[Tracy]

I just realised that I haven't posted (on CGR in general) in nearly a month. This is odd, because I've been visiting quite regularly. I just can't think of anything productive to say. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's just intense writer's block after all the papers I had to write at the end of the last semester.

I'm still not sure what to think of my courses this semester. Adult psychology is interesting in theory, but not so much in practice. I can't tell why, but I find something about the prof's notes (400 pages of small text that pretty much need to be memorised for the exams) very off-putting. Or maybe it's the abundance of TMI moments involving his personal life and that of his friends. I'm taking psychopharmacology and psychophysiology, which are interesting enough but not particularly inspiring. Organisational psychology isn't a subject that interests me very much, but the course material is good so it's not at all painful. Finally, I have a course in "helping skills" (clumsy translation of "relation d'aide"), which is fairly practical. I carried out my first practice interview on Tuesday. I do not know how well it went. I have to type up the verbatim soon, though, so maybe that will help give me an idea.

I'm still having trouble connecting at all to a group of Christians here. Visiting my home church over the holidays reminded me of how much I miss that. I finally found out that there's a church that is accessible by bus. Before that, I couldn't really get to church consistently, because there are no churches within a 45-minute walk from my apartment, and they start their services early in the morning, before the buses start running. It's all well and good, but when it's -30 and/or the sidewalks are excessively icy, it's not really doable. I'm not sure why they all start so early, since this is a college town and that gets in the way of students attending, but so be it. Anyway, there is one church that meets at 5 PM, which is doable. I just can't motivate myself to go.

Part of that is because I'm increasingly uncomfortable with being open about my faith around other Christians, or rather, around those I've met in my neighbourhood. I just feel like I don't have the right words, right sayings, right temperament... and to a certain extent, that's probably true. I guess the thing is that I don't feel like I can say I'm a Christian around those I've met here while having those faults. I'm still trying to figure out why that is. I know that some of it is that, despite how long I've been in the faith, I still have virtually no experience in ministry of any sort (in the very broad sense of the term), and I get the impression that no one would ever consider letting me try or that I would be able. Part of the rest is probably just a matter of culture and, in some cases, personality conflicts, but I can't figure out the rest or how to get over it. The result of this is that I'm pretty isolated, and that's had a major impact on my faith. I'm not sure what it will take to turn that around. I'm hoping the new church will be helpful in this respect, but I can't tell.

[bobthecockroach]

Ohai!

Nice to see a blog post. I hope things work out for you at that church. Don't worry about having the right words; no one does, especially not the people who think they do.

[Kati]

Wracy! Ohai2u2.

I will be praying for your church/connecting situation. We are dealing with a bit of that ourselves, in that what we would really like to do would be scoop up this church four hours away from here and stick it in our back yard, and nowhere else really comes close. And for some reason they don't particularly seem to want us to do that. *sigh*

Anyway...it's good to read a post from you. It's been too long! I miss Tracytime.

[Tracy]

It's pretty sad when my tendency for procrastination extends into CGR... it's not even that I haven't been keeping an eye on this place, it's just that I keep telling myself I'll post tomorrow. Well, today is tomorrow. For now.

Originally Posted by Kati

I will be praying for your church/connecting situation. We are dealing with a bit of that ourselves, in that what we would really like to do would be scoop up this church four hours away from here and stick it in our back yard, and nowhere else really comes close. And for some reason they don't particularly seem to want us to do that. *sigh*

Churches' lack of portability is sad indeed. The church I want to displace is only an hour and a half away, but they're not liking that idea, either.

The church thing is still where it is. I'm going to try and force myself to go to the gym at my second university this Sunday (the English one where I take my biology courses so that they don't mess up my otherwise decent transcript), so that I'll be in the neighbourhood when 5 PM swings around. I don't get why this is so difficult for me. I've been uncomfortable with things in the past, but I always went. What is so different this time around?

My cat still hates to see me sleep. She woke me up at 6 AM, when I'd been up until 1 AM. So I got up to feed her, and promptly dumped her kibble into her water dish. Go, me. After ditching the soaked food, feeding her properly and refilling her water dish, I went to bed. She then blessed me with 90 minutes of blissful sleep. But the minute my roommate left for class? She sat behind my head and yowled at the top of her lungs. She's so lucky she's cute. I don't have class before 7 PM on Mondays, so I very much appreciate the ability to sleep in.

This semester's been... interesting. I'm still waiting on grades in 2/3 courses that count for my average, and worried about one of those grades. I have to decide whether to drop that particular course on Monday, and the prof e-mailed us to say that she might have our grades in time for our class on Friday. I am not reassured. I'm waiting to hear whether I got the job as research assistant that I applied for. It won't be much in terms of hours or pay, but it should be interesting work and good for graduate school applications. I'm also on the organisational committee for the department conference, which is getting more involved by the week. I'm not playing a major role, because the other members seem to have the routine down and really know what they're doing, but I'll probably have plenty of practical things to do as the day approaches. I haven't been involved with the Christian group on campus because they now meet during one of my classes, and I haven't heard news about any activities outside of the weekly meeting.

[Kati]

Your life sounds way more interesting than mine. Right now I'm just taking bets on how long the electricity is going to last, as it's been out twice in the past two hours. Storms are dumb, sometimes. How crazyfreezing is it where you are?

Good luck on the grades. I'm still praying for you, and I'll add that to my list. However, you must let us know how it goes instead of procrastinating. I can say this because I'm never guilty of that, of course. *cough*

Also, I'm confused as to what cats have against sleeping humans, exactly. My sister-in-law's cat used to pounce on my head any time it thought I was about to fall asleep. It was kind of horrible. I hope your cat sticks to yowling and not head-pouncing. It's better.

[Tracy]

Originally Posted by Kati

Your life sounds way more interesting than mine. Right now I'm just taking bets on how long the electricity is going to last, as it's been out twice in the past two hours. Storms are dumb, sometimes. How crazyfreezing is it where you are?

It's just a bit below freezing here, which is not crazy at all. It's been a very snowful winter, though. It makes me very grateful to not own a car. Or live with my parents. Their town has stopped clearing snow from the roads (they just push it to the side) and only clears one side of the sidewalk on major roads, none on minor roads.

Good luck on the grades. I'm still praying for you, and I'll add that to my list. However, you must let us know how it goes instead of procrastinating. I can say this because I'm never guilty of that, of course. *cough*

Thanks. I got one of the two back. It's okay, but lower than I expected. I hope the prof will let me consult the exam so I can see what went wrong. As it stands, it doesn't affect my average... but the problem is that I need to increase it by a good amount to have a competitive application to graduate school. As for the other... I don't know.

Also, I'm confused as to what cats have against sleeping humans, exactly. My sister-in-law's cat used to pounce on my head any time it thought I was about to fall asleep. It was kind of horrible. I hope your cat sticks to yowling and not head-pouncing. It's better.

She hasn't done head-pouncing yet. Although one time, she jumped from her window seat (attached to the window above my bed) onto my stomach right as I was having some serious stomach pain. No love for her that day.

In other news, I found out that a workshop I wanted to attend (on making natural soap/lip balm/lotion) at the university is already full. It made my heart sad. Coffee cheered it up, though.

[Tracy]

There was a last-minute opening for the workshop, and so I went. It was a great thing for the former science student in me. It was like a chemistry lab, only I actually got the result I was supposed to get. In my organic chemistry labs, I almost always got much less product than predicted, and often got no product at all. Naturally, the lab where we isolated caffeine from tea went by smoothly. The prof was as baffled by it as I was, because he didn't see me making all that many mistakes. In retrospect, I think that maybe I didn't clean out my equipment very well. I am so glad those days are behind me.

The lip balm and lotion turned out awesome. Well, one of the tubes of lip balm did. We drew numbers for extra supplies at the end of the workshop, and I ended up with a tube of lip balm from another team. I don't know if it was a mistake in the proportions of ingredients, or the cocoa powder they added, but it's actually irritating. I don't know how the soaps turned out, because it takes about a month for the chemical reaction to be complete so that they can be used. They smell good, though more strongly than I would have liked. Ditto for the hand lotion. My partner for the workshop was a little too fragrance-happy. I think I might really enjoy doing this on a regular basis. I'm waiting for final confirmation than I do indeed have my usual summer job at the warehouse, and then I'll be placing an order with Canwax. It's not all that expensive on a per-item basis, but the initial investment is pretty big.

I found out about the research assistant job. I'll be typing up verbatims at the beginning of summer. How I'm going to manage 15 hours/week of that on top of a full time job and a weekend course, I don't know, but I'll figure it out. The prof initially wanted me to assist one of his doctoral students with conducting interviews, because she's not very comfortable with English, but it would have been after I started my summer job. Also, he mentioned not being sure I could do it because I'm too "shy," and that made me uneasy. Thinking about the job description, I felt perfectly capable of doing it, but he seemed so doubtful of that fact. It's a little frustrating. I understand how it seems worse than it actually is to him, because he's the head of the organisational committee I'm on, and I really don't say much there. It's because the rest of the committee knows what they're doing and I genuinely have little to contribute in the way of ideas (I'm mostly there to help out with more concrete things, like putting together participants' kits), but I can see how that could be understood as extreme shyness. Still, it really bothers me that I can't seem to do anything without that haunting me.

The final grade I was waiting for was much better than expected. Now I'm in the position of having to carry out another interview on short notice (it's a counselling course), but all the better. I just don't like the next assignment, where I have to evaluate my abilities as a counsellor. There is a big disconnect between what I intend to do and the actual effect, as my supervision in February highlighted. On many occasions, I intended to reformulate what the "client" was saying, or make sure I really understood what she was saying. But somehow I ended up heavily relying on interpretation, which isn't an appropriate intervention for a first interview. I'll be carrying out the second interview in English, in the hope that not having to worry about saying things correctly will make getting the technique right easier. I know I have to be able to do this in French once I start graduate school, but I'll worry about that when I get there.

That sums up my life at the moment, pretty much. I've had the apartment to myself all weekend, and it's been nice. I don't necessarily prefer living alone, but I do need a fair amount of time alone. Today's challenge is getting out in the cold (-20) weather and somehow purchasing a new hair dryer and a bag of cat litter without freezing to death. And doing some homework, eventually. If I don't freeze to death, that is.

[Tracy]

Well, the semester is over. I'm still a little sleep-deprived, because I have a persistent cough that isn't too bad but does keep me from sleeping, but at least I don't have to think under those conditions. I'm still waiting for grades. One course I'm almost sure I did very well in, the other two... no clue. I may even have a problematic grade. I don't know what it is about my organisational psychology course, but I just didn't "get" it.

Also, I am blown away by the fact that applicants to the doctoral program in clinical psychology only found out this week if they were accepted... and that's for the top 12 who were immediately offered admission, not even those on the waiting list! I predict a very, very tense finals week next year. I'm starting to work on my applications already: so far I have a list of five Canadian universities to work with. I stumbled across a program offered at a US seminary that fits my basic criteria (immediate access to doctoral program without going through a Master's; preferably PsyD) and seems accredited, but I don't know that I want to fuss with going there to study. Some applications are simple (Université de Sherbrooke is just based on grades and an interview), but Université Laval in particular has a ridiculous amount of paperwork and most universities require that you have one of their staff agree to direct your thesis before they'll even look at your application.

My initial plans for a summer course have been foiled, because it turns out that I need to take weekend courses for my summer job and there's a conflict. I can't complain, because I'm being paid for attending said courses, but... I work in a warehouse. It's really not that complicated! I'll probably be taking a course on second language learning and bilingualism via correspondance. I just need to get in touch with the university and see if I can submit proof that I did my previous studies in English rather than having to sit through a placement test.

On the bright side, now that my summer job is confirmed, I can go ahead and order the supplies to make the soaps, lip balm, and lotion I made during the workshop. In the long run it's actually a bit cheaper than buying it already made (well, all except the cheapest, but I find they tend not to work so well), but the initial investment can be pretty steep, since most things are sold in bulk.

Apart from that, life continues as normal. My room is still a mess, I still have yet to get a decent photo taken for my Facebook profile, and my cat still insists on interrupting my sleep at an inconvenient hour most mornings.