Some random tidbits about my day/recent happenings:

• I mentioned a long time ago the gender differences between beginner fencers - in retrospect I should have emphasized that this was mainly a thing beginners did, because there’s no difference at all between the more experienced fencers. The girls are as competitive as the guys, if they’ve been doing it for at least a year. The update on this story is that pretty much everyone who wasn’t serious about fencing has stopped coming. I think I’m staying in foil, and I’m the only beginner doing that, because the foil teams were already full. There are two (maybe only one now) girls who stayed for sabre, both of whom I think were aggressively recruited for the team. They’ve been getting a lot of individual training from the coaches. Then there’s two guys who are doing epee, again because that team needed people. And that’s it, about five people of the (if I remember right) thirty or so who paid $80 for the beginner course and club fees. The two girls in sabre (given the nature of the weapon) are as aggressive as any of the guys, so the point I made in the original post is basically moot.
• I met Dr. Masako Hirotani today to discuss volunteering at her lab. When I first got there she was talking to a student from Japan (she’s Japanese, I believe, though her English is quite good so she may have been born here) about whether you should say “that makes sense” or “that make sense”, except at the speed they talk it’s pretty hard to tell the difference. We spoke for a bit about my skills and interests in regards to the lab, then I went to a meeting with a few of the other students working in her lab. One of whom is in my Phonetics class, the other of whom is the president of the cognitive science undergraduate group thing, and was born in PEI! So that’s cool. We’re looking at doing tours of the lab for high school students so they can learn about how cool cog sci is and stuff.
• Went to one psychology study earlier today, being conducted by a young guy. Possibly a graduate student doing his own research. He was pretty tired. I should note the way experiments are conducted - to avoid affecting the results by giving you subtle feedback on what you’re doing, the experimenters tell you what you’re going to be doing and then leave you alone to do it. You have to do a lot of training to properly conduct experiments, even if you’re only going to be around the subject for a minute or two - so more experienced experimenters are pretty careful around their subjects. Younger ones less so, and this was the first time I’d been around someone who seemed like some regular person who happened to be doing research.
• Went to a second study a short time ago. Found out I wrote it down as 4:30 when it was actually at 3:30. The experimenter was again someone young, and she was understandably unhappy. This is where the younger experimenters thing comes in, because I apologized and stuff and she didn’t even acknowledge that I’d just accidentally screwed up. In my (admittedly small) experience, I figured someone older would be more understanding. Could be I’m wrong and taking it personally, but I felt terrible and she did as much as possible to make that worse. On the bright side, I may not be penalized because she said she’d reschedule me in a couple of weeks. An older experimenter would probably just dock the required 1% from me and be done with it.

Anyway, I’m off to help set up the strips for the fencing tournament being held here this weekend. I hurt my leg last week (pushed myself too hard when I was trying to be tough) so I won’t be competing, but I’m probably going to go watch with my parents so they can see what it’s like and I can learn what to expect if I ever get to compete.