Thinking
So… I could either put off graduating a semester to try and get an undergraduate research grant over the summer, or I could graduate and just take a psychometrics class next semester and not get the grant. At first, I was gung-ho about putting off graduation. Now, not so much. It feels silly to stay enrolled just to get a tiny grant. It makes more sense to me to just take the stat class I feel that I need. Plus, if I do that I can keep my OIT job for another semester, which would keep my cost of living low (vs. a job elsewhere that is out of the way and would interfere with my research time).
Dr. Baldwin has told me I can work in her lab next semester, and possibly over the summer if anything opens up. Dr. Gordon said she’d keep an eye out if she needs me to do anything. This is all good, because for some reason I feel like no one in Dr. Fite’s lab like me. I guess I’m not peppy enough? No one seems to like talking to me in there about anything (with a couple exceptions), even though I go out of the way to take an interest in what they’re saying. It makes me feel like a moron every time I open my mouth.
I don’t know how much longer I’ll stay in the lab. It’s not my population of interest, we haven’t really touched on the psychopathologies I’m interested in, and I don’t see myself going any farther in the lab. Hell, if I’m going to let myself be stressed out by the social environment of a lab, it might as well be in a place I get to look at stress or self-efficacy or interpersonal betrayal/trauma or anxiety/depression or SOMETHING.
Anyway, it just feels like time for me to move on. I don’t really think I should cling to the school so much as to push back graduation, and I don’t want to stay in a lab just because it’s familiar.
Or, Wake Forest could always accept me and none of this would be an issue. That would be great.