AILA mon amour

veeery nice conference! considering that i went to two presentations: one on thursday afternoon and then mine, on friday morning! huhuh. $700 for that... BUT, i loved madison, i loooooooved the convention center which is absolutely gorgeous, i loved to vedge in front of the tv for hours and not feel guilty, and... well that's about it, it was a nice conference. i met one of the iep directors who'se been exchanging emails with me for months now, and that was cool. she's a nice one too, so i told her thanks for her help and kindness.

talking about that, among the 28 emails that were waiting for me at home, two were from iep directors saying that they couldn't help me after all, one for whose school i had already fought for and received irb approval. damn! my list is shrinking by the day! what i'm doing now, is when those directors tell me they can't help me after all, i beg ask them to at least respond to the administrator questionnaire. so far, i've had 3 responses from 3 programs that have dropped out. better than nothing. and, oddly enough, i got 3 responses from teachers from one school i had given up about. don't know about their students. but at least i have 3 more teachers.... that's 11 responses from teachers so far.

iu's irb is getting out of control. i'm sorry to single them out like that, but this is beyond anything that any other irb has done so far! i BROUGHT them all the paperwork myself, the signature, etc. and they first complained about the sponsor not being able to be my sponsor, then they complained about details forever, and now, they wrote to purdue's irb to verify that the papers i had given them were real and not fake! i had given them a copy of purdue's irb approval, which didn't have a signature on it. and they wrote to purdue's irb saying that they couldn't verify that it was real because it didn't have a signature and LYING about the fact that it was not on purdue's letterhead. IT IS! iu might have the nicest campus on earth, but i must warn anyone who wants to do research with them... ... and so purdue has no clue what this is all about, they're all confused, they wrote a letter to margie saying what they heck??? and of course, margie was at aila... and she won't have a clue what this is either... haha... i'll spend another 3 hours on the phone on monday... before i go spend the rest of the day at the breast center that is... and it's the first of august, happy swiss national holiday!

on a happier note: my presentation this morning went absolutely marvelously well. it was a panel, and everyone did great... and i don't want to be prideful but honestly, the whole room woke up and laughed with me, smiled with me, asked me tons of great questions, made cool comments... and people even came at the end and asked me for my handout, my name, my address... even margie took my transparencies at the end. i simply LOVE to have the room for me, to be in front of people, to see them smile, be surprised, be interested, be curious, and listen to me without making a noise! i must have been jerry seinfeld or coluche in a past life ;) ok ok, that sounds super prideful, doesn't it? it's just that most of the time, i think very little of myself and don't think i'm good at anything... and when i present stuff like that, i just amaze myself. i just don't know where this talent comes from, especially when i see famous, experienced, and established people like margie present with a shaking voice...

note to self: don't ever attempt the drive lafayette-madison, it's a killer! SIX HOURS! NIGHTMARE! but it was good to go away a few days and to see something new. and it's good to be back to work. haha. tomorrow: i WRITE and i READ!

ok, i have to make an announcement, now: i am looking for speakers of arabic and japanese and maybe portuguese too, to help me with my questionnaire. what is needed is: translate a questionnaire from your language into English and/or help me make some changes to the questionnaire (like change a question, the order of the questions, the format, stuff like that). if you're a very good speaker of any of these languages and/or know one (or more) who is, please let me know and/or pass on the message. if you help me i'll cite you in my dissertation (and it'll be famous, i promise!) and .... something else but i'm not sure yet what :) and you can put that on your cv as translation assistant! thanks a bunch! oh, and it'd be sometime between now and the end of august (japanese is ready to go already).