trochee

I'm feeling much better today than I was day-before-yesterday. Hoping this isn't a pendulum effect, because I like where I am today.

Today during class I looked at the whiteboard covered with notation regarding information retrieval theory -- vectors, morphological stemming, probability equations, and diagrams -- and I was thrown out of myself, looking at this from the outside, thinking "this stuff is cool!" I realized that if I walked into the room where it was happening, I'd think "dang, I want to take that class" -- and I am!

What was fun about it for me was the contrast with a few minutes before, where I had been completely in-the-moment, taking careful notes and trying to understand each piece -- I was working without savoring it, just methodically integrating the information into my mind. And by noticing how much I really like the work, I actually lost focus for a few minutes -- but what a lovely way to get distracted.

The meeting with advisor yesterday went fairly well -- she's gone to bat for me to make sure I don't get scooped by people to whom I've offered help, and she's helping me get a picture of where I want to focus my work so that I get a conference or journal paper (she'd prefer a journal paper) before the middle of June. yikes. She understood that I was feeling panicky and left out.

Yesterday I found out some dismaying news about the data I've been working with. It's not all bad, because the experiments are still valid -- but I've been running with a section of data missing. To rerun old experiments would be annoying, but the numbers might be higher. (Since my experiments are all about relative differences, this shouldn't matter much).

Today I worked with a labmate and banged out a proposal for our class project, which I think will become chapter 5 of my MA thesis. it looks pretty sharp.

Tonight: