(no subject)
So, I'm helping a grad student with her research. It's absolutely amazing. She's amazing. I initially just asked her about jobs around the department and she just took me under her wing. She seems really impressed with me, also. What was supposed to just be just her telling me about her research ended up with me helping her for about 3 hours. I mean, yeah, setting up experiments is tedious, but I wasn't bored once.
She grilled me on what I was interested in then proceeded to introduce me to a professor that followed near those lines. He's a freaking genius, but cool as hell. He explained what I know only has to be a small fraction of what he's working on. I guess he was impressed with me also because he asked my TA to show me the ropes and maybe I can get a job with him next semester if he can get a grant. So now I get to tag along fishing for gars.
I asked for some advice about my psych minor and explained how I wanted to integrate not just the classical type cause/effect methods, but also the more progressive techniques that are used on humans. I figure, humans have inferred so much from animals in their research, why not switch around and see how those derived applications could be used to advance some of the more primitive research methods used now. The geneticists, chemists, math, etc. disciplines have provided huge insights into zoology, but perhaps there's something useful in psychology, also.
Anyway, he thought that was fantastic and asked me about some of my ideas. Probably to steal them, but who cares. As long as he lets me help, I'm ecstatic. But they both subtly mentioned not to be a moron by getting my MS in psych. I agree.
Next week we go to xray two species that we prepared yesterday to pinpoint what they call landmarks. So basically instead of counting scales and rays and taking caliper measurements, they're trying to use this technique that gets a digital image and then getting a standard from the coordinates of the landmarks.
Man, I've never been so stoked!
She grilled me on what I was interested in then proceeded to introduce me to a professor that followed near those lines. He's a freaking genius, but cool as hell. He explained what I know only has to be a small fraction of what he's working on. I guess he was impressed with me also because he asked my TA to show me the ropes and maybe I can get a job with him next semester if he can get a grant. So now I get to tag along fishing for gars.
I asked for some advice about my psych minor and explained how I wanted to integrate not just the classical type cause/effect methods, but also the more progressive techniques that are used on humans. I figure, humans have inferred so much from animals in their research, why not switch around and see how those derived applications could be used to advance some of the more primitive research methods used now. The geneticists, chemists, math, etc. disciplines have provided huge insights into zoology, but perhaps there's something useful in psychology, also.
Anyway, he thought that was fantastic and asked me about some of my ideas. Probably to steal them, but who cares. As long as he lets me help, I'm ecstatic. But they both subtly mentioned not to be a moron by getting my MS in psych. I agree.
Next week we go to xray two species that we prepared yesterday to pinpoint what they call landmarks. So basically instead of counting scales and rays and taking caliper measurements, they're trying to use this technique that gets a digital image and then getting a standard from the coordinates of the landmarks.
Man, I've never been so stoked!