Now back to a semi-daily log:
Monday:
Today was a crazy day. Slight backstory, on Thursday I went to talk with dr. Hirsch about my study, but she was super busy. She said she we could talk friday, but I wasn't coming in on friday, so we planned to talk today. Almost all day her doors were closed. There was another summer student waiting to talk to her about his study, which is about the perception of pain as a person giving pain and as an observer. It was interesting and, luckily, only used a simulation of pain infliction using pictures. Had the pain not been simulated, the experiment would basically be the famous Milgram experiment, just with 2 people doing the shocking instead of 1. We talked a lot about his experiment, my experiment, and other stuff. Eventually dr. Hirsch came outside, told the other student that she was super busy but could meet with him for a few minutes and said nothing to me. At this point, I decided to go talk to the grad student in charge of summer students, Grace, about my study. When I went to talk to her, she basically told me that, because I am not required to do a study for a specific program, I can't run one. So for about an hour, I had nothing to do. Spiro wasn't there, so I couldn't get any new work from him, and I didn't want to work on my study if I wasn't going to be able to continue with it. Eventually, Grace came back and told me that I could, in fact, work on my study, but the students who are required to do a study get priority for things over me.
For the rest of the day, I did reading and stimulus-finding. (This was actually the day I changed from decision making to math.) What's really nice about the lab is that basically everyone is happy to help with whatever you want. I asked Spiro a ton of experimental design questions, and not only did he not mind me asking, he also knew the answers. Additionally, I was able to bounce a lot of my ideas off of other summer students; my final design was helped along a lot by Evelyn.
Based on today's developments, I think I will be a bit behind schedule for finishing running my pre-study by the end of this week, but I feel like it's not actually that big of a deal.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Sam,
ReplyDeleteThis is amazing stuff. Not only is this fascinating, but you are really a terrific writer. I read your whole blog out loud to Gerry and we are very excited about your internship. I agree with Dana, I am soooo glad you are writing this blog! This way I get to do the research too without having to learn new languages--not that I could... your parents could tell you about my questionable capacity for other languages--and without really understanding alot of the technical stuff you are talking about. This is waaaay more interesting than the TV, my pile of books beside my bed, and other stuff. A really great internship. Thanks for sharing, Sam.