boooooooring!

so i met with my undergraduate little helper. she's nice. enthusiastic and all. we talked about the research, the goals, the plans, stuff like that. then i gave her 30 questionnaires filled out by some students... and said sorry, this is going to be boring and tough, and we'll probably get around 400-500 of them! she was all excited... and came back two days later already bored to death after 30 questionnaires... huhuh...

i have to admit that it IS horribly annoying to enter these things into a spreadsheet. especially since those that are in non-orthographic languages (chinese, korean, japanese...) because WE CAN'T UNDERSTAND 1/3 OF THE ANSWERS! question: what class are you taking right now? answer: tching tchong thung! ah. ok. that's helpful. thank you! so we enter the multiple choice questions, the numbers, the letters... and then tons of blanks!

if i ever do this again, i'll have to find out a better way to do it so i can match the pre and the post questionnaires. many students did not want to give their birth date, where they were born, stuff like that, so it'll be hell to match these answers with those at the end of the semester. i wonder if i couldn't create a numerical code with multiple choice questions that are not too personal like: you were born in 1988, 1987, 1986 (circle one), your father was born in january, february (circle one), have you ever had a dog (yes, no, circle one), the color of your first car was red, yellow, white (circle one), the initial of your first name is A, B, C (circle one), you like root beer (yes, no, circle one), you like cats, etc. of course, it's a big waste of space and time (and translation money), but maybe it'd work better than what i did. although, if i saw such random questions on a questionnaire, i would certainly guess that someone's trying to trick me and i would lie on most of the answers...

i'm trying to keep working on my chapter 3... but i can't do much until i have all the data entered and analyzed...

i'm taking this class for 2 credits, higher ed administration, but i'm just auditing so it shows on my transcript, i'm not really doing anything else than reading, for this class. it's very interesting so far.

i've reworked the LT article proposal this morning and it was a big rush and a big mess because i hadn't worked on it for a while and it was due... today... and THEN the guy told me that he was going to ask the two biggest names in our field to review our proposal... so i asked him if i could revise it one last time during the weekend and he said ok. the pressure's on!

G. is going to write me a letter of recommendation. i don't think i could get a better name on my cv... i hate it that i can't read those letters, just to make sure that they say nice things about me! aggghhh i am so insecure! i have to revise my cv and my letter of application... and finish the dissertation summary and stuff.... damn... no time, no time!!!!!