wispfox

At least one of the fellowship forms wants to know what scholarships and grants I have had in the past.

That's... not something I've kept track of, and I have _no_ idea how I would figure this out!

My most recent school had the info when I called their financial aid office (I hadn't even heard of all of them, so there's no way I could have come up with that list even had I kept all records). The previous one, I left a message. The previous one to _that_ only keeps records for three years. And... FASFA people cannot find that out.

I had forgotten that my pre-sleeping time used to be taken by my brain processing the day's events. But, now that I'm going to bed closer to 11 than 10, I seem to take about an hour doing that, then sleep. Which is way better than taking two hours to fall asleep!

I think I'm starting to adjust back to this sleep schedule, although the fact that I've taken anti-migraine meds the past couple mornings - which include caffeine - make it harder to be sure if that's the case.

Unfortunately, there were a couple of things I wanted to write down right before sleeping last night, but refused to get up and do so. And now I can't remember. Ah, well, they'll come back. I think. :)

It's funny that chatting with the receptionist on a regular basis means that I just got half her blueberry muffin, which was very tasty. Dunno; that just seems like such a lonely (and often boring) job, especially at a company full of introverts!

Car goes to regular maintenance tomorrow. I love that the place I go, recommended forever ago by catya, is about a 10-15 minute walk, at max. So on days I WFH, I can drive there, drop it off, and walk home.

Starting work on essays; I'm having a difficult time remembering that it doesn't matter if I necessarily have what I think of as required experience in Psychololgy - since my undergrad was not Psychology - it's still worth applying. Especially to programs that are precisely what I'm looking for. Will be hard to not sell myself short, as I hate selling myself in the first place even when I _do_ feel qualified.

Still highly uncertain about the HCI program, since it _will_ involve at least some programming. But, it's the one I'm most confident about making it into, since my undergrad was in CS and all my experience from the last almost 10 years is in computers. It's also the most likely option with which I would be able to find a relevant position after getting the PhD, since psych research would tend to mean academia, and those are not easy positions to get. Will apply, mind you, but... programming. And also a distinct lack of a break from CS, although it will still be a break from QA.

GRE in early October. Taking a break from studying to give my brain a rest. I'm fairly sure that I'm not going to do as well as I did when I was still in college, which is somewhat frustrating, but a fair amount of the math on the GRE involves things I have trouble with - word problems, visual representations of anything at all, and such. So it's frustrating to think that it will not actually reflect my math ability (consider that I had a TA in college try quite hard to convince me to change majors to math from CS). Ah, well. The verbal stuff I don't think I've worstened on, although anything additional gains in points will be difficult as I'm down to words that I'm having trouble memorizing. And I always have some trouble with the questions involving interpretation of the reading passages, since their wording is often perplexing.

once escorted. Go read it.

Am suspecting that two ativan at night, while permitting me to fall asleep faster (assuming stress doesn't override them) also causes me to have much trouble getting up in the morning and being drowsy all day. Not really a fan, so back to one and taking longer to fall asleep. So far, so good.

I would like it to be a little less easy for me to get into states where I'm not functional due to stress or overwhelmedness or whatever. So, after much conversation with metahacker, I shall be investigating having a therp (therp! Therp! Therp! the_xtina, I blame you) to try to work on things which are non-urgent (my entire experience with mental health professionals up until now has been for urgent stuff). I am not really sure how I feel about this.

Starting to investigate application processes for grad school, to be ordering transcripts once I'm home and have envelopes and my checkbook and such. Am vaguely annoyed that the earliest application deadline place does not yet have available the electronic application for next year, and that one of my application places requires that you do the entire electronic application in a single setting. Ah, well.

Soon, I shall need to start taking a stab at various personal statement things. That'll be weird! I don't recall my undergrad application at all, although I'm sure I had similar things to do then.

I've two people from my two last classes at UML as potential recommenders (one would prefer not, as he did not have much interaction with me and it was entirely online, but at least one of the schools wants two in academia, and another wherever), and two boss/co-worker-type people. So I should be good on recommendations.

Settling better into new location. I always seem to forget how hard moving is on me. Which is probably good, or I might try to never move again, and usually there is good reason to do so, when I do!

As you may or may not know, I'm trying to figure out what I want to do for grad school, slightly more specifically than psychological research.

So far, I've determined that I don't feel like I have enough of a background in Psychology to _know_ what I want to do enough. Except possibly for HCI/usability, since that is a crossover between Computer Science & Psychology (or at least can be).

So my current school-related activities are trying to find places within Massachusetts (preferably Boston area) which have HCI PhDs or are something that I could convince to become such, which is not about coding (my CS undergrad degree means that I know that I do not actually _like_ coding much), and general master's programs (in case I don't get into the PhD programs, so that I can at least get a better idea of what I would like to do and how to do it).

Finding HCI graduate degree programs at _all_ has been... complex. Lots and lots and _lots_ of conversation with metahacker has helped quite a bit, both in my better understanding that I really don't have any idea what I'm doing with this search, and in pointing me at places that may be right.

I would like to be trying to apply for the 2010-11 school year, which means applying to schools this fall. And financial aid. And such.

I do at least have recent classes in psych stats and some minimal research experience, and a psych research professor at umass lowell who is utterly happy about being a reference for me.

But right now, I'm a bit (not totally) stuck on figuring out where to apply for PhD stuff relating to HCI in eastern MA. Suggestions are welcome, although much of why I feel stuck is that I was overwhelming myself by trying to figure this out in, well, February and January.

Writing documentation for stuff, at least in my head (regardless of what the stuff is) also involves checking to make sure that what is supposed to be happening does. (I do documentation and testing for bugs pretty much simultaneously. Always have. It's a large part of why I'm good at documenting things that I understand well enough to test them or use them. I have to write things down to remember them _anyway_!)

Oddly, this appears to relate _strongly_ to the process I use to figure out the things in my head.

1) write something down
2) read it, see if it's accurate, clear, and covers everything
3) if missing any of the above, go back to one and modify the original writings. Alternately, if I can't figure out where things aren't quite right, have someone else take a look. When they find something or question something, go back to one and modify.

It's not that I do drafts, because I don't. Drafts always killed me in school, because if I saw things as not being accurate, I would want to fix them _then_. (well, also because drafts were writing by hand, which is hell for me) It's more like... writing an outline of what I want by putting basic concepts on paper, with little to no organization, then filling them out and moving things around as necessary.

Because, for me, organizing is _last_, and happens when I think a piece of what I'm writing has enough words to be clear. So outlines are... worthless to me. Entirely. Drafts almost as much so, since at least drafts have the useful aspect of encouraging me to come back to an idea after a bit of time has passed, and see if it still makes sense.

I do often wonder how entertaining it might be to watch the process I use to write things, if they are things which require a lot of effort to write (usually, these things are heralded by a total inability to interact with people until I've at least written down the initial basic concepts, although I tend to prefer to at least fill some of the words around them in, as well.).

Organizing is very much a learned, not automatic, thing for me. On the plus side, it appears to be tied thoroughly into my mild OCD.

I kinda want to learn sign language. I already know most of the alphabet (and numbers 1-10), because my mom knew it. And I suspect strongly that when I get nonverbal, I would probably still be able to sign.

But I'm nervous about it, because I tend to be bad with languages. Also because I don't think most of the people I know know it, so I'd have no one to practice with.

So I am indecisive... and yet curious!