking with me to find a bed and get some sleep before I passed out on the floor.

As soon as I got to the room, I barely had time to appreciate the complementary coffee or the beauty of the room's decor before completely passing out for the next four hours. I woke up to a groggy call from a fellow grad student who had just arrived to the conference. Luckily by then I'd had enough sleep to successfully comprehend the present ongoing activity (haha cognition joke...nevermind), and headed off to my first poster session.

The whole of Psychonomics is sort of a blur of posters, talks, and one on one meetings, but luckily I had my moleskin planner!

which has plenty of extra pages for notes for conversations with people at conferences like these (I filled about three pages with hasty chicken scratches that I am currently decoding and making sense of so I can put them into action).

Each day of the conference whizzed by and culminated in utter mental and physical exhaustion --mostly due to my chosen foot ware. But all in all, this conference (including my own poster presentation) went swimmingly, and was every opportunity that I could have hoped for.

 I even got to catch up with a great old friend!

Dog Dishes

I have pet fever. 

Ever since I moved away from home, I have missed my cat, Gracie.

And since I have been missing an animal in my daily routine, things have only gotten worse -- I even miss my BOYFRIEND'S DOG...

Bottom line, I love animals and was really looking forward to adopting a pet when I moved to Illinois for graduate school. 

Unfortunately, my roommates are not as in love with animals as I am :( and while this results in a beautifully clean and perfectly quiet home, I am missing puppy (or kitty) love in my life. Thus, I recently decided it would be a good idea to dedicate a small portion of my restricted free time to become a volunteer and the humane society here in DeKalb. 

This has proven so far to be the best idea I have had since moving here, hands down. 

Our local humane society is always looking for volunteers to train, as this is primarily how they operate and are able to provide a safe haven for lost, wounded, and abandoned animals, so on my first day at the shelter the volunteer coordinator immediately gave me a quick tour and set me the task of washing dog chew toys in the laundry room. Since this is my first time volunteering at the humane society, I am classified as a level 1 volunteer, meaning that the only thing I'm qualified to do is household chores. I guess dog dishes aren't going to do themselves. 

Once I was finished however, I set off down the hall, only to be stopped by a minor distraction in the form of....

A BIN OF PUPPIES!

As soon as I looked down into the crate, these little guys sprang up on their hind legs and put on their best "adopt me" faces. I couldn't help but start playing with these soft wiggly cuties. A second later, the volunteer coordinator stuck her head around the corner and informed me that since we were done with all the level 1 chores, I was welcome to take a couple of puppies into one of the play rooms to "socialize them". 

So I was like "sure"

....and this happened. 

The Humane Society takes on the responsibility of not only providing pets healthcare, shelter, and food,  but also with the tools they need to be "adoptable". This is a never ending task. Thankfully, most important way to ensure a pet's adoptability is making it comfortable around people. 

In the end, that's pretty easy to do. <3

Opt to adopt and save a life! 

Milestone Moment: My 1st Talk

While I spend a lot of time blogging about the short and sweet moments of free time that I have as a busy graduate student, I don't want to lose sight of blogging about the things that I do in my program as well.  Usually the reason that I don't write about the things that I'm doing as a student is that all the posts would look like this.

or how discuss how perfectly this picture describes my life

But I want to document all of the meaningful things that happen for the first time in graduate school, and so I'm starting this miniseries of firsts called "milestone moments", and I had one a few days ago.

Every Friday, the people involved in the cognitive psychology program at NIU (faculty and grad students) get together and share research that they've been working on, as well as ideas they are interested in pursuing. The schedule is predetermined on the first day of each semester. On my first day in lab, I was assured that since I'm only a first year, I surely wouldn't be asked to share anything. After all, what would I possibly have to share? I've barely started to scratch the surface of what I'm dearly hoping will be a long and fruitful research career.

To my surprise, by the end of the first meeting I somehow found myself on the first semester lineup of presenters. Toward the start of November I was to give a presentation on the work that I'd done at my previous university with my former research mentor. Despite my initial reaction and desire to insist that I merely observe the first semester of presentations, I found myself taking the bull by the horns and confidently telling everyone that I was down for a talk.

Let me clarify something...I have had a few experiences already presenting research. This same study was featured at GVSU's 2012 Student Scholar Day, and at the 2012 Science and Art of Aging conference in Grand Rapids.
But I have NEVER given a talk. And standing by a poster and giving an hour presentation are two very different things.

See, when you stand by a poster, you only need give a 3-5 minute description of the project, and answer specific questions that people might have. This is a lot different than preparing 45 minutes of spoken material and trying to anticipate unexpected questions.

You will be happy to know that my first talk was a success. Thankfully, I've been reading about the topic this research is on for over a year now (as I'm hopefully beginning a new related project in the immediate future), so to some extent I can attribute the success of my very first talk on Friday to the number of hours I've spent on reading related literature. I can of course also thank my advisor for the hours of facilitated discussion on the topic that reinforced my comprehension of the complexities of the theory itself.

I can also thank my capstone professor from GV, who taught me a number of things in my final year at GV that included the following:
1) always make sure your audience understands the methods you used in your study
2) if someone is perpetually frowning during a presentation, it is NOT an indication that you are doing a bad job, or aren't being clear.

So! First research talk = success! Looking forward to the next milestone moment coming up this week which will take the form of attending my first professional conference.

Christmas Wishes: ...too soon?

As you may know, I've been taking lessons to learn the Ukulele. Learning a new instrument comes with challenges, frustrations, and the eventual thrill of mastering a new skill. I got into the Ukulele when Eric gave me this tiny wannabe guitar for my birthday, as a precursor for perhaps moving on to the real deal.

The master himself tired to teach me...

And while he's a great teacher, moving to DeKalb was not ideal for my progress (hence the lessons).

But this post isn't really about my Ukulele, or music in general for that matter, but rather about the whole process of gift giving to begin with.

The rationale behind the giving of the Ukulele was that

1) I am musical

(me after a SWE concert with my Grandmother and Mother)

(me and the rest of BCC'sVarsity choir during the 2007 Bijou Orchestra's Holiday Pops Concert)

2) We share music together

I argue therefore, that the Ukulele is the perfect combination of shared interest and thoughtfulness, which is everything that a good gift should be. It's something beautiful, it brings joy, or brings people together...either way the great gift expresses how well you know the person in demonstrating that you know they would like (or even come to like, as was my case with the uke).

This year, as Eric and I were hashing out our long term plans for the winter months ahead, we got to the topic of Christmas wishes...

naturally joking around (as usual) we started sending pictures of our deepest Christmas desires.
I sent this...

(time together at a cute reclusive ski lodge)

Eric sent this...

...?

and then this

Well, at least he's honest! From what I can make of these pictures (to which I plan on ignoring the shiny sports car) we both seem to want some well deserved relaxation time together with friends and family (maybe even on a beach!..no? damn)....after all, an amazing relationship with a wonderful person, great friends, and loving family is the best gift that anyone could ever receive...

and I get that all year round :)

So I guess I'm just extra good all the time! ;)

(Me, Eric, Caroline, and my cousins at "Asiala Christmas" 2011)

Thanks Santa <3

what I do on a daily basis

One of the things that is really cool about going to grad school is meeting people who are into the same weird and obscure stuff that you are.

While I always really liked cognition as an area of the overall discipline that is Psychology, most of my close friends studied everything from biomedical sciences to film. Furthermore, the people that I did know who liked and studied psychology actually DISLIKED cognition - finding it on the whole complicated and abstract (which it is...and to be honest, I feel exactly the same way sometimes). By the way for those that don't know, cognition refers essentially to the study of mental processes. It examines everything from models of working and long term memory to event perception, argumentation and reading comprehension.

However, the cognition lab here is, in a word, awesome. Many of us take (or have taken) similar classes, read the same papers, and are familiar with many of the same debates, theories, and ideas -- thus our social interactions probably get some weird looks and raised eyebrows from people who devote their lives to different pursuits, but they end up getting some seriously important questions answered.

Well...maybe not.
But we have fun.

SCIENCE!!!!

Momma Visits and Boyfriend Visits – my past too weekends

I swear one of the reasons that I never stuck with journaling is because when I get busy I never keep up with it. I’m really trying I promise, and this is how I plan to make up for it… the purpose of this blog post is to report on the last two weekends in one entry, because two very special and important people came to visit me, and we had a lot of fun. (Be warned - this post is going to be lengthy).

Part 1 – Trouble with Trains

Last weekend, my Mom came to DeKalb. We decided to experiment with Midwest trains for all travel purposes…this proved to be not such a great idea.

For one, I’m not sure what we were thinking - we’ve never been all that good at trains.

This is a picture of my mom and I in England at a train station in Kingston (the suburb of outer London where I lived during my semester abroad as an undergrad). See the train behind us? That’s the one we were supposed to be on.

It left without us.

Now this particular train experience wasn’t passenger error, but rather idiot driver error. We’ll get to this later on.

First off, as soon as my mom got to DeKalb we dropped off some things at my house and immediately went out for manicures and pedicures before going out for dinner at my favorite pita place (further fueling my addiction to amazing Greek wraps and hummus). Here we are at Pita Pete’s, where you can see my lovely nails.

After dinner we rented a couple of movies and got some Ben and Jerry’s for the rest of the evening.

The next morning I made coffee and we got ready to drive out for a fun afternoon in Chicago and so she could catch her train back. 

Unfortunately, something was amiss at the Amtrak station that afternoon. Sure enough just as we were saying our goodbyes, we got a call alerting us to the train cancellation. Upon further information, we discovered that a train on that track had derailed earlier. Luckily no one was seriously hurt, however when asking why the train had derailed, the woman at customer service told us that trains sometimes derail if the conductor needs to slam on the breaks to avoid HITTING A CAR!
…WHAT!?!?!

If you are reading this, I very much hope that you are not the type of person who would race a train to avoid waiting a few minutes for it to pass, although if you are I’m judging you. Negatively. People can get seriously hurt in train accidents and train derailments! It’s not just a question of whether you and your car will survive! Ok, I’m getting off my soapbox. Long story short, my mom ended up spending an extra night at my house. This ended up being great, because she taught me how to make homemade soup and bread. However, now we know that as a rule, the train system between Michigan and Illinois is somewhat unreliable.

Part 2 - Apple Cider, Pumpkins, and Travel Success

The next weekend Eric came to visit! 

We went to Jonamac Orchard for some nice carving pumpkins to put our artistic abilities to the test.

Naturally we weren’t about to go to an apple orchard without stopping inside the general store for some homemade donuts, apple cider, and caramel apples. Trips to apple orchards are one of the best things about fall (maybe even the best!). But since it was getting cold, we hurried back to the house to start carving.

My gentlemanly boyfriend generously let me carve the pumpkin that could stand up on its own, taking the one that needed to lie on its side for himself. Thus, my jack-o-lantern design was rather traditional (and pretty cute, if I do say so myself).

Cute vampire pumpkin J

Eric’s couldn’t stand up by itself, so he had to get more creative. He wouldn’t let me see it until he was done, but upon finishing I was very impressed with the “ship in a bottle” theme.

Laker for a lifetime.

They looked very nice and festive flickering on the stoop.

The next day, Eric had a work obligation in Chicago early in the morning, so I spend the majority of the day catching up on all my grading as well as studying for an upcoming exam. Nothing motivates me to reach my goals like the prospect of meeting up for a fun dinner in the city. After making my final comments on each student’s midterm, and reading a couple of papers I needed to know for the exam, I hopped in the car and headed out to Chi-town for dinner with the traveling business man.

Not only were my last two weekends highly productive, but they were also fun and filled with loved ones, and were enough to recharge me for an intense week or two.