Thursday, September 29th

So, my proposal finally passes the IRB. Great, let's post for participants, thinks me on Wednesday at 12am. Naive, so naive, have you not learnt from your past experiences (as J said to me after my first dmv experience)? We are in the States, now we enter the participant pool procedure. "But oh, you'll have it all done by Wednesday, you can run participants on Thursday", I am told. "What, you have a filter, you only want women, oh". Yes, oh, and it was all supposed to be done by this evening but the person who promised this had disappeared to a bridal shower, no even worse, a baby shower (can't people shower babies on their own and leave people to do their work?). Giorgio came by about 15 minutes after I heard this and asked whether I was coming for the happy hour. YES, says me. So happy houring I did at the pub (not too much) and at home. After one hour G told me I looked very different, so much more relaxded, compared to when he had picked me up. Yes, it has been a stressful week, and if I did not have to drive tomorrow evening after Demis's birthday celebration I would definitely have a few glasses to compensate. Trouble is the coordinator of the participant pool (the baby shower girl) is the only person I took an immediate dislike to (and she seems to have the same feeling - she was the one who did not send me an invitation last week, b). She ran into the computer room this afternoon. I said "hi", she said nothing and then raffeled through all my just printed, fresh experimental material (and no one touches that, that is precious). I said, "those are mine", she raffled through what was coming out of the printer, I said "that's mine too", she raffled on some more and ran out of the room. She is supervised by the only faculty person I find irritating and potentially dislikable.
Anyways, enough about her, thanks to her, rather than working on my next study I have to drive to the uni early tomorrow morning (provided she has done her work) to set up the participant pool.
But today was not as bad as yesterday. I don't really feel like thinking about it but we lost the soccer match. And I was really angry about that! The only thing that helped is that, ever since, I have had compliments about how well I played.Well, I want to carry on doing that, if we lose on Sunday, that's end of soccer for the season. So we have to win. I lay in bed thinking of new strategies last night. No one really wanted to listen to them in the bar this eve. I talked to someone who kept saying: "in the economist it says about muslims in HOlland that.... Is that true"? Now, don't get me wrong, the first few times this was quite interesting. But at some point I had to bring up my: How do you get rid of boring men, try to remember, it's been a while strategy. Oh yes: "do you know where the restrooms are?".
J comes back 2 days earlier than I had thought. That makes the suggestion for a meeting on Monday somewhat more realistic, now he's back on Saturday. Just have to get myself a time.
Yes and that was work again, the more I sit behind my comp, the more I worry about that participant pool again - well, actually , the more angry I get. Does that person realize how little time one has to run 3 experiments + get through the IRB (who refused me definite approval for 3 meaningless sentences + a debriefing they had not seen because they scanned the document) in 4 months? No, I didn't think so. She does not have to, she should just keep her promises. Now I am going to have to get in touch with my RAs to see whether they can run more sessions for me. And they have not impressed me so far (my roommate managed to get really good ones by going and advertising at a lecture where I was supposed to advertise as well, only I was screwing on license plates for my car instead....).
Ok,I am going to stop, to look on the bright side, anger is probably more pleasant than frustration (at least you have a feeling of control, you can still go and explode in front of someone - perhaps I should stay at home tomorrow).