ups and downs

every day is full of good news and bad news, it's exhausting! today i spent 2 hours filling out the irb stuff for columbia and i was almost in tears at the end because it was so complicated and i kept calling the very nice lady over there and asking her for numbers, names, protocol details, explanations... it doesn't bother me too much to enter the same information over and over and over, but it bothers me A LOT to have to enter it in tons of different formats! and the worst is that every irb protocol is different so i have to learn the technology, if i'm lucky to find it online, and learn all the details required by that specific procedure. it's insane!

i have been calling this one guy for four weeks, now, and leaving voice messages over and over... and i finally called the iep director and told him i couldn't find his irb director. looks like the guy is gone for the summer! great! and he's the only one who can approve the project. makes me want to give up, sometimes.

the excellent news of the day is that the english dept. will help me with some of the photocopying (approximately 1/4 of the total, depending on how many people end up participating). i was driving karen to the airport on saturday morning (at 5am...), and she said why don't you just ask, maybe they'll help, and maybe they won't, but it doesn't cost much to ask! truth is, i hadn't even thought of asking! so today, i met with B. and gave him a number (which was wrong but better than nothing). and this afternoon, i got an email from him with the good news. that is excellent news! i'll still talk to margie tomorrow and ask her if we could talk to the dean of the liberal arts dept. and grad school and ask if they'd help with the translating costs.

... back to work...