All the Pretty Words

Well, I’m a good deal less stressed out now that most of a week has passed. Right now, I’m trying to focus on my thesis, which is a bit behind schedule. I submitted my proposal to the Institutional Review Board, which makes sure proposed research projects follow ethical guidelines, in early January, but they took until the end of February to approve it! Argh! However, with a good deal of work and some luck in getting enough participants within the allotted time frame, I should be able to have it finished on time. My thesis advisor is asking for April 1st, but we’ll see about that.

I’m conducting a study to examine the effects of criminal sentiments (antisocial attitudes and beliefs about the law, courts, police, tolerance of law violations, and identification with criminal others) and prior mental health service usage (whether or not a person has gone to a psychologist, psychiatrist, or similar professional for help with mental health issues) on criminal offenders’ attitudes toward mental health services (the degree to which they are willing to share psychological issues, their willingness to seek help if they developed psychological issues, and the degree to which they are indifferent to perceived stigma associated with having psychological problems). It all sounds a bit complicated, and I guess it is, but I find it very interesting. I think this research will be helpful for psychologists working within the legal system, because it will help them identify the factors in an offender’s life that might make him or her more or less receptive to mental health treatment, which is especially important for those offenders who have mental health issues. A lot of offenders do have these issues, and at a much higher rate than in the general population, but they also tend to be resistant to participating in the treatment they need.

I’m about halfway through the data collection now, and have nearly finished the literature review (the first part, which describes prior research relating to the topic and the reason I’m doing this particular research project). I can’t write much of the rest of the paper until I’m finished collecting the data, so I hope it moves quickly.

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For those who noticed the previous post and actually care, the password-protected post might be making a few more appearances through the next couple of months. I have some personal issues to sort out, and while I’m pretty sure my readership consists of roughly five people, I’m not comfortable sharing those issues with any old Joe on the interwebthingie. If you want to know what’s going on, then you could email me or IM me and I’ll tell you about it.

In other news, the school-seeking campaign is going somewhat well, I think. I hope. Anyway, I’ve been accepted to the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. That’s great and all, but they only offer a Clinical Psychology PsyD (all clinical, no research), and I really want a Clinical Psychology PhD (half clinical, half research). That means I probably won’t be moving to Chicago this fall. I had an interview at Drexel University in Philadelphia, and the program there would be great for me. I also had an interview at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, which is fairly close to Houston. That program is not as good of a fit, but I could make it work for me. I had a phone interview with Carlos Albizu University in Miami, which is another PsyD, and I’ll probably be accepted there too. I’ve been rejected from Fordham in Queens, and I haven’t heard back from Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, BC), Carleton University (Ottawa, ON), or the University of Arizona. Simon Fraser is and always has been my top choice, but as I haven’t heard from them, things don’t look good on that front. Drexel would be an excellent choice if I get accepted to their program. At any rate, all I can do now is wait. My thesis adviser has put in a few good words for me at Simon Fraser and Drexel, which makes me think he deserves something knitted. Perhaps a scarf?

I should be hearing back from these schools in the very near future. Tensions are high and my nails would be at the quick if I were in the habit of biting my nails. I do have the summer to look forward to, as I’ll be spending most of it in Edmonton with Bryan and his mom. They say the city is beautiful in the summer, and it will also be wonderful to be in a real live city with real live people to see and talk to and actual things to do without having to drive miles and miles to do them! I’m quite excited. The downside is that the logistics of moving all of my things to Canada for the summer, the border issues that will force Bryan to stay in Canada at the time, and my family’s inability to make it to Vermont will mean that none of my family or friends will be at my graduation ceremony, so I’m planning to skip it. Call me pitiful if you will, but the prospect of walking across a stage with no one to watch me strikes me as overly depressing. I’d rather leave two weeks early so I can be with Bryan, making our way to Edmonton.

It’s late and I should sleep. I guess I just needed to talk to the ether. Wish me luck.

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My move to Vermont is almost complete. My parents and I left home last Tuesday and drove three days to get here on Thursday morning. Google maps says that the trip was 1300 miles, so you can see that it was more of a marathon than a road trip.

Anyway, we got here and met the realtor I had talked to about an apartment, only to find that he was contradicting himself by telling us different things than he had told me last week. We decided that we should look elsewhere, and lucked out by finding an apartment that’s right next to the campus, the general store, two laundromats, and the post office. It’s not the greatest apartment (photos here), but it will do. I could use some air conditioning and ceiling lights, though. I have a serious lack of both.

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Today I decided to accept the offer of admission into Castleton State College in Vermont, so I’ll be moving there in a couple of weeks. It’s a Master’s of Arts in forensic psychology program, and will take roughly two years to complete. I had wanted to go to a school in the Bay Area in California, but they have been taking ages to decide whether or not to admit me, and it’s well past time to be making plans for my living arrangements, classes, and the like. I’ll also get a lot more financial aid, which is always good. Living expenses will be cheaper, the program is more of what I need, and so on and so forth. It’s just not as exciting as the Bay Area, though, and I’ll miss the SFlickr meetings I’ve heard so much about. It’s colder, too. Brrrr! However, I think Castleton is a better choice for the long run, and that is what I need for my life. Wish me luck!

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Well, the past few weeks have been pretty busy for me. I’ve started a few posts, but never actually posted any of them after reading what I had written. Too drama queen-ish, I guess.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, I decided to buy an external hard drive, since it seemed that my computer might die soon, due to various internal rumblings and general weirdness. Once I had 160 gigabytes of cheap storage goodness, I made a backup and then decided that I should probably reinstall Windows and finally update the BIOS and do other maintenance-type things to see if that solved any of my problems. This then lead to the ongoing experiment with a dual-boot system that I now have, with WinXP on 15 GB and Fedora Core 3 on the other 15 GB, with a full backup of the old system and various little-used files on the external drive. I had various misadventures during trying to do this, which I won’t write here in order to save you a good 20 minutes or so of reading, but if you actually want to hear my little rants, I’ll be happy to oblige through email or Yahoo or somesuch ;)

Other than that, I’ve been finishing up papers and taking finals (only two of them, woo!), and now I’m going to graduate tomorrow. It’s really weird to see my newly-ironed gown hanging up in the kitchen. It’s also weird to know that tomorrow I’ll be packed an auditorium with a few thousand people and then I’ll walk across a stage and get handed a fake diploma (you get the real one in the mail a few weeks later). It’s very weird to know that tomorrow will be the end of my undergraduate career. It’s also weird to know that I don’t yet know where I’m going to graduate school :p. I’m working on that, though.

Anyhoo, these have been the highlights of the past few weeks. I’ll try to post more often now that I shouldn’t be quite so busy during the summer.

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