The very random adventures of a psychology student, geeklet and all-round dork.


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Cambiare una testa, non tutte le teste

... or, I need to get my Italian back in working order, now.

Once upon a time, I actually spoke passable Italian. It was never stellar; most of it was achieved by attending a three-year course in high school, at the end of which our teacher hadn't gotten round to proper past tense or, hey, even passive voice, but it was decent enough to routinely beat commercial school students in a few competitions who took it as a third (rather than fifth) language. After I graduated, I merrily forgot most of it, to the point where I would default to English when addressed by an Italian tourist.

A few weeks ago I made up my mind to try and get back into things as a first instalment to my evil master plan to exploit my freak ability, language. I borrowed a bunch of Lara Cardella books from my sister, the classic Volevo i pantaloni and the slightly mushier Intorno a Laura, and set out to read about abused women in rural Italian communities. Hell, I even read some to the boyfriend's aunt's elderly cat to practice my pronunciation. (It was just about the only time she showed any sign of affection or even interest in me.)

All in all, it went exceedingly well. If I can pick up a little more literature and grab my sister's Gianna Nannini CDs for a while, I'll probably be able to pretty much speak and write like I could five years ago or better, and work out a complete set of verb forms. Um, and swear like a Tuscan queen bitch, of course :P

This has been an entirely random story, by the way. I just wanted to share my enthusiasm =)

Kruskal-Wallis' bitch

Things are moving along somewhat with my thesis. I've got at least part of the dates for my testing set; over the next two weeks I will be coding my experiment as well as another minor exploratory experiment from which I hope to draw a bunch of items on cognitive strategies for spatial reasoning that don't violate the Geneva Convention. Oh, and finally evaluate my preliminary priming experiment, of course - it's going to be fun times. Unfortunately, I have an interesting type of bunny-caught-in-headlights syndrome when confronted with SPSS, but then I picked up pretty damn good grades on both my Complex Statistics class and my Psychometrics papers this month. I should stick them above my desk so that when I try and exhume my long-buried knowledge of SPSS, at least I'll know that I'm officially not as dumb at it as I may feel at times. And be satisfied with "changing one person's mind, not everybody's".

posted by Godiva at 12:37 PM

 

The cult of bleh

It's Monday and this week already sucks.

Today and tomorrow are two more days of testing high school students for my colleague's online experiment. We have been working together on many aspects of our respective theses since our topics are closely related, and I have been assisting her in submitting 16- to 18-year-old kids to her core study. Tomorrow is her last day of testing, and the day I go to my hometown to negotiate the details of my own testing with various teachers from my junior high school. All in all, this makes for some extremely stressful days of little sleep and far too many reminders why I always knew I never wanted to be a teacher.

One thing I've been noticing - and I look forward to discussing the matter with my father, who will be able to offer the insight of 35 years' teaching experience - is that some major but as yet unexplained developmental step appears to take place around the age of 17. Both my friend and I were surprised to see that the 10th graders we supervised were by and large noisy, overly agitated and appeared childlike in many ways - many found it both hard and not worth their time to focus their attention, and spent the duration of the experiment continuously chattering away almost like a bunch of excited 12-year-olds on a day out. We've seen five 10th grade classes all together, at two different schools, so the effect can hardly be completely arbitrary. Yet the 11th and 12th graders seemed radically different; they paid close attention to detail, questioned things critically, and many showed the kind of interest that made me want to sit down for coffee and discuss the details of our experiment with them at length, knowing both parties would gain from the discourse. They were essentially the same kind of folks you meet at university, to me.

I don't know why or how the perceived difference could ever be that striking, and as I think about it I can watch as part of my brain compiles a list of perceptive biases, moderator variables and social priming that influenced my observations. I am now all the more curious to see the current students at my own high school, where my own class turned out as such an odd assortment of intellectually overdriven characters. Of course, I only ever remember us as the argumentative 12th graders, rather than the noisy kids, though I'm sure we were both at some point, and probably quite often both at the same time.

(And there I went, off on a tangent once more...)

Anyway, to cut a long story short it's only Monday and I already want to curl up in my bed, get extremely sniffly for a bit then sleep for twelve hours straight. You know it's going to be a bad day when the only thing that keeps you from getting embarrassingly emotional in public on your way to the station in the morning is the thought that some 80 high school students will be able to see for the rest of the day that you've been crying.
posted by Godiva at 2:06 PM

 

Pasta!

That's right. My tongue is officially feeling better. It no longer violently objects to small food being chewed, and generally feels less swollen and icky. Although I've come to wish I hadn't asked Gerald to place it so far back that the lower ball got to be located right next to the tongue tendon, which is just plain uncomfortable at the moment. I look forward to a smaller bottom ball.

Last week the first of my close friends got married - she is expecting a baby next month - and today was the first time I got to see her since. I think I'm simultaneously deeply touched and weirded out beyond belief; touched because she and her husband both act really, really sweet, loving, and caring around one another, and bewildered to see people I went to school with, hung out with, played with, suddenly get married and have children. Next week I'm visiting my junior high school for the first time in I don't know how many years. I think I'm feeling my age for once. @_@

Today I also wrote an English-to-German translation of a 3+ page document for work in about 45 minutes straight. Sometimes I love my brain.
posted by Godiva at 2:23 PM

 

Of hippos, t3h XOBX, and my face

I've always imagined hippopotami to have huge, heavy, slobbery tongues. As they stand in dirty water stoically chewing and crapping their days away, it's hard not to imagine them that way. Rather hard, in fact, to imagine anything about hippos to be anything other than huge, heavy and slobbery.

That is exactly what my tongue feels like. As my 1337 friends in #arstechnica were quick to point out, my tongue is currently - quite like the infamous Xbox - HUGE LOL. Thanks for that particular gem, guys.

I am told that swelling generally goes down within three to five days after piercing. Well, it's been around 55 hours since the deed was done and if there has been any improvement, I'm too grumpy to see it: The damn thing takes up so much space it's hard to close my jaws without biting my tongue. I tentatively tried to make my mashed potatoes slightly chunky today, but I'm still miles away from eating solids. My speech, however, seems quite unimpaired or at any rate, not much worse than usual - I talked (uncomfortably) for several hours with friends today, and not only did they not notice much beyond a slight, excited mumbling; they also could not see the piercing until I attempted to stick my tongue out at them for that purpose (sticking out your tongue is, by the way, Mission Impossible when it's twice its normal thickness). This bodes well for work - I'm going back to the office tomorrow morning, to teach the last instalment of my computer class no less.

OK, so I am whining a bit. I'm already loving this pretty new toy. Hell, it already feels good, now that my tongue is a bit less sore. Family and friends are reacting with increasing bewilderment to my bodyart addiction ("What? Again??"), and I'm not about to promise that this will be the last addition even for this year. It's fun. And I suppose I needed a break from junk food, and a challenge to my cooking skills anyway.
posted by Godiva at 3:31 PM

 

Needles

I got my tongue pierced today.

And I'd been pondering doing it for so long that I'm damn well going to post about it here and voice my enthusiasm :D

To say that I'd been a little apprehensive about it would be a bit of an understatement. In between this being my tenth piercing (earlobes included), and my piercing artist recognizing me by name and having a chuckle at seeing me again so soon, this is slightly odd. I guess the simple fact is I can't stand people messing with my face, at all.

Everything went quite smoothly though, and as painlessly as promised. Probably the least painful "real" piercing I've had, albeit uncomfortable as hell: You never realize how much you use your tongue before the most mundane movement reminds you that there is an overlength titanium barbell stuck squarely through its center. Foodwise, I'm looking at baby food and goo for a few days, and no dairy products, citrus fruits, soda or alcohol till the barbell gets changed. The worst part is that I'm perpetually hungry, and since my piercing moods tend to strike at random, my fridge is still filled with salad ingredients that I'd just love to do something about.

Surprisingly, I can still talk. My speech is just the tiniest bit slurred, but I aan thefinithewy noth thawging wige thith. ;) The boyfriend - whom I called earlier, and who appeared to be in favor of the decision - insists it's barely noticeable. I'm hardly surprised to see the commonly held beliefs about tongue piercing turn out to be mostly urban myths. So, for the record - no, it didn't hurt like all hell; yes, I can still speak without lisping or drooling all over myself; I still have a sense of taste, my tongue hasn't fallen off, nor is my brain about to be destroyed by a tragic infection courtesy of that hole in my tongue; and no, so far it hasn't turned me into a lesbian as far as I can tell.

Assorted other stuff is going well. I'm holding the last unit of my computer class at work this week, which has gone tremendously well. The thesis is moving along: I'm talking to high school principals whose students I'm planning to acquire as test subjects, compiling the tests and questionnaires I'll be using, etc. etc. Oh, and I'm making tentative plans to see the boyfriend for his spring break in March. Needless to say, I'm not exactly lacking enthusiasm for any of those things. :D

Oh, and a happy new year to any and all who may read this. Hope yours is as good as mine has been so far.
posted by Godiva at 12:33 PM