anyone awake right now?

kinda lonely...
kinda bored...
anyone awake?

I guess it is summer (and night time) for all you people in the northern hemisphere. I think board participation tends to go down in summer months as people get out more enjoying the weather and go on holiday and stuff, and tends to go up in winter months as people are more housebound cause o fthe weather and suffering depression and co.

Well it is winter here...

Cold...
Depressing...
And I'm engaging in some hard core thesis procrastination.
Though even I have a little difficulty chatting to myself ;-)

but not so very much difficulty that i'm about to stop mwah ha ha!!!!! anyone else writing a thesis? anyone else engaging in hardcore thesis procrastination? or do you guys get the summer off from having to do that?

dum de de. i've been off sick all week. bad bad me. had conference last week and i found it so stressful that i promptly fell sick at the end of it :-( it has been nice taking the week off. i meant to do some work at home but i've been playing on boards all week :-( feel guilty and ashamed about that... :-( still... need to look to the future, eh? will take tomorrow off and... do some work. i will do some work. i've promised now so i have to do it, okay????

i really have been sick though. horrible sick. felt really very horrible. runny eyes and runny nose and then sore throat and horrible runny throat. not pleasant at all. stress was the last straw, i guess. have one week to get some serious writing out to get to supervisors. one of them arrives back at the end of next week so i want some serious writing to get to him. about... half way through something decent so that should be managable. need to write something for another person too. in my own interests. i think there is this grad student phenomena 'i am a fraud and pretty soon they will figure that out!'. i'm getting a major case of that at the moment. i'm meant to write half a paper and this other lady is going to write the other half. i'm worried she is only interested because i have misrepresented the significance of something in personal communications with her. i'm worried i can't deliver my half and so i've been avoiding it. i'm worried i'll just embarrass myself with giving her work that isn't up to scratch. and so... i haven't written it. but really... i should make that a project for either this weekend or next. need to get that done. put my fears aside and just damn well do it. in my own best interests really. if i do it and she thinks it is crap or it doesn't work out. oh well. marks for trying. will be a little embarrassing but no more embarrassing than avoiding her which is what i've been doing to date...

i understand. i had my thesis finished a couple of years ago.

what area are you in?

philosophy.

naturalistically inclined philosophy of mind / psychology / biology.

yay you finished yours :-)
maybe there is hope for me :-)

what was yours on?

ah. i checked your bio.
you know... we might have met... maybe... possibly... just possibly... but possibly not.

substance abuse and offending ... criminal justice psychology.

spent most of my time hanging out in prisons interviewing offenders (interesting when you're an early to mid 20s female).

i sold out though, i do research which involves marketing and business strategy type stuff for a huge multinational.

way more money!!!!

you interested in youth offenders at all? i should PM you about that... i used to know someone in my region who used to work with youth offenders... might have met you through him... i used to help out a bit with his agency... volountary work kinda stuff...

dum de de...

i'm still a little sick, but not anywhere near as bad as i was near the start of the week. Probably could have gone to work today to tell you the truth. I get more work done at home though as long as I get into it. I want to stay home tomorrow and really get some work done.

My keyboards keys are starting to squeek. dammit. what am i going to do about that?

substance abuse and youth offending... i think we might have met :-)

sold out is relative... i dunno who i'm gonna get to sell out too ;-) there isn't much that philosophers can do... ssssssssh but i'm considering moving to otago to do medicine once i've finished up my philosophy phd. more money in 'health research funding' i think. hard to get research funding in philosophy... don't get me wrong nice if you can get it but so very much harder to get...

nah mine was adult.

that's a lotta study - don't you just want to get onto earning sum dosh?

i have a travel habit and need to buy a house soon ...

though if i get more into the biology stuff there could be a good future in that. i've seen some of the research philosophers have done with summarising two fields of science... developmental psychology and behavioural genetics for example. they are two different fields. they ask different questions they use different research methods they use different statistical techniques. the proceed to talk past each other... while they both have something to say re how much certain traits are innate vs environmental (for example) their findings tend to contradict and the scientists from both fields persist in talking past each other and slinging mud (eugenics!!!!).

you can get some nice research funding (as a philosopher) to survey the fields in language that outsiders can understand and insiders can agree with. then you can get each side understanding the other sides point of view. you can try and carve a middle ground of advantages and disadvantages of both sides and try and reccomend a way forward... (especially when they are trying to work out a unified discipline as a meeting point between them).

that kind of thing looks kinda fun. great way to learn about various fields within science too... and a nice use of philosophy. a kind of diplomat to the sciences :-)

i like to do that with 'competing' psychology / psychiatry theories too :-)

i'd like to be a diplomat but sometimes i manage to %#@&#! everyone off instead. oops. need to get better with that.

Mmm. I've just been flying round the country interviewing CEOs and GMs and BDMs of different pastoral/agricultural persuasions, so I am quite tied up in biotech/bioactives/dairy/meat stuff at the moment. I've never found science interesting but right now it's fascinating me almost to the same degree as psych ... teehee Who would have thought you can make a cow who doesn't produce any lactose in her milk!

I posted a thread on a nz website similar to the one that was locked here on the sex offender website. very interesting responses i must say.

Yeah science is pretty cool. I used to do some stuff in a behaviourist lab... They were working on the psychphysical abilities of possums and stuff (what colours, sounds etc they could detect). I think they were working on developing traps that emitted this high frequency of sound that actually attracted possums (and not native wildlife) to the traps. Also stuff on... Teaching cows to milk themselves... Sounds crazy but it was something like yellow triangle means it is time to be milked (and they just made their way to the milking machine) and red square meant it was not time to be milked. 'Further research will determine whether the cows are responding to the colour or the shape' lol. heh heh.

Yeah science is pretty interesting (who would have thought?). Did some stuff on behavioural economics too... You can run experiments to determine whether chickens will work as hard for litter as for other things that are considered 'needs' or whether they don't work so hard so litter is more a 'luxury'. They found that they work almost as hard for litter as they do for food (when they are kept at 80% body weight so they are very hungry indeed). Hence scratching in litter... Is very important to chickens indeed. That has implications for humane treatment of chickens regarding battery farming and even free range where free range means 500 of them kept in a room the size of my bathroom where they peck each other to death in some instances and have no access to litter... (Free range doesn't mean humane people... Though SPCA approved free range probably almost does though at around 3X the price...)

But yeah, science is interesting.

That is cool about the cow without lactose :-)
Watch out soya beans :-)

My old university was trying to breed goat/sheep.
The notion is you could milk em you could eat em you could take the wool from them...
Didn't work out so well apparantly.
They were also trying to breed water buffalo/cows.
The notion is that some parts of the world can't have cows 'cause it is too swampy and cows tend to get stuck in the swamp, fall over, and they can't get back up again. Water buffalo can manouver around swamps better 'cause their hooves are more suited but they don't have a very high milk yield. Oh the wonders of science ;-)

It is funny how lots of people with PhD's end up doing something fairly unrelated... Still... Gets you into something I guess :-)

I've never had money to miss having money if you get what I mean. Still... I'm getting more money on scholarship now than I was getting from student loans and allowances. Sure I'd like money one day... I'd like to travel. I'd like to live some place nice. I'd like to be able to go out more. But at this time in my life... I don't really know any different. I guess ideally I'd like to get a post doctoral fellowship when I've finished up. Ideally I'd like to get two of them and then a research post lol. But... It is very competitive and I'd be lucky to get one post doctoral fellowship truth be told. People think I'm a little crazy and I probably am... But I can't imagine anything worse than having a 4/4 teaching workload at some little tiny university in some little tiny town. I think it really would drive me even more crazy than I already am. Over half the people who get philosophy PhD's never manage to get a job in the field. But you have to be very dedicated indeed to be able to continue your own research with a 4/4 teaching workload. So... It is hard... And I don't know whether it will work out for me. Some people say I'm being defeatest. Maybe I am. I like to think I'm being realistic.

If I don't get a job (and lots of people who finish find themself in this position) then I think I would like to do medicine. I love study. I'd like to become a psychiatrist. I want to write theory at the end of the day... But I think I'd like learning the science and working with clients and having the odd case study ;-) Maybe clinical psychology would be the way to go... I've almost done enough for a major so it wouldn't be so hard to continue with that... The trouble there, however, is that I don't think I'd be eligable for another PhD scholarship (I think you can only get one in a lifetime). Still... You can do clinical (in Australasia) without doing a PhD I suppose... Don't know how seriously they would take me researchwise however... Don't know. I guess I just like to have plan A and plan B and plan C and plan D so I won't be mortified if I can't get a job...

I couldn't do 9-5.
4/4 teaching load is too much like 9-5.
And smaller universities... tend to attract not so great students... who aren't really interested in the subject...
And if i do 'critical reasoning' with too many people who can't speak english i feel like i want to scream...
Truth be told... I was on sickness benefit... Probably would have stayed there for the rest of my life until... I discovered university. I just love academia :-)

I used Grounded Theory in my thesis (yea I'm a qual rather than a quant, primarily) and I went travelling, came back, landed a job through having a contact in the company, have been using all the research skills I developed in the phd ...

Went to our training conference in Malaysia a couple of months ago and the Exec Director of Melbourne office did a huge section on GT ... she did her thesis with it and uses it in everyday practice ...

So I guess I feel I have the skills from phd that are transferable to my current field. I just love business and business analysis and writing clients strategy and marketing plans ... it satisfies me, especially when they come back and say it's improved their profitability etc.

My job is not very nine to five at all ... between out/around interviewing, doing focus groups, meeting with clients, it's much less structured. Spent today with my boss just thrashing out a presentation cos we didn't wanna go into the office.

Wow possum stuff sounds interesting. If they altered the possum gene to make sterile male possums it would wipe out the possum population totally within a few years. Weird huh ...

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special_k said:
i really have been sick though. horrible sick. felt really very horrible. runny eyes and runny nose and then sore throat and horrible runny throat. not pleasant at all. stress was the last straw, i guess. ... i think there is this grad student phenomena 'i am a fraud and pretty soon they will figure that out!'. ... put my fears aside and just damn well do it. in my own best interests really. if i do it and she thinks it is crap or it doesn't work out. oh well. ...

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Hey,
Funny, I woke up at around 4 a.m., but I didn't know why. Maybe I "heard" your post.

I'm sorry you haven't been feeling well. It sounds miserable. I hope you're taking good care. You know the drill...drink plenty of fluids, get plenty of rest, etc.

And oh yes, I do know the writing avoidance thing. I think I'm the queen of it. I've avoided so darned long, I'm not even aware much anymore (in the moment) that whatever else I'm doing is a distraction from writing anxiety. I just shift into distraction and avoidance mode without any kind of awareness of the feeling or the moment. But hey, just that I admit that is good, right? Awareness is the first step, and it's a biggie!

About the "fraud" thing. That's a real phenomenon, particularly among women, not just in grad school. It's "the imposter syndrome". I get it. It's not pretty. For some, it can lead to working so darned hard to "prove yourself" and "not be found out." For others, it becomes almost a paralysis--you avoid doing stuff so that no one can find any "proof". If you don't have work out there, no one can notice that's it's not up to par...something like that. I fall into the latter category. I don't mind verbally expressing my thoughts and what I know. I guess because verbally I figure it will sort of float away like a wisp of smoke. But if I write it down...well that's something different entirely! That means someone could (gasp!) READ IT! And it feels a lot more permanent and significant .

See what we do to ourselves? I get mad at myself when I realize how much of my cognitive and emotional energy I spend throwing all this junk into the mix. I'm trying to work on keeping it simple. It is what it is, and it's not what it's not kind of stuff. Work in progress, though.

We ought to form a support group.

Take care,

gg

My undergrad research involved goldfish. It's one of those past experiences that make me think about karma in a more worried way since it involved injecting a drug into their craniums and then training them to avoid an electric shock with a light cue. Bleah bleah bleah bleah bleah. I used to watch and root for them to swim. Swim!! Swim!!! Go toward the light!!!

I hated every minute of the research, except for cleaning the tanks. There was something very calming and therapeutic in the routine of that task.

Amazing the things one will do because they think it will help them get into grad school.

Hey. Yeah, 'impostor syndrome' (though distinct from the Capgras Syndrome lol). Yeah, that is is exactly. I never used to be thought of as shy or reticent... But I've been having trouble finding my voice here. And recently... I've been having trouble getting into it too. I mean... Really rather severe trouble. I found this website:

http://www.phinished.org/

It looks pretty good. I've just joined up... Don't know how it will go... Bit worried about being identified IRL... And posting name link etc etc... And email address required to post (oh well worst that can happen is my inbox gets spammed I guess). Not that hard to get another anonymous email account I guess...

They contract... Work in 40 minute blocks then have 20 minute break. You can post 2X40 and then I think that means you have contracted for 2 fourty minute work blocks. Lots of suggestions for ways to get into it, ways of organising material, formatting suggestions and co. Site looks pretty good. Pretty active too. I should... Cut back on the time I spend on this kinda site (because it is my main way of procrastinating - or 'faffing') and spend more time on that site using it to MOTIVATE me to do some work. Their completion rate looks pretty good too... Might be worth a try???

I'll have to check that out. Here's an article about imposter syndrome written by a grad student for the APA student organization (APAGS).
http://www.apa.org/apags/edtrain/notimposter.html
I found it useful.

Thanks for the other site.

gg

> have been using all the research skills I developed in the phd ...

:-)
that is great
:-)

> I just love business and business analysis and writing clients strategy and marketing plans ... it satisfies me, especially when they come back and say it's improved their profitability etc.

:-)
Then you haven't sold out
:-)
IMO 'selling out' is about doing something you hate for more money than you would have got doing something you liked when the money you would have got doing something you liked would have been adequate to meet your (and your dependents) needs.

Like.... (dare i say it)... Applied Ethics would be for me...
Or Applied Stats would be for a Calculus freak...
Though don't get me started on issues of global justice ;-)

> Wow possum stuff sounds interesting.

Mmm. Kinda semi ;-)

> If they altered the possum gene to make sterile male possums it would wipe out the possum population totally within a few years. Weird huh ...

Yeah. They have developed a virus that has something like 2/3 liklihood of making the infected females unable to have baby possums. (In case other people are following along possums are a pest they are systematically destroying the native bush). The virus only infects marsupials and all the marsupials in NZ are pests (there are wallabies that are also sytematically munching their way through native bush).

The trouble is they wanted to introduce the virus into genetically modified carrots. People freaked out about the 'genetically modified' business and also about the notion of introducing a virus when it is possible the virus could mutate to infect other critters... Maybe even people. It could also endanger NZ / AUS relations as AUS would worry about the virus getting to australia and seriously threatening their possums and kangaroos and wallabies and koalas and so on and so forth (where some species are protected).

I did some work on what should be done about the possum problem a while ago (kinda selling out lol). It was kinda interesting to consider the costs / benefits to trapping vs poisoning vs hunting vs fencing vs virus vs deporting the suckers to aussie where they are protected (lol) vs a combination of the above.

Seems that there really isn't much hope for eradication. Can only hope for maintenence. So... Support the NZ possum fur industry people! Buy your possum fur nipple warmers lol!

Ooh I missed this:

> My undergrad research involved goldfish.

ROFL!!!

> It's one of those past experiences that make me think about karma in a more worried way since it involved injecting a drug into their craniums and then training them to avoid an electric shock with a light cue. Bleah bleah bleah bleah bleah. I used to watch and root for them to swim. Swim!! Swim!!! Go toward the light!!!

LOL!!! Yeah I felt sorry for the chickens too... And the possums... And so forth. Don't get me started on the ethics of animal research ;-)

> I hated every minute of the research, except for cleaning the tanks. There was something very calming and therapeutic in the routine of that task.

:-)
Thats a worry about psychology (I think)
I like theory I don't wanna have to do experiments!

> Amazing the things one will do because they think it will help them get into grad school.

Ah... Yes... I remember learning about what we should do to maintain (oops I think that shoul d be 'contain') the possum problem... Govt agencies etc etc... Sigh.

I was getting that irritable / frustrated / unhappy / uncared for kind of feeling... This thread helped me feel a lot better. I went off to sleep feeling happy and cared for.

:-)

Read a chapter for a reading group today. Reading group isn't happening for some reason or other... So I'm going to go home (still fighting off the reminants of a cold). I'm going to do some work. The most recent version is at home. I'll make a pot of coffee and sit down... And get into it. I'm going to show a supervisor some work on Monday dammit!!!

Thanks so much.

(((((((gg)))))))))

((((((((sunflower)))))))))

Thanks guys :-)

I hear you...........possum nipple warmers....i think that those would go over big in the northern states.

They are indeed trying to reach out to the US market:

http://www.nznature.co.nz/ecofur2.htm

I'll also say that generally I am opposed to the farming and killing of animals. I make an exception for the NZ possum, however, because they are threatening endangered flora and fauna (including the beloved kiwi). So even if you are vegan and don't wear leather and so forth don't hold back on supporting the NZ possum fur industry :-)

>Possum wool is unique to New Zealand - the hollow fibres of possum fur are the lightest and warmest natural fibres on the planet. Luxurious to wear, lightweight, anti-static and non-pilling. Possum wool is versatile for the winter months or to fend off a cool summer breeze.

>Eco-Fur™ is the trademark of New Zealand Nature Co. and applies to possum fur and possum wool products from New Zealand using fur of the trichosurus vulpecula (commonly known as the brushtail possum).

>Possums were introduced into New Zealand about 150 years ago from Australia to establish a fur industry. The brushtail possum has multiplied now to over 70,000,000. With no predators, the possum has decimated huge tracts of native forests eating 21,000 tons of vegetation nightly. Both bird life (including the Kiwi) and many unique types of trees are threatened with extinction because of the brushtail possum. This marsupial is only very distantly related to the American Opossum. Eco fur has nice mink like fur while Amercan Opossums do not. The brushtail possum has a fur similar in quality to mink and colours range from silver to red brown to dark brown.

>Preservation of New Zealand’s Native Forests requires control of the possum population. All controls used in the past have had minimum impact. Poisoning of possums is an environmentally unacceptable way of control. Only through world wide marketing of possum fur products (Eco fur products: fur teddy bears, davy crockett hats, etc) can this pest be safely controlled. Our Eco Fur products are all of the highest professional standards. Be assured that Eco-Fur is cosy warm and soft. It is also anti static which means it makes the perfect seat cover for your office chair.

Here is a particularly cute pic:

cute pic