For anyone who wants to know more about the /y/ thing, here's a bit from Wikipedia.
What does it say about a person if she sees an article called "Phonological history of English consonant clusters" and responds with an excited "ooooooh!"?
I had such a good day. My advisor has been trying to derive a linguistic measure with a language analysis program that is not very user-friendly, and I have been working for weeks on the "fell swoop" approach. I was assigned to this project in August and it was immediately clear to me that we could obtain the measure far more efficiently. I've been working out the details ever since, and today was Fell Swoop Day: in my lab hours today I generated results that would have taken approximately 125 hours of woman-power to obtain under the old system. I have also learned lots of useful stuff about a program that's very powerful even though its learning curve is steep and its manual is less than helpful. I'm going to use it for my stats project later this semester. On which topic--
My stats prof is earnest but...less than dynamic. I am learning the material mostly from the slides and the book, because I have trouble with his lectures. But today I spent most of class tracking, even though the material wasn't in the book. He was talking about logarithmic transformation, which is extremely useful but not really intuitive for me. It's also not in our book, so it's a good thing I was able to follow today's lecture. Here's hoping for more of the same.
This afternoon I went to a seminar on the impact of No Child Left Behind on kids with disabilities. I was not looking forward to it, because our guest speaker was the author of two articles we read in preparation for the seminar and he seemed astonishingly pro-NCLB. I loathe NCLB. I mean, I really, really despise what it has done to American public schools. The goals are worthy but the execution is a disaster. How was I going to sit in the seminar and be polite to someone who apparently failed to recognize that much of what is valuable in an education is difficult to quantify? How, for instance, does one quantify "qualified"? (I find the criteria for "qualified" teachers" woefully inadequate.) I was happy to discover that virtually everyone besides the speaker shared my reservations, so I was able to participate without frothing at the mouth. Or with the merest modicum of frothing at the mouth.
The midterm for my departmental class was tonight and it went really well. I wasn't sure about taking this class because I'm the only doctoral student in there. But I've learned a ton, and pretty painlessly too.
Oh! And I also spent some time today communing with the file cabinets in the basement, whence I am digging out addresses so I can send out the questionnaires for my early research project. I want to get them mailed off very soon, so they do not arrive with a slew of Christmas cards and charities' year-end pleas for money. But it's been hard to put the time in. (Plus I am a little resistant to putting the time in. What if nobody responds? What if my pet idea is wrong? If I don't send out the questionnaire, my study can't be a disaster. Spot the error!)
All right, if I don't get to bed I am going to be ill-equipped to provide fun and enriching speech therapy in the morning. And that, my friends, would be a bummer. Night, all.
P.S. Are you in need of a way to waste time on the web? Yeah, I know, you need a web time-waster approximately as much as you need a gaping hole in your head. But still: check this out. (Totally addictive for a word person like me.)
CJ you stinker! I'm now 20 minutes late getting my first load of laundry in. Addictive is hardly the word!
Posted by: Salome Ellen | October 23, 2007 at 05:53 AM
I'm curious--in a nutshell, what were the speaker's thoughts? I'm in agreement with you that NCLB hasn't been positive for our educational system overall, and certainly not for kids with special needs.
The FreeRice site...I really don't need another excuse to spend more time on the computer. But I'm exercising my mind, right? ;)
Posted by: KatieButler | October 23, 2007 at 07:45 AM
Oh, my. Now I'm getting competitive and I want to know what everyone's vocab level is! And I'll get one wrong because I'm not familiar with the particular definition they're looking for and I'll start arguing with the website. But at least it's feeding the hungry, right?
Posted by: Sarah | October 23, 2007 at 01:35 PM
Ohhhh, excellent game! My vocab level is 45... hopefully the scale isn't out of 100.
Posted by: Ariella | October 23, 2007 at 05:42 PM
I sent my husband the vocab link and he emailed me back, "Made it to level 47 . . . and there goes my lunch hour."
:)
Posted by: Linda | October 25, 2007 at 03:16 PM
I'm dying to know: what level did you get to?? Darn if I didn't find it addictive too. Made it to 48 but only briefly!
Oh, wtg on the "fell swoop." That must feel really satisfying to make such a big advance in efficiency!
Posted by: swimmermom | October 30, 2007 at 01:40 PM