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theladyroseI'm beginning to understand how addictions start; I've drunk more coffee since the start of the semester on Monday than in the entirety of my educational experience. I can somewhat rationalize my new Starbucks habit in trying to jumpstart myself to handle a packed semester because I really can't justify being unfocused. Due to my stupidity in drinking an iced caramel macchiato at 4:30 yesterday, I was up until 5:30 this morning reading like a maniac. It also means that I've done all of my reading for my aging policy class until spring break in mid-March and read my death and dying textbook from cover to cover. Naturally, of course, I have more difficulty focusing on this week's priorities, like writing this op-ed piece due Friday about the portrayal of Asian Americans in the media as perpetual foreigners, or divying up work on a presentation with a classmate due this Thursday.
My sense of priorities confuse me, too. But caffeine makes me feel like a superwoman, and I figure there are far unhealthier addictions to have.
Today I'm meeting with my thesis advisor to figure out what on earth I'm writing for my honors proposal, which will most likely deal with age differences in the mood congruence effect on certain types of verbal memories. The mood congruence effect, to quote Wikipedia, "refers to the tendency of individuals to retrieve information more easily when it has the same emotional content as their current emotional state." The simplified version is that depressed people tend to enter a vicious feedback loop regarding the world as uniformly negative and unchangeably so. With age, people tend to have better emotional regulation coping strategies and are generally more optimistic in what they remember. The other project I'm working on investigates whether or not older adults' optimistic bias affects the way they interpret facial expressions. Malcolm Gladwell has this thoughtful piece published in the New Yorker a while back about the power of being able to read expressions and catch their nuances and its value in lie detection. The research is genuinely fascinating, but I'm really not looking forward to learning how to score hundreds of cognitive assessment measures and having to work out some interrater reliability measures on the project off of which I'm piggybacking for my thesis.
I swear, you don't realize that you have a soul until you do research because it pretty much sucks it out of you. It's also made me seriously question whether or not I could actually handle a PhD program and if I really want to go down the clinical psychology track professionally. I'm considering jumping ship to gerontology and doing a PhD in that. I have a fairly decent chance of getting funded for a gero doctorate if I continue to stay here at USC after I finish my master's, which I start next year. My current classes in aging policy and the management of chronic diseases is proving far more interesting than I had expected it to be.
That, and I'm a wimp who is deathly afraid of multivariate statistics and advanced research methods. I don't know of any clinical or counseling psych PhD grad students who have a decent quality of life in their programs, and I interact with them on a regular basis thanks to my jobs. I also suspect that earning a PhD is my attempt to prove that I could be just as smart as my freakishly brilliant friends and the people I look up to, which doesn't really make sense when my problem is that I tend to lack more common sense about general life things than anything else. At least I know now that you don't die if you accidentally get hydrogen peroxide contact lens cleansing solution...twice.
On to more cheerful topics...
I wanted to like this episode. I really, really did. The first half is stronger than the second, but the whole episode suffers on second viewing, as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
darlightluna will agree when we saw it together.
I liked how the Doctor was so compassionate in eliciting Jackson Lake's backstory; the viewer gets the sense that he's reached this psychological maturity in his 10th reincarnation in that after the over the top elements of the last episode, he's much less apt in treating people with this manic andn occasionally flippant way that so conveniently distances him psychologically. There's an understandable weariness in his sympathy, that he's much better at empathizing after his latest losses where 10 somewhat forcibly attained closure with Donna and Rose. It sets the tone for the last season featuring this incarnation.
Unfortunately the dramatic tension dissipates halfway through once we find out who this "other doctor" is. The whole "repressed trauma because of a dead wife and a kidnapped son" was too cliché for my taste, with RTD really milking the whole traumatized "other doctor" turned fanboy to a ridiculous degree. David Morrissey was given the unenviable task of dealing with an inconsistent characterization penned by RTD but did the best he could in making the sudden emotional flip flops more believable.
The Cyberking was artistically inspired, and I rather liked Miss Hartigan's red dress (yes, I'm being horribly superficial). I also thought it was rather nifty how she was able to overpower all the Cybermen and kill them with her brain, If, by killing, you mean override their psychological makeup in an "Evolution of the Daleks" sort of way, which you could interpret as killing. Rosita's voice sounded freakishly like Martha, and I liked how she was smarter than both of the doctors. The revelation of Jackson Lake's TARDIS was probably my favorite scene.
This may be the first episode where I actually figured out how the scheme was going to work out.
The major disappointment with this episode, which isn't all that major, is that there was no Albie. Are they reducing RV's role on the show intentionally, or will he have just as much air time as he did in the first four seasons in future episodes? I was also hoping that there would be more of undercover!Ash beyond the usual techie duties because I couldn't stop cracking up in the series 5 premiere whenever he was onscreen as the really slimy businessman. I also love Eddie and his attempts at a fusion bar; I don't know if I'd enjoy this show anymore if it weren't for Ash and Eddie.
And Ash's "great legs" comment - there is fanfic begging to be written about Ash in drag.
Honestly, I was hoping that Emma was going to say that she was lesbian in that wonderfully awkward taxicab conversation with Mickey. If there was any chemistry between the two characters, their avoiding "business with pleasure" scenes would feel far less contrived.
Sorry, but Emma and her brother just don't make up for Stacie and Danny for me, and I'm not just saying this because I really liked Ash/Stacie. They just seem terribly new and eager to impress without any particular personality. Stacie was the one character I never expected to become so attached to because she's so fun whenever she's working the inside; you can tell that Jamie Murray is having a ball whenever she's portraying any of those roles within roles during the cons. Same with Danny. There just isn't the same exuberance for the newcomers, but I may be too harsh considering that they've just joined the crew. The brother is starting to come across as a white Billy Bonds, trial 2.
Stacie's like the awesome older sister you wish you had, who's not afraid of knocking you down a peg when you're acting dumb but do so so playfully that you never feel hurt. Emma's like the sarcastic younger sister who's trying to prove that she's really clever but doesn't really quite believe her own rhetoric yet.
On a totally unrelated note, I discovered that many many moons ago, I attempted to translate the opening dialogue of the Prisoner into French. Oddly enough, it seems somewhat funnier in a different language.
- Où suis-je ?
- Au Village.
- Que voulez-vous ?
- Des informations.
- Dans quel camp êtes-vous ?
- Vous le saurez plus tard... Nous voulons des renseignements...
- Vous n'en aurez pas !
- De gré ou de force, nous les aurons.
- Qui êtes-vous ?
- Le Nouveau Numéro Deux.
- Qui est le Numéro Un ?
- Vous êtes le Numéro Six.
- Je ne suis pas un numéro, JE SUIS UN HOMME LIBRE !
My sense of priorities confuse me, too. But caffeine makes me feel like a superwoman, and I figure there are far unhealthier addictions to have.
Today I'm meeting with my thesis advisor to figure out what on earth I'm writing for my honors proposal, which will most likely deal with age differences in the mood congruence effect on certain types of verbal memories. The mood congruence effect, to quote Wikipedia, "refers to the tendency of individuals to retrieve information more easily when it has the same emotional content as their current emotional state." The simplified version is that depressed people tend to enter a vicious feedback loop regarding the world as uniformly negative and unchangeably so. With age, people tend to have better emotional regulation coping strategies and are generally more optimistic in what they remember. The other project I'm working on investigates whether or not older adults' optimistic bias affects the way they interpret facial expressions. Malcolm Gladwell has this thoughtful piece published in the New Yorker a while back about the power of being able to read expressions and catch their nuances and its value in lie detection. The research is genuinely fascinating, but I'm really not looking forward to learning how to score hundreds of cognitive assessment measures and having to work out some interrater reliability measures on the project off of which I'm piggybacking for my thesis.
I swear, you don't realize that you have a soul until you do research because it pretty much sucks it out of you. It's also made me seriously question whether or not I could actually handle a PhD program and if I really want to go down the clinical psychology track professionally. I'm considering jumping ship to gerontology and doing a PhD in that. I have a fairly decent chance of getting funded for a gero doctorate if I continue to stay here at USC after I finish my master's, which I start next year. My current classes in aging policy and the management of chronic diseases is proving far more interesting than I had expected it to be.
That, and I'm a wimp who is deathly afraid of multivariate statistics and advanced research methods. I don't know of any clinical or counseling psych PhD grad students who have a decent quality of life in their programs, and I interact with them on a regular basis thanks to my jobs. I also suspect that earning a PhD is my attempt to prove that I could be just as smart as my freakishly brilliant friends and the people I look up to, which doesn't really make sense when my problem is that I tend to lack more common sense about general life things than anything else. At least I know now that you don't die if you accidentally get hydrogen peroxide contact lens cleansing solution...twice.
On to more cheerful topics...
I wanted to like this episode. I really, really did. The first half is stronger than the second, but the whole episode suffers on second viewing, as
darlightluna will agree when we saw it together. I liked how the Doctor was so compassionate in eliciting Jackson Lake's backstory; the viewer gets the sense that he's reached this psychological maturity in his 10th reincarnation in that after the over the top elements of the last episode, he's much less apt in treating people with this manic andn occasionally flippant way that so conveniently distances him psychologically. There's an understandable weariness in his sympathy, that he's much better at empathizing after his latest losses where 10 somewhat forcibly attained closure with Donna and Rose. It sets the tone for the last season featuring this incarnation.
Unfortunately the dramatic tension dissipates halfway through once we find out who this "other doctor" is. The whole "repressed trauma because of a dead wife and a kidnapped son" was too cliché for my taste, with RTD really milking the whole traumatized "other doctor" turned fanboy to a ridiculous degree. David Morrissey was given the unenviable task of dealing with an inconsistent characterization penned by RTD but did the best he could in making the sudden emotional flip flops more believable.
The Cyberking was artistically inspired, and I rather liked Miss Hartigan's red dress (yes, I'm being horribly superficial). I also thought it was rather nifty how she was able to overpower all the Cybermen and kill them with her brain, If, by killing, you mean override their psychological makeup in an "Evolution of the Daleks" sort of way, which you could interpret as killing. Rosita's voice sounded freakishly like Martha, and I liked how she was smarter than both of the doctors. The revelation of Jackson Lake's TARDIS was probably my favorite scene.
This may be the first episode where I actually figured out how the scheme was going to work out.
The major disappointment with this episode, which isn't all that major, is that there was no Albie. Are they reducing RV's role on the show intentionally, or will he have just as much air time as he did in the first four seasons in future episodes? I was also hoping that there would be more of undercover!Ash beyond the usual techie duties because I couldn't stop cracking up in the series 5 premiere whenever he was onscreen as the really slimy businessman. I also love Eddie and his attempts at a fusion bar; I don't know if I'd enjoy this show anymore if it weren't for Ash and Eddie.
And Ash's "great legs" comment - there is fanfic begging to be written about Ash in drag.
Honestly, I was hoping that Emma was going to say that she was lesbian in that wonderfully awkward taxicab conversation with Mickey. If there was any chemistry between the two characters, their avoiding "business with pleasure" scenes would feel far less contrived.
Sorry, but Emma and her brother just don't make up for Stacie and Danny for me, and I'm not just saying this because I really liked Ash/Stacie. They just seem terribly new and eager to impress without any particular personality. Stacie was the one character I never expected to become so attached to because she's so fun whenever she's working the inside; you can tell that Jamie Murray is having a ball whenever she's portraying any of those roles within roles during the cons. Same with Danny. There just isn't the same exuberance for the newcomers, but I may be too harsh considering that they've just joined the crew. The brother is starting to come across as a white Billy Bonds, trial 2.
Stacie's like the awesome older sister you wish you had, who's not afraid of knocking you down a peg when you're acting dumb but do so so playfully that you never feel hurt. Emma's like the sarcastic younger sister who's trying to prove that she's really clever but doesn't really quite believe her own rhetoric yet.
On a totally unrelated note, I discovered that many many moons ago, I attempted to translate the opening dialogue of the Prisoner into French. Oddly enough, it seems somewhat funnier in a different language.
- Où suis-je ?
- Au Village.
- Que voulez-vous ?
- Des informations.
- Dans quel camp êtes-vous ?
- Vous le saurez plus tard... Nous voulons des renseignements...
- Vous n'en aurez pas !
- De gré ou de force, nous les aurons.
- Qui êtes-vous ?
- Le Nouveau Numéro Deux.
- Qui est le Numéro Un ?
- Vous êtes le Numéro Six.
- Je ne suis pas un numéro, JE SUIS UN HOMME LIBRE !
