Proficient

Or at least competent enough in the lab. I finished six sessions yesterday and had no real problems. By the end my voice was somewhat hoarse but that was the only side effect. I enjoyed keeping everything filed and running the subjects. I ran a total of 17 people which was more than all the other research assistants for the week.

I have a feeling running the experiment week after week will get boring but at least it's a small change from the rest of my schedule. Next semester I might get more involved in preparing the second phase of this study, which would be cool to experience.

In other news I got my coat in the mail today. It's grey (I'm spelling it that way because it came from Britain), wool and clasped with toggle buttons. It is supposed to be vintage too, whatever that means. Often someone will label clothing vintage even though it was recently manufactured. This coat smelled old though, so I'm going to risk saying that it is actually old. I bought it for about $180. It would have been less had I gotten it in England but what can you do about the economy...I think it looks adequately like a coat Doctor Who might wear to satisfy me. I'm going to start putting random things in the pockets soon.

My dream last night was really awesome. It was long, so I'll summarize it: after abandoning a friend's car on the road because it wouldn't make it up a hill, we get stuck on a dead end road. Someone's bull-dozed the road, making a big pit! They've left a note stating that we can drive over the logs made into a road, but I don't see how. As we walk around the logs we notice plenty of farms with rolling hills, run-down barns and open fields. I comment that I would like to live here, especially since it is so close to the city. Later on in the dream I go to a bar set underneath a rooftop parking garage. It was really open and must have been from the 1960's. It was awesome. I decided to take a panorama of it so I started walking home to get my camera. On the way back I ran across some things someone had dropped. I found an old camera, pins from World War Two and a cool leather case. I carried it all home.

I'm sure that dream was really only fascinating to me. Sometimes I wish I had the memory to remember plenty of details from my dreams because then I could potentially make that awesome bar. It would help if I had a ton of money to make it too. What I like the most is when I have a dream and it is so vivid that I can still see it after I wake up. I had a dream about furniture that was clear enough that I could draw the furniture later on. I can definitely understand how people get inspired by their dreams to make great things.

First Day Lab Jitters!

I'm about to start my first day of running subjects and I'm pretty nervous. I think it will go well because I've run through the protocol several times and I have everything written down, but until I go through at least one session I'm going to be nervous. I almost had a little snafu involving the key to get into the lab, but that was all taken care of. It would have been a disaster had I not been able to get in here at all!

I'll be in here until five, although I do have a two hour break in between sessions. Most of the people coming in should be freshmen, so they just want to get things done and leave. No questions. It's how I like it. The only thing I'm really worried about is getting the subject numbers mixed up. I think that as long as I stay calm I'll be fine.

I never thought I would be helping in a scientific study. It still kind of blows my mind. I'm not doing too much right now but maybe in the future I will have a bigger role. I don't know. I'll let you know how everything goes.