Postgrad Fears

I refuse to stay up 'til 2 like I did the other day, but I have a need to yell into the virtual stratosphere and wonder I'm really good at. I mean really. High school's mentally prepared me for college, college should prepare me for the "real world", right? Real world equating to graduate school, my first real job, etc. I've looked at my resume and just see numbers in my GPA, standardized test scores, and courses completed over the years. That's the whole thing! The frosting is the minor experience I've had in the workplace. My classmates are already mastering the art of spreading their selves thin. There's only so many hours in a day and I can already imagine long nights and early mornings, struggling to make sure everything works out. It's the last year and you'd think I've gotten the hang of it after the first 3 years.

Senioritis at its best

Ranting, rambling, ranting, rambling.

Winter break always seem to bring out the worst in me, allowing me to pay tribute to 2 of the 7 deadly sins: sloth and gluttony. I'm starting to memorize schedules of TV shows and eaten out every day since break started. I sleep late and wake up late. I've probably only studied for GREs for 2 days.

For some reason I'm really annoyed with my daily Internet habits. Facebook no longer interests me but I still check it knowing that nothing's changed. Twitter is becoming a spam magnet and I cannot find any benefit left from it since no one tweets important information through it anymore. Even my inbox is looking dull, and it just further emphasizes how materialistic the holidays are. I really should stop subscribing to these shopping websites though. My RSS feeds are becoming sort of redundant, too.

I should be sleeping. I'm just cranky because I'm feeling too "on the go". Forget being productive, I don't want winter quarter to start though. I think I just need a day to stay in. Maybe watching My Fair Lady tomorrow while I mope in my pajamas by the fireplace and hot tea should do the trick.

And I Thought Morons Didn't Exist

To the nimrod that decided to park right outside my apt and blast bad harp and creepy children's music from his car, go screw yourself. In fact, I hope that the cops I called actually found you and ticketed you for being a first class asshole. Who the hell decides to blast pedophile music at 2 in the fskin' morning? If you are a student and know it's finals week, you're even a bigger ass than I thought.

The nerve of some people...

Finals Week

More appropriately what I call "dead week". Schedule this week is not so bad.

Today: 112A Final & 145P Final
Wednesday: Review session, work
Thursday: 121S Final (too early in the morning), work
Friday: (Last) 127C Final! Not ending until 3:30, at least it's not at 8, that'd be madness.

T-shirt Design

Credit: http://binside.typepad.com/binside_tv/ryan_leslie/

They need a shirt on Threadless that says "Smartypants, hike 'em up".

Hello Winter!

It's finally 56 degrees! In Irvine! That's gotta be some sort of miracle waiting to happen, right? I'm hoping for it to rain tomorrow. It's perfect weather to be bundling up right now. 7 more days until I see the Bay!

Couverture Humide

I've been called a lot of things but how does calling someone a "wet blanket" a good thing? At home it apparently means a safe and risk-less person. No idea how that is compared to a wet blanket because I sure as hell won't feel safe under a soaked blanket. My level of spontaneity doesn't go up very high, I'll admit that. I just prefer having a plan, any plan! I'm not a 60 year old stuck in a 21 year old body. Maybe 40, but not 60.

Make-me-over

It's about time I had some sort of makeover for this poor blog. Thanks for deluxetemplates.net for the upgrade :). Now if only Blogger functioned more like a social networking site! I'd be set for sure.

Lady G over Mister B?

Our experimental psychology class just recently had a mock conference for this quarter's research groups. My project was on lexical stimuli and short term memory. As fancy schmancy as that sounds, it basically came down to lists versus sentences and how well subjects were able to recall them depending on the number of words in them. I personally wanted to do an auditory memory task but my group-mates insisted on something a little less complex. Oh well.

There was a group today that particularly stuck out and I don't mean to be nit-picky but I need to critique their project (yes, online). They too had thought of an auditory memory recall study and actually presented it to the "board". Their study was to compare snippets of classical and pop music: Lady Gaga versus Beethoven. They had about 4 subjects and gave them parts of 8 different songs. The point of the study was to focus on rhythm I believe and I found it appalling, but only because of the response I got from one of the members that gave me a quick run-through about their study.

Their results showed that subjects were more likely to remember Lady Gaga over Beethoven. This is already obvious given that Beethoven and Lady Gaga come from different eras and neither sound alike. This group assured me they had a "neutral" song but I have no idea who or what would be considered the medium for these two artists. I made a point to the group that Lady Gaga had higher accuracy of recall due to the popularity of this mainstream artist and the fact that you can definitely tell a house beat from the sounds of a piano or violin. I wasn't trying to be mean, I was just commenting. I actually thought their study would be the most interesting out of the 15 that were presented today.

One of the members of the group countered my argument and told me that subjects probably were able to remember Lady Gaga more than Beethoven "because she's more soothing" and "that her beats were more flowy". Apparently the percussion section of an orchestra scares the beejezus out of the subjects, so much that they decided to eliminate any memory of that piece altogether.

At that point I felt like I just got slapped in the face with a cold fish. When did "Poker Face" ever let a few notes legato their way through a song and lull you to sleep? My God. Lady G would be the last artist I'd seek to relax. I'd be imagining future seizures and elevated blood pressure from her music. After centuries of musical influences from these masterful minds, our generation has forgotten about them and hailed sequined, fake haired pop stars as the next Mozart.

Yes taking 10 years of piano has led me to be slightly biased, but even so, that comment was just horrific.