the truth about cats and dogs

do they ever tell you that things will be that hard??? is everyone's doctoral project that crazy or is it just me??? could anyone have warned me earlier??? does it ever get better???

well actually today's not been bad since i haven't done much! just this one lady who wrote me very kindly and said she'd help me with my pilot if i made it shorter. not so good, since the pilot is actually longer than the final study, since i'll have to calculate the reliabiltibilitybily of all the questions and THEN throw the bad ones out! so i said i'd cut the questionnaire in half, and she could give one half to one group of students and the other half to another group. haven't heard back from her yet. this other lady said she'd love to work with me too but her irb was too crazy and it took her 3 months of work last time someone wanted to do a study at her school... gggrrrr.... i'll end up working with 2 schools for the pilot and 2 schools for the big thing, if i'm lucky. the good thing about that it that it'll give me more time to look for jobs... ah yeah, i have to decide, sometime in june, if i'm going to graduate next summer or the following one. depends on how many people agree to participate in my study and how insane their irb requirements are.

got a new book today, which will help me with my grant proposal. actually, i've been reading it all day and it DOES seem very interesting and very relevant to my research but i don't know how to WRITE the darn grant proposal any better! gosh darnit, this is one heck of a project, as they say in utah ;)