and the nightmare continues...

i know it would not be easy... this IRB story is going to be my biggest pain, although i'm sure i'll become quite an expert at that after i have to deal with 20 schools which each have a different system! I can't believe they tell me "this is federal regulation, i can't do anything, you have to go through that, blah blah" and at the same time nothing that i do for one univeresity is accepted and recognize by the next one. how "federal" is that???

last night, i spent about 3 hours filling out an online application for one school in georgia. it wasn't hard, it was just very annoying and repetitive and unclear. fortunately, it was all online, which is RARE (even Purdue doesn't do it online yet)! then this morning i got an email saying that it had been rejected because i should not have sent it myself but my "sponsor" had to send it. then it turns out that everyone involved in the project needs to be certified by something called the CITI program, and the director of that school, who should be my sponsor, is not certified! it took me a good 10 hours to complete the training by cheating and i feel bad asking the director of the school to do this... so if she refuses to do it, i'd have to find someone else in that school who is certified and agrees to be my sponsor. not that i know anyone in georgia... if she accepts, she'll have to do the training, submit the IRB protocol to her chair, then the chair has to approve it, send it to the IRB, and then the IRB approves it and sends it to its chair for approval. and THEN they tell me if i can do it or not!! DAMMIT! i swear, i thought i wouldn't have any administrative experience when i graduate but THIS is complex, because every school is different and if i manage to survive and get approval from say 10 schools, i'll be the QUEEN OF THE IRB! ... well, i just don't know how far i'll go with all this! i mean, i'm bound to get really frustrated really quickly! hopefully a couple of schools will be less of a pain, like that school in utah, that has an internal IRB so i don't have to go through the university's IRB plus the people know me. i just want to say to the people out there who make those kinds of regulations that IT IS INSANE! i understand that you need to protect people and children and interests and all, but you are building walls around your school and preventing research to take place! and research is IMPORTANT! especially from outside people!

other than that, i finished and sent TWO book reviews today! yeah!! one was easy, for a textbook, and i'll be payed $200 for it! the other one was harder, and i went to the writing lab for help, and i won't get paid nada but if it's published, it'll be GOOD! it was a really cruel review... and i know the author VERY WELL... she might never talk to me again! but i ended it by saying that DESPITE all those negative things, everyone should read this book! because that's all i can say: it's a REALLY GOOD book but it also has a lot of annoying stuff in it. we'll see... haven't heard back from the 2 articles i sent a few months ago... or weeks, i'm not sure, time goes by too quickly! i think i should hear from the ET people soon, since they said it takes about 6 weeks for them to give feedback, but the TQ article will take much longer.

i'll submit the colloquium tonight... back to work!