So, I'm sitting in the science lab right now. I've been analyzing my data since 11:00 . . . and, well . . . it's just really boring and I have no idea if I'm doing it right or not, and this is just not fun. I've taken every excuse to take a break. And I've finally decided to blog to see if I can get some random crap out of my head and focus my thoughts. Here goes:
Part of the reason why I'm having such a difficult time with this project is that I can see sooooo many holes in it. And I thought it up. But it got approved, and Dr. Murch-Shafer says its good and there isn't really time to do something else, sooooo . . . I'm just gonna have to do it. I still haven't decided if I should talk about all the holes during my presentation. I mean, I have to discuss what I learned, but, well, everything I've learned can be explained away. Quite easily, in fact. Do I admit that my project was flawed? Do I just act like I can't tell?
I guess they are teachers and they will probably be able to tell, so I'll just look stupid if I don't mention the obvious flaws, but . . . why do they think it's good then? I mean, wouldn't they have pointed out the flaws if they saw them to begin with? Grrr . . . soooo frustrating.
And then it's been so long since I was introduced to this type of test that I'm having to go back to the manual and double check what everything means. And then whenever I zoom in on the waves, I get different bumps, and I don't know which bumps are the bumps I'm looking for and it's all so confusing.
So I'm talking to Scott and he says I should've done a project on brainwaves during different types of videogames. Sooooo perfect for me, but of course he thinks of it the night before I have to present my findings. Oh well. Besides, it would've required a hell of a lot more effort than this.
I'm so tempted to just throw something together and be done with it. But I need this good grade. It'll probably be the first grade since October that won't have late points taken off of it. Lord . . .
I'm looking at the manual, and there's lots of other stuff to measure than just the number of bumps. There's the duration of the bumps, and their percentage of the entire time reading, and then there's the slope of the bumps. Grrrr . . . it only took me 2 hours to just count the damn bumps and decide what really counted as bumps and what didn't.
God, I hate this.
I don't think I'm going to get to sleep tonight. At all. Which isn't good because I have just as much, if not more to do tomorrow.
If I ever skip class again, someone beat me. Please. Beat me until I realize how stupid I'm being.
Alrighty! So! Here's my plan for the completion of this analysis: Go through and compare percentage time of bumps. I'll ignore the slope; It doesn't look that important anyway. And by looking at the pictures in the manual, I can see how far they have it magnified to count the bumps. So now I have a clue as to how to do that. So, I'm basically starting over. Oh joy. At least now I know what I'm doing. Then I can start on my presentation.
Shit. How am I going to do that?
Let's see . . . 10 minutes . . . what to say . . . Well, I think I'll start with a little discussion of language and symbols and the differences between music and words. Then I'll talk a little about eye focusing and movements, and hopefully that'll take up almost 5 minutes. Then I can go into how I performed the experiment, which ought to take up at least a couple minutes. And tell my results of course, which will probably take a little longer than my methods, so 3 minutes there, and I've got 10 minutes before I can even talk about what my results mean. So I can get up there, forget some of what I'm going to say, and still have enough to blab about. Sweet. This is going to work. Barely, but it's going to work.
And I have 6 hours and 30 minutes to finish it. Holy shit, that's not much time. I better get back to work. I"m sure I'll want a break later.
Eric 12/04/2003 02:31:00 AM
