Heavier Things

Last Undergraduate Semester

My classes are shaping up to be rather interesting this semester: Thesis class, History of Psychology, Seminar in Biopsychology, Psychology of Gender, and Philosophy of Sex, Love and Friendship. It seems like this will be a paper writing semester: only a few tests and only 2 finals, but 8 or 9 papers. Ick. Carpal tunnel, here I come.

I do generally like the atmosphere of academia - especially since I am a senior student, taking mostly 3rd-4th year classes. I detest the stress of school, and the daily complications and neuroses that I suffer from because of it, but I thoroughly enjoy the sense of intelligent, intellectual, and informed atmosphere of University where I can learn and discuss what I'm learning. I notice a distinct lack of opportunity to discuss the subjects I'm interested in outside of the University arena with other people - therefore I sincerely appreciate the ability to analyze these really fascinating topics with other individuals in the same atmosphere. If I start talking about the relationship between uridine and the neurological substrates of aging in the hippocampus, or Michel Foucault's panopticon from a postfeminist perspective, I lose people quite quickly.

What I detest about academia is the inescapable fact that sometimes you have to deal with the utter incompetence of other individuals that inevitably fucks up something you're trying to do. This is true for non-academic fields as well, to all fields I suppose, but I really feel it with respect to conducting research. Over the Christmas holidays, it appears that our experiment have been totally fucked with: the research assistant that was being paid to keep up the environmental sessions barely showed up. The rats were barely handled. No weight data was marked. Rats were put in the wrong cages with the wrong diet. I can't even describe how horrible this is: worse, it was out of my control. We did everything we could before the holidays to ensure the RA knew what he had to do. He chose not to show up, and to do a half-assed job when he did.

Moral of this story = other people suck.



Listening to: Flake - Jack Johnson

posted by Joanna @ 8:52 PM