The Smiths - The Queen is Dead
20 March 2011
19 March 2011
30 Day Song Challenge - Day #18
Day #18 - A Song You Wish You Heard on The Radio
David E Sugar - To Yourself
18 March 2011
30 Day Song Challenge - Day #17
Day #17 - A Song that You Hear Often on The Radio
Bill Withers - Aint No Sunshine (Magic Radio =])
17 March 2011
30 Day Song Challenge - Day #16
Day #16 - A Song You Used to Love But Now Hate
From First To Last - Emily
16 March 2011
General Update
I've just noticed that I haven't updated my blog for about five days now, well at least not properly, I do manage to post my 30 day song challenge every day (mainly because I schedule the posts in advance). To cut a long story short, I've had busy times with university work and the like, so I haven't really had time to blog. However, I do have a bit of time to update now, so I'll make the most of it =].
Surprisingly I don't have much to say even though days have gone by where I haven't reported what I've been doing. This is probably because I've been working and my social life (not that I had much of a social life) has been put on hold for a while. Even when I've been into university I have been there solely to get some work done, with the odd conversation with class mates which have tended to be about university works. Deadlines for our final assignments are very soon, so everyone I know at university seem to be rushing around trying to get masses of work done. I suppose studying the cyberpsychology module is an advantage for me because there's a group work element, so at least I've been able to socialise with people and do work at the same time. However, we do have our presentation on Monday, finally!!!. Everything seems as though it's coming to an end.
I was saying to a friend on MSN last night that I'm slightly scared of leaving university yet excited at the same time. One of the main reasons that it's a bit scary is because I have to leave so many friends behind, especially when I leave for Nottingham after graduation. I've met so many amazing people at university (and some horrid people, no doubt). I know that once we part and go our separate ways we'll try and keep in touch with each other, especially with technology such as Facebook and texts, it makes keeping in touch much easier, but it will never be the same again. I could take the positive view that this will be a new chapter in my life and I'll make new friends (as I make friends pretty easily). I can take my own research a step further as well as being an independent individual. But I'm going to miss people nevertheless, some people more than others.
I won't go on too much about this because chances are that many of you are in the same boat as me. Also I don't want to dwell on it too much, it's not the end of the world after all, having to adapt and move on is part of human nature, development and evolution if you like. I'm going to make my most of my final few months or so and spend as much time with people as I can once my deadline have passed. Luckily for me this will be April 13th, quite a few of my friends have final deadlines in May. I suppose having earlier deadlines is good for me because I work best under pressure, but my friends say it's not fair that all of my deadlines are grouped together, it's debatable to be honest.
Sorry if this post seems to be a bit on the dark-side, it's just a reflection on how things are for me at the moment. Well I'm off now, I aim to start working on my dissertation at 11am. I'll catch you all later.
Bye now,
Jodie
30 Day Song Challenge - Day #15
Day #15 - A Song That Describes You
Chase Coy - If The Moon Fell Down Tonight
NB: This song describes how I feel rather than describes me [No songs describe me]
15 March 2011
30 Day Song Challenge - Day #14
Day #14 - A Song That No One Would Expect You to Love
Master Shortie - Dance Like A White Boy
14 March 2011
13 March 2011
12 March 2011
30 Day Song Challenge - Day #11
Day #11 - A Song from Your Favourite Band
The Smiths - Frankly Mr Shankly
11 March 2011
Random mumblings
Hello everyone, I hope you're all feeling well today! At the moment I feel pretty tired despite having done more or less nothing all day. I suppose I feel a bit fidgety too almost irritated and possibly stressed. I want to apologise in advance just in case this blog entry turns out to be depressing or just uneventful.
On the upside I can say that my dissertation is coming along nicely and I finally finished transcribing my focus group interviews this morning. I seem to have been transcribing forever, firstly because it was a skill that I needed to develop and secondly because I used my laptop to type them up and then some how lost the files and had to start all over again. Based on the initial reading of my transcripts I can certainly say there are some interesting provisional themes present, so the thematic analysis should be fun and hopefully won't take too long as I have some ideas for themes already. As I mentioned a few days ago, my quantitative analysis is now complete too. So all is looking good for having a draft of my dissertation by the 23rd March, and then I can start work on my final assignments too.
I suppose the downside of things is having more or less no social life. I kind of wish that I could go out more often than I do, then again I do enjoy working on my dissertation and often moan if I waste my time. Also, I get tired easily lately, so majority of time is spent either studying or sleeping. I really do hate sounding pessimistic but I kind of feel grouchy at the moment. Another thing I actually want is a boyfriend. It's just difficult having strong feelings for someone who you can't be with for a number of reasons. Sometimes it almost feels pointless having such feelings, but at least I accept that there is no problem in having any feelings now....
Actually I'm off to bed now because I'm kind of over-tired. I'll write tomorrow when and if I'm in a better mood. tata for now
Jodie
30 Day Song Challenge - Day #10
Day #10 - A song that makes you fall asleep
The Birthday Massacre - Underneath the Stairs
10 March 2011
Jodie's Daily Mail Critique
I've selected a few of today's "Daily Mail" science related stories to discuss and critique with witty and possibly comic effect.
"Do Doctors See You As a GLM or Just a TBP?"
A SHOCKING news story reveals that although hospital doctors practice professional etiquette publicly, they use slang acronyms in private. These include: GLM meaning Good Looking Mom, GLL meaning Great Looking Legs and FLK meaning Funny Looking Kids. A personal favourite of mine is GROLIES meaning Guardian Readers of Low Intelligence in an Ethnic Skirt. Furthermore, the slang extends to describe their work practice and colleagues. Terms include "house red" meaning blood, "slashers" meaning surgeons and the "Freud Squad" meaning psychiatrists. This SHOCKING information was revealed by Dr Fox of a London hospital.
Whilst the story is slightly interesting it is worth applying some form of critique. First of all we should consider whether the slang terms are universal (amongst doctors) or just generalised to employees of the hospital where Dr Fox works. Chances are that not all doctors use the slang that was mentioned in the short article. It's called slang for a reason, i.e. it's not standardised or universal. Secondly, the article mentions that hospital doctors do act professional in public, so does using slang in private really matter? As a developing professional myself, I realise that most professionals have a private unprofessional outlet, considering that people have several 'selves' or roles within society. May I add that this story is as pointless as an article about what net-speak acronyms professional psychologists are using on their private Facebook accounts.
"If There's A Mouse in The House, He's Probably Singing Love Songs"
A BREAKTHROUGH piece of research from a Japanese university has found that mice innately sing the songs of their biological parents rather than their foster parents. It's probably worth noting that we don't have a precise record of the prevalence of mouse adoption, so the research has no significant practical application. Also consider the well known phrase "as quiet as a mouse", that says it all really.
"Laughter is The Best Cure"
Researchers have found that laughter is the best cure as it promotes healing by speeding up blood flow. Recent research has looked at the effects of laughter and happiness on the healing process. As a scientific speculation I'd say that it's stress relief interventions that speed up the healing process. Positive thinking and happiness are implemented into stress relief interventions and laughter is a factor of happiness. Therefore, laughter has no direct relationship with healing. The idea that stress relief interventions promotes and speeds up healing is not a new idea and it has been heavily researched by health psychologists and biopsychologists, so why report this now?!!. Besides, if laughter IS the best cure then billions of pounds and several decades have been wasted researching the healing process and developing interventions to speed it up. Surely that's nothing to laugh about.
"The Hair-Raising Truth About Straighteners"
"A third of women use them [hair straighteners] but experts say hair irons can actually make your hair go more frizzy ... and even fall out"
Firstly, the findings of the survey can't be generalised to ALL women as only a small sample of women took part in the survey, which was probably advertised in a certain magazine or on a certain website that has avid readers/visitors who have time to take part. Secondly, surely it's common sense that more or less burning your hair everyday causes some kind of damage and thirdly who are these experts exactly?
I hope you've enjoyed this whirlwind tour through todays most important science stories. I hope I've educated you in some way or another, or just made you giggle. I'll see you soon with more outrageous stories (in the correct sense of the phrase).
Jodie
09 March 2011
Hot-Air Balloons, 1+6=7 and Dissertation Work
So, I'll say the usual, I haven't posted for a few days now. I suppose I've been busy with university work or otherwise sleeping. This is the story of my life at the moment. I'm not moaning about the work-load that I have, it's just that I don't have much free time. But obviously this will all pay off in the end. Besides, I really love psychology (as you probably know).
As far as I remember, I posted the (embarrassing) video-blog on Monday, so I should blog about yesterday and today. The past two days have seemed to really drag even though I've been very productive. This could be because I've done as much work in 2 days that I would usually do in 3 or 4 days. This would explain why it feels like it's nearly the weekend already and it's only Wednesday.
Yesterday morning I got into university by about 10am to prepare for the afternoons meeting and meet my friend Arun to back-sign a consent form for a questionnaire that I filled in for his dissertation. Instead of putting the group presentation together like I originally planned I decided that it would be more useful to involve the rest of my group, as it is a group presentation after all. I spent my time creating a handout for the meeting, explaining what we were to do in the meeting and what we should do between meetings. Just as I finished the handout, Arun arrived at the library so I spent a bit of time catching up with him and then a girl in my presentation group phoned me to ask me if I was in the library, so I spent a bit of time with her before heading off to our group meeting. In the meeting we discussed everything that we needed to discuss and started putting the presentation together. We all now have a small job to complete before finalising the presentation and rehearsing it. I'm rather looking forward to the presentation, I love presentations and for that reasons you probably think I'm a bit mad. After the meeting I spent a bit of time with Linda (a girl in my group) before I headed off home. When I got home I felt pretty tired, so I just listened to music, watched the finale of "Coming of Age" series 3 and used the internet to chat to friends for a while.
Today I woke up nice and early, so I was on track for actually getting to university between 9 and 9:30am. After showering and getting ready I headed for the bus, which took a while longer to arrive than usual, but I was still out early and on track with time. I arrived at university at about 9:30am and spent an hour in the library before heading to my lecture that started at 11am. During the time I spent at the library I reported the significance levels for tests I had already done (for my dissertation) in APA format and then took time to create a to-do list / list of task deadlines. I ended up heading to my lecture at 10:35, when I got there Sandeep was standing outside the lecture theatre already. We had a general moan about all of the work we have (even though we secretly enjoy it) and then Sammy arrived so we moaned about the work-load a bit more. In the meantime I saw Arun too.
Today's lecture was the last lecture of the module and also the last lecture in lecture theatre MC001, a lecture theatre that we've spent a hell of a lot of time in over our 3 years at university. For the majority of the lectures in that theatre I have sat in the same seat, seat number 16 on the second row. Sandeep and I always giggle because the number 7 is my favourite number and I always used to go on about 1+6 equaling 7 when I sat down. We would also use "zappers" to answer multiple choice questions, they were numbered on the back and I would always aim to get a number that had something to do with the number 7 (mainly for a laugh). When we headed towards our seats today I said "I'll sit in sear 16 because 1+6 = 7). Sammy looked pretty amused (as she's missed out on this for the past 3 years) but she did like the idea when I explained and said that I should get a number 16 for my chair at home. It's not a bad idea really haha.
Today's lecture was about the workplace and production of knowledge (again!!). We had a lecturer who can be pessimistic about psychology at the best of times and he likened psychology to the pound shop and also bad taste art. I don't really approve of this, but I suppose his philosophy is pretty interesting. We also watched clips from films that dramatised decision making in the workplace. Also we talked about research funding bodies and how Richard Branson has put about £25million into green research ... probably to show that his hot-air balloons are safe for the environment. I actually wrote lecture notes today but I also drew many doodles including an impressive one of a hot-air balloon (the Richard Branson thing inspired me to doodle it). My notes ended up looking quite pretty as I wrote with a red pen too. I miss college times where I used to cover my communication studies work in lots of little stars, with university I'm usually too stuck into the lecture materials and too busy making notes to stop and doodle ... with exception of ANOVA Andy who I drew in a statistics lecture in my second year. But ANOVA Andy was actually designed to make me remember the concepts of analysis of variance much easier that make pages and pages of notes.
After my lecture I headed into town to buy some lunch, I was kind of craving something from the Cornish Pasty Place as they sell some pretty tasty vegetarian food. I ended up buying 2 vegetarian sausage rolls and a double chocolate doughnut. I ate one sausage roll on my walk back to university and put the rest of the food in my bag. I spent the afternoon rather productively carrying out statistical tests using SPSS, putting the findings into APA format and making sure I understood the statistical terms I was reporting. Overall I carried out 5 Kruskal-Wallis H tests, 9 correlation coefficients, 2 2X2 Chi-Squares, 2 Wilcoxon Signed Ranks tests, 2 Mann-Whitney U tests and 2 Factorial mixed-design analysis of variances. I also carried out a repeated measures factorial ANOVA, but this was not needed for my final results. I then printed a copy of my output before heading home. When I got home I just relaxed, listened to music and chatted to a few friends online again. I was supposed to watch Eastenders but I really can't be bothered with it lately. I suppose of the coming month and a bit I have a lot to do, do I really need more drama in my life? haha
Anyway, I'm getting tired of writing now, so I'll catch you later =]
Jodie
08 March 2011
30 Day Song Challenge - Day #7
Day #7 - A Song That Reminds You of A Certain Event
The Beatles - A Hard Days Night
07 March 2011
30 Day Song Challenge - Day #6
Day #6 - A Song That Reminds You Of Somewhere
Brian & Michael - Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs
06 March 2011
30 Day Song Challenge - Day #5
Day #5 - A Song That Reminds You of Someone
Metric - Monster Hospital
05 March 2011
30 Day Song Challenge - Day #4
Day #4 - A Song That Makes You Sad
Katie Melua - Closest Thing To Crazy
My Mind's General Input and Output ... A Posh Way Of Saying 'What's on My Mind"
Today (well yesterday now) went pretty well overall. I managed to finalise my focus-group discussion transcripts and then spent the afternoon preparing and writing some of the introduction to my dissertation. I read some pretty interesting stuff and fell back in love with my project. I suppose taking a break from statistics was the best idea that I've had in a while. Although I'm generally a fan of statistics I do admit that sometimes they can be confusing at first and when you feel lost all it takes is a break from them and then a fresh look and it all makes sense, that's my theory anyway. The reading I did today put a lot of things regarding my project back into perspective, the joys of studying deception actually came back and as a result of this The most nerdy things cheer me up. If I'm ever sad and you want to buy me a gift, don't buy me flowers (I have hayfever) find me a good research paper to read or a scientific book.
Earlier I had the brain wave to find out how much it would cost to get my dissertation professionally printed and plastic binded. To be honest I wish I hadn't bothered. I went to a well recognised website (I think it was print express) and requested a quote for a document roughly 70 A4 pages long, on white paper and ring binded. I also specified that I would be needing at least 2 copies (preferably 3). I got an email telling me that it would cost £33 for one copy, £60 for two copies and £120 for five copies. I suddenly realised that it would be cheaper to print it myself and pay for ring binding at university (or else where depending on how it all pans out). I then decided to purchase 500 sheets of A4 paper from Amazon (costing me £5.80) and two ink cartridges from Cartridge Monkey (costing me £20). This will print at least 2 copies of my dissertation (which is the number of copies I have to hand in) and it's only cost me £25 + plastic binding costs, even if it's £5 it's still only cost me £30 for two or three copies of my dissertation, saving me a minimum of £27 and a maximum of £93. I suppose I liked the idea of someone doing all of the printing for me, so it would just arrive in the post and I could just go and hand it in, hassle free, but i refuse to pay that much.
I've just realised that my thought processes are quite disorganised at the moment, there is no structure or flow to the things I'm thinking about. I'm actually thinking about the way that I'm thinking, this is called introspection, a research method used in cognitive psychology that was discontinued for various ethical reasons. The mere mention of the word ethics reminds me that I have an assignment to write about ethics. I should probably start it soon as it has to be in the day after my dissertation, so I'll probably end up forgetting all about it because of stress and panic. First of all, I need to actually decide which question of the six options I'm going to answer. I might stick with the question about online behaviour providing I'm able to answer the question in a more focussed manner than the question itself suggests to answer it. If not, there's a perfectly good question about psychologists in the media, I suppose this would give me another chance to slag off the Daily Mail using literature to support my view point, pretty much like the first assignment of the ethics module. I'm sure I'll answer the most appropriate question to the best of my ability and hand it in on time. I'm just sharing this with you because I'm bored yet I'm thinking quite deeply.
I should honestly go to sleep soon, there are lots of things I want to do over the weekend and I'm just not going to get everything done if all I want to do is sleep. I'm kind of in a relaxed state at the moment, my house is as silent as it can be, my bed in comfy but I just don't want to sleep. Insomnia tends to kick in when I have lots of work to do. This is probably because I spend all day working and then I want some free time for myself, so I sacrifice sleeping. Another plausible reason is that my brain just won't shut down properly. Either way, I'm awake now and I don't particularly like it.
It's also kind of horrible to constantly have a guy on your mind. It's even worse that there's nothing that I can do about my feelings for this guy for several reasons at the moment. I won't elaborate too much as my blog is public and a lot less private than I actually realise when I'm writing my posts. But, this guy is perfect in my eyes personality and looks-wise. I'm hoping that things will get a bit better in the future. Lets just see where the future takes me eh?
I think I'm going to wrap this blog up now, before it turns into some kind of vicious rant about the Daily Mail, Andy Coulson or how sociology is not a science. These are just a few of my favourite rants to have. Maybe I should write some rant posts soon. It would certainly make my blog more interesting and add a bit of personality to it. But obviously, I can only post rants when I actually feel like it.
So, goodbye for now
Jodie
04 March 2011
Time to Get .... STRESSED
Hello everyone. I hope you're all feeling well and that you're studies are going well (if you're a student that is). It seems that I forgot to blog yesterday, this was probably due to the fact that I was busy and very stressed at the same time. Yesterday was the day that I realised that I only have just over a month at uni until majority of my work has to be handed in, including my dissertation.
Yesterday, I was happily working on the results section for my dissertation and realised that one of the statistical tests I did just didn't seem right at all. I started to panic and tried similar (but slightly different) statistical tests to see if I could pinpoint where I'd went wrong. In my state of panic I emailed one of the psychology demonstrators, who replied to my emails pretty quickly and gave me some general advise and things to think about when carrying out statistical tests. It's a good job that I emailed the guy because the realisation hit me that for that particular test (and a few others) I'm actually working with ordinal data not ratio data, therefore ANOVA wouldn't have been a suitable statistical test to carry out anyway. I found the appropriate tests last night and carried some of them out, but then decided to quit with the statistics and do some transcription instead. I went to bed feeling quite stressed but I've woke up in a motivational mood.
Realising that I only have until around April 12th at University saddens me a little bit. The best three years of my life are closely coming to end ... and then it's time to move on. I'm sure I'll see my favourite people again, but it's not quite the same is it. On the other hand, I'm looking forward to moving to Nottingham in September, I see this as being a new start, chance to get things right (for once). I've just decided that it would be a good idea to write a blog entry about my time at university and experiences that I'll remember for a long time. Obviously I'm not going to do this now as I'm running short of time, I aim to start working on my dissertation at 9am (it's now 7:49).
I still have so much of my dissertation to write-up. As usual, I have masses of notes and ideas but not much to actually show for it. I'm pretty sure that I can write between 6,000 and 10,000 words quite easily once I get the ball rolling. It's like I know what I want to write but can't get motivated enough to actually write, which is a shame and quite foolish of me. I've decided that it might be a good idea if I cut down the time I spend on the internet, especially connected to live messenger and various social networking websites. You've probably noticed that I've cut down on my use of Twitter already. But even having the websites and programs running in the background as I work is a huge distraction. From today I'm going to use my PC account that I've restricted access to every form of social networking on, at least until I've finished work for the day. So expect the very occasional status update / conversation on the many social networks that I'm a member of. However, do expect a daily blog. I find that writing helps me to clear my mind, and I like to share my experiences with people, especially when I'm not social networking with them as much.
I'm off to have some breakfast before I start my full day of work now. I'll see you around some time. I wish you all well.
Jodie
03 March 2011
30 Day Song Challenge - Day #2
Day #2 - Your Least Favourite Song
Alesha Dixon: The Boy Does Nothing
02 March 2011
30 Day Song Challenge - Day #1
I've read about the 30 day song challenge thing on Facebook and decided to take part via my blog (so I don't bombard all of my Facebook friends with 'bad' music videos)
Day #1: Your Favourite Song:
Today I Learnt That I'm A Scientist .... No Sh*t Sherlock
Hello everyone, first of all, I'm sorry for not blogging for over 24 hours as I've been ill. I do aim to keep my posts regular (preferably daily) but sometimes have difficulty in doing this. I'd also like to give myself a pat on the back for actually blogging regularly for a whole month. I've never kept a detailed blog or diary for more than about two weeks. So, Well done me =]
As I mentioned, yesterday I felt ill. I had back and chest pains and therefore had to have a day away from university and studying in general. This is a rarity, the last I had a day off university ill was over a year ago. As I decided that doing nothing was best yesterday, I decided to watch some TV and listen to the radio. I started out by catching up with the Mark Watson Live thing on BBC Radio Four. I must say that I really appreciate Mark Watson and the first show of the series was brilliant, however I missed out on the interactivity of the show, I was rather looking forward to tweeting relevant tweets as I was watching the show, however, when it was aired live I was actually ill in bed ... asleep. I then caught up with Eastenders and 10pm Live. Eastenders has gone a bit down hill lately (in my opinion) but I tend to watch it as everyone else watches it, it's more of a conformity thing that actually getting stuck in dramatic story lines. 10pm is as good as I expected, I've only just started catching up with the series (we're on episode 6 already). I do keep meaning to watch it as it's broadcast live but some how I just forget. On Monday I was told to catch up with the series (by Dr F) and I didn't think it was such a bad idea, so that I did. Although I've downloaded the series so far as a podcast as I'm usually too busy to sit watching TV for hours on end. Last night I watched the latest episode of Eastenders and Coming of Age. Again, what I said about Monday's Eastenders applies to last nights episode and Coming of Age was as funny as ever.
Today I went back to reality. Although I still felt slightly ill I decided to go into my lecture anyway. There's only so many hours of sitting at home watching TV that I can take, I wanted to see my friends and get my brain thinking properly again. I headed out to university at about 9:30 and listened to episode one of 10pm Live via my iPod on the bus. As much as I was tempted, I managed not to laugh out loud (literally) whilst I was travelling. When I got into town I saw my friend Sandeep and we walked to the lecture theatre together whilst have a good old natter. Today's lecture wasn't the most exciting, it was about career planning and CV preparation and because I know what I want to do, the whole session was pretty pointless. We were asked to take a test (using pen and paper) to find out what type of job we should look for, I suppose this is because a psychology degree provides you with such a wide range of skills and career opportunities. Unsurprisingly the first type of job it suggest was a job in science, i.e. research and the second type of job it suggested was to work in human relations and it listed psychologist as a possible job. Overall I'm not shocked by the results I got. I'm clearly a psychologist who is passionate about research. However, Sandeep's results weren't as accurate as mine, the test suggested a job in business for her. After the lecture, Sandeep and I headed towards the library to work on our dissertations. However, for some reason my SPSS output sheet wouldn't open on the university computers, well it would open but not show the tables, it just said "processing" and then didn't show them. I decided to work on my introduction instead but realised that I didn't have any decent research papers on my USB drive, so I decided to call it a day (at university) and got the bus home. On the way home I listened to episode 2 of 10pm Live. When I got home, I ate a cheese omlette, and a chocolate moose. Now I plan on returning to my work.
Catch you later,
Jodie
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