12 December 2008

My virus is apparently superior to my immune system

I am now on Day 8 of this neverending cold/flu. I have transitioned (for better or worse) from my-head-is-exploding to I-can't-stop-coughing. And I'm tired all the time. If I can make it through my Cell final on Monday and bang out my take-home final for Core II (aka electrophysiology aka kill myself), everything will be okay. 

The lab has been exciting lately. The causality study I'm working on got the green light to go from behavioral testing to the scanner (yay!). Subjects will have the unenviable task of watching my exhilarating stimuli for 20 minutes while being bombarded with loud noises. Sorry. We did some preliminary analyses for the other study on motion processing and got brain activation. Yay! Lit up brains are probably the coolest thing in the world. Diffusion tensor imaging and transcranial magnetic stimulation are also very cool -- variations on a theme, somewhat. Anyway, this all makes me sad that I am leaving the lab at this high point in awesomeness. Hopefully, my next rotation will be even better.

Finally, I think I have decided to teach myself Matlab. It seems inevitable and it is something that will likely make this whole getting-a-PhD much easier. I now regret selling the Matlab book I bought for O'Connor's class and never opened...

06 December 2008

Zzz...

I've been sleeping most of the last two days, since I seem to have fallen prey either to a bad cold or the flu. As an unfortunate result, I'm going to be missing Kate and Laura's holiday party tonight. And I was looking forward to putting on a dress... :(

However, I am very happy that for the first time since Brian and I moved into our apartment, our upstairs neighbors did not have a party on Friday night. Yay for some semblance of peace and quiet.

Next week, I have 8.5 hours of faculty talks to listen to. I've already decided who I'm going to do my next rotation with, so this should be sufficiently mind-numbing. Perhaps I will be pleasantly surprised.

One last thing: RIP H.M. Cognitive neuroscience and psychology will forever be indebted to you.