Class Presentation about Language Abilities and Brain Degeneration

This semester, I’m taking a class called Language Processing and the Brain with Dr. Ann Laubstein. There’s been some pretty interesting things so far, though admittedly we’ve covered mostly psycholinguistics (psychology of language) rather than neurolinguistics (language and the brain) material. When we’re not reviewing the material from last class (which I suffer through for the sake of people who find it helpful), I’m pretty engaged with the material. Specifically, I want to argue with everything. That’s… probably good, but I think there’s other fields for me in the long term.

Side note: I realize I haven’t posted about what classes I’m taking this semester. The reason I haven’t posted about this semester is because I still have to post about last semester. And the reason I haven’t posted about that is because I haven’t posted about my summer. But I’ve written that post! I just need to break it up into a series of posts because it’s long.

Anyway, back to the point: one of the required projects was a group presentation. We were assigned groups by last name, and my group presented this past Tuesday. The task was to find a recent paper that had made a significant contribution to the field, and present it to the class in ~10 minutes. On the advice of our TA, our group went with the paper Cognition and Anatomy in Three Variants of Primary Progressive Aphasia (note: paywall, sadly). I realize no one has any idea what that means, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

You can see all the materials over on UniNotes. The “Merged notes” documents have the notes each person took while preparing their section (plus full paper notes from me), so that’s the best free explanation you’re going to get about what the paper is about. The images are the graphs I created for the presentation, using the data I pulled from the HTML version of the paper, which is in “aphasia.csv”. Which took way too long for me to reformat for proper processing (Me: “Why is this being parsed as ordinal data rather than numeric…?” Professor Biddle: “Great question, let me know when you find out!”). Then the code for producing those graphs is in “aphasia.r”, which was a five-hour long foray (plus time spent looking at online help and such) into programming in R.

Then there’s the presentation itself. I was handling the introduction and conclusion, and by virtue of being relatively comfortable presenting, spent too much talking about. We put the presentation together using Prezi, because the first group that presented used it, and now the entire class is forced to. I mean, it would just be rude to assault their eyes with PowerPoint slides. So that’s available online here, if you’re curious. In case Prezi dies, I’ve got it on UniNotes too. Anyway, you can see there’s very little text in the sections I handled, which makes the whole thing pretty confusing for anyone who wasn’t around for the presentation.

Anyway, I actually like this paper. Their results are genuinely compelling, to me anyway: “damage in areas X, Y, and Z led to problems X, Y, and Z”. “We’re pretty sure Area Y is related to Problem X, so that suggests Areas Y and Z are related in some way to Problems Y and Z.” “Based on genetic profiles, the underlying cause may be X rather than Y.” Direct links like that are pretty rare, generally speaking.

Matthew Darling: Bachelor of Cognitive Science

A year ago, the Cognitive Science department at Carleton took a vote on whether the primary name for our degrees should be changed from Bachelor of Arts: Major in Cognitive Science: Specialization in X to Bachelor of Cognitive Science: Major in X. I voted in favour, and so did most other people apparently, because earlier this year the BCog became an option for us. I’ve finally gotten around to making the change, and I’m pretty happy about it, I think. The requirements for me to graduate didn’t really change from what they were when I first came to Carleton and the current calendar, so it was an easy decision from that point of view.

The important change is from Bachelor of Arts to BCog. My first thought was “well, nobody’s going to know what to think about this weird degree only offered at Carleton”. Then I remembered that you can often get a BA in psychology, or a BS in psychology. They’re probably quite similar degrees, but odds are there’s one or two differences in required credits. Cognitive science gets a free pass on some of the BA staples like “breadth requirements”, so from that perspective it makes sense to make us separate. But the other aspect is that if I’m BCog with a major in Linguistics, it acknowledges that I’m probably only a few credits away from a BA degree in Linguistics. I can’t necessarily say whether my degree is primarily focused on linguistics or on cognitive science, so I can’t speak on whether “majoring in cognitive science” is better than “majoring in linguistics”. But the specialization thing has always been really confusing, and I’m glad to be rid of that.

It’s really weird to think I’m not far away from graduating. Most of my prerequisites in other areas were taken care of last year, but I had to do logic and philosophy of science this year too. This semester, I’ve got one required cognitive science course and three linguistics courses. Next year will be pretty similar, though at some point I’ll be doing an AI course. Over the summer, assuming I’m at Carleton, I’ll be doing an independent study course to learn statistics the hard way via R rather than the typical “stats for psych students who are scared of math”.

I say all of this because it’s equal parts exciting and scary. As it turns out, I’ve learned stuff over the last three years. Still, I haven’t decided on what I’m going to do after I graduate. This summer is going to be important, I think, for deciding what I’ll do when I graduate. Still figuring that out, though. I’ve been told I could potentially travel to work at another university over the summer, but the trouble with that is I don’t know what my options are. Or if my recommendations are good enough to be accepted by professors I’ve never met.

Anyway, I’ve got some meetings to arrange before I start making decisions. Though, of course, I’ll be screwed if I take too long on that. But then homework. And other things that need to be done. Blaaarg.

[please direct any funny jokes about my bachelor-tude to your usual communication channels, or comment so everyone can chuckle]

Kayt Sukel on Love

Last Friday, the Cognitive Science department at Carleton hosted a talk by Kayt Sukel, a science writer with a recently published book about the neuroscience of love, sex and relationships. While I enjoyed the talks I attended by Paul Thagard and Zenon Pylyshyn, their main job is to do research, and so their talks were fairly functional. Kayt, on the other hand, writes for a more general audience - unsurprisingly, her talk was really entertaining. There was a lot of laughter, and only a little bit of blushing. But it was super interesting, too, and I wound up buying her book afterwards. Got it signed, too, and her dedication made me smile - “to love and other indoor sports”.

At any rate, before the talk I was looking around her site and read a handful of articles. My favourites:

• 5 sex myths busted by science
• Orgasm unlocks altered consciousness - weird as it may seem to people not doing a degree in cognitive science or philosophy, this is really interesting to me. The same topic actually came up once in my philosophy of mind class, when we went over an argument to the effect that orgasm is one proof of qualia. It was a weird lecture, but was theoretically interesting.
• I donated an orgasm to science - the story behind the above article.

With all that being said, below are the notes I took from her talk. If you’re interested, find a link to buy Kayt’s book from her site!

That Crazy Little Thing Called Love

If we’re going to study love scientifically, we’ll need an operational definition for what we’re actually looking for

• Love has been written about for hundreds of years, and we can recognize it even in old plays and paintings - so it’s something that has persisted in humans for a while
• At the 1995 Wenner-Grom Symposium, the topic was “Is there a neurobiological basis for love?” The goal was to gather the best and brightest and figure out an operational definition for love
• Their definition: love starts with motherhood, then we leave our mothers and search for that same kind of bond elsewhere

Love on the brain

Bartels & Zeki (2000) was the first published study on the neurobiology of love

• They found significant deactivation in the frontal cortex when participants were looking at loved ones, by comparison to when they were looking at images of physically similar people
• The frontal cortex handles executive control and is responsible for a lot of our inhibition - so people are less inhibited when looking at loved ones?

Fisher, Aran & Brown (2005), in a similar study, found activation in three key areas that are related to attachment, lust, and sex drive

• They proposed that these three areas, while distinct, had overlapping functionality - they worked both together and against eachother
• In theory, this is what allows us to transition between different relationships with the same person - from platonic attachment to lust, from lust to love, and so on

The smell of love

But, for starters, we can mostly agree that love starts with attraction in some form or another

• Now we need to define attraction - where does it come from? Most of the time, when you ask people what attracted them to their partner, it seems like they’re just guessing
• As it turns out, the biological basis comes from our odour-print - this is largely determined by what’s called the MHC, a gene cluster that primarily influences the immune system
• People with optimal immune system compatibility tend to be attracted to each other, even if they say the reason was something else
• See the “dirty t-shirt studies’ - interestingly, immune system dissimilarity was a major factor in the choices women made, but so was similarity to their father
• The authors explained their results by saying that the women needed to find a mate whose scent they could still recognize (hence similarity to their father), but was as dissimilar as possible while still being familiar

Is love a drug?

When people claim to be madly in love with a new partner, there are changes in:

• Dopamine (involved in reward systems)
• Oxytocin (related to pair bonding in monogamous prairie voles)
• Vasopressin (related to monogamous behaviours - when you block it in the aforementioned voles, they stop being monogamous)
• Serotonin (mood regulation)
• Neurotrophins (chemicals that aid in growth of the brain, sort of like fertilizer)
• Sex steroids (i.e. testosterone)

In particular, here’s how these chemicals were affected:

• Serotonin went down, dopamine went up (serotonin sometimes acts as a brake for dopamine, so these two effects may be related)
• Oxytocin went up, reflecting the formation of a bond
• Neurotrophins and testosterone also went up
• However, two years later, the couples who were still together and in love were studied again - these chemicals had all returned to their baseline levels
• Perhaps these changes early in the relationship reflect a need to solidify the bond, and after the bond is formed, things start to settle down

Love may actually be the blueprint for drug addiction, as many similar chemicals are involved

• This explains the change in focus, lack of attention to other things, and phsyiology of both phenomena
• Perhaps drugs actually hijack the subsystems for love?

Evolution of love and monogamy

Since we see this weird response at the initial development of a romantic relationship, maybe it’s necessary for some evolutionary benefit

• A few ideas: having one dedicated partner provides more reliability than looking for many mates over time - they’ll always be around to protect from predators, search for food, and so on
• If love has these evolutionary fitness benefits, then we could suppose there’s a drive to find it

Actually, a lot of studies on love and attachment are done on prairie voles

• As it turns out, they’re a pretty good model for humans, as the relevant brain areas are very similar
• Strangely enough, only 2-3% of mammals are monogamous, so it’s hard to find a species to study
• In prairie voles, if you block their oxytocin receptors, they stop being monogamous and go search for other mates - even ignoring lifelong partners
• Closely related vole species that aren’t monogamous have less vasopressin receptors in the areas of the brain related to attachment - if you modify their genes so they have more vasopressin receptors, they show more monogamous behaviour
• Menawhile, if you surgically remove vasopressin receptors from prairie voles, they become less monogamous as well

In humans, things are a bit harder to study, but there are interesting differences between men and women:

• In men, having a certain variant of a gene that relates to vasopressin receptors correlates with more dissatisfaction in marriage
• For women, a gene related to oxytocin receptors leads to the same correlation

Is monogamy "natural” in humans? This is probably the wrong question to ask

• These kinds of genetic factors are just probabilistic, not deterministic - correlation with dissatisfaction in marriage doesn’t mean a gene will cause people to be unfaithful

Love and parenthood

Motherhood changes the volume of a few areas of the brain

• This is easy to explain, since women have to be host to a growing parasite for nine months - physiological changes could easily lead to brain changes as well
• Maternal love seems to overlap with romantic love in neuroimaging studies, and involve similar chemical changes

Dads actually have neural changes as well, with an increase in oxytocin

• Why does this happen to men, who don’t become pregnant?
• Oxytocin levels seem to correspond to the type of interaction parents are having with their children - for mothers, it relates to nurturing behaviours like cuddling their child, while for fathers it’s more physical, explatory play like gently tossing the child into the air
• Perhaps it’s beneficial for the child to have these two different types of interactions from two different parents

Conclusion and questions

Some people have asked whether studying the neurobiology of love will ruin the mystery and excitiment of love

• Samir Zeki disagrees: “Learning about DNA allowed us to replace the mystery of heredity with awe towards its mechanics”

Oxytocin was first discovered in relation to labour/child delivery

• Delivering a child associates a lot of oxytocin with them - this is like a shotcut to attachment
• However, with adopted children, this isn’t the only way to get the same attachment
• This is similar to how sex is a shortcut to attachment and bond formation - plenty of people form romantic relationships in other ways

Do the chemical changes in parents stay over time, such as after children move out?

• No real studies on this yet
• Anecdotally, many parents find it hard when their children have all moved out

The chemicals involved in love are similar to those involved in long-term stress responses - perhaps they just signify important things in our lives

Psycho-social approaches have advanced understanding of a lot of things like heart problems in medical fields - perhaps they would help in the study of love, too

• However, it’s very hard to get funding in the US for anything that is even remotely related to sex and love, much less to start investigating psychological and social factors

What about relationships that form solely online, where the influence of odour-prints would be removed?

• Think of people who have met up in person, after dating online, only to find that there was no real connection
• This makes it seem like online dating is good for making introductions to a lot of people relatively quickly, but it’s best to meet face-to-face early on in order to see if there’s real compatibility
• What people say they want doesn’t always match what they actually want, which is a notorious problem for online dating sites

Perhaps, in the t-shirt studies, women have inherited preferences from their mother - which is why they go looking for someone similar to their father

• Or maybe they are unconsciously looking for a mate who is equally good as their father was to their mother

Co-op employer panel notes

[Earlier this week, I went to a panel hosted by my university’s co-op program. A handful of employers agreed to come talk to students about how they hire at their company. Interestingly, it was fairly skewed towards programming/engineering employers, but then again, about 75% of the audience was in the engineering department. At any rate, I took notes on paper for my own benefit, but I figured I may as well post them and free myself from a few pieces of paper. Assume any errors in, say, last names or job titles is my fault.]

Participants

Shopify - Doug, recruiter

• Interns at Shopify are put on par with all the other developers

Smart Technologies - Jennifer

• Located in Kanata
• Make interactive whiteboards, historically for educators
• Actively hiring sales reps, but also software engineers

Adobe - Tia Murphy

• Moving towards Software as a Service
• New job postings every quarter, which last for three months

Immigration Services (Federal government) - Jacquelin Cote

• Handles employer outreach and research on the part of immigrants
• Event coordination and management of programs with non-government employers

Solar Logics - Calvin Adams

• Hires a lot of engineering students

Teldeo - Casey Li

• App developers for two-way radios, used in places where cell signal is unreliable
• Use C, Java, and Ruby on Rails for development
• One of several incubator startups in a group

Q&A

What are dealbreakers for you on a resume?

• 5 page resumes for someone in university - stick to 1-2 pages
• You should be specific about any experience you have that’s relevant to the job you’re applying for
• Spelling and grammar mistakes are pretty much disqualifiers
• You should try to find out “to whom it may concern” actually refers to, and address the person who will be reading the letter
• Follow the directions in the job posting, don’t send in the wrong document format
• Have someone review your resume
• List all the skills the job posting asks for directly on your resume - don’t make the employer infer your skills from job descriptions
• Think about what your “unrelated” jobs may have taught you
• Use LinkedIn, or something like that, to look up the people who will be hiring you - then tailor your resume to them
• Prove you can do what they’re hiring for, or that you have the passion to learn how
• Try to give more information than just a list of bullet points
• Don’t assume your employer is familiar with your school program - tell them what relevant courses you took
• Consider the culture of the company you’re applying for, and what level of formality they expect

Should you stick exactly to a one page or two page resume, or can you have a page and a half? Answer: A page and a half is fine

Submitting the classes you’ve taken and your grades (aka your transcript) with your resume is helpful

• However, they may not go looking for details on the classes you took
• Providing class descriptions (at least, for every class) is probably overkill

Listing bursaries and other testaments to your skill is worthwhile, as it helps make you stand out

• But beware the generic bursaries you automatically get for, say, having a certain GPA - these aren’t exactly prestigious, and their names mean nothing

Being bilingual isn’t needed in most co-op positions, but it is necessary for government jobs in the long run

• For languages other than French, the government has professional translators
• In addition, if two people have the same skills but one is bilingual, the person who is bilingual will likely get the position/promotion

Regarding objective statements, they can help illustrate where you’re headed in your career

• This kind of detail may be better placed in your cover letter
• If you’re putting it in your cover letter, you can give it a bit more breathing room - you can provide a paragraph about why you want to be hired and how it fits into your overarching plan
• Include one if you can find a single sentence that completely summarizes you, and you’re really passionate about it

You should absolutely tailor your resumes to each job posting

Highlight your student projects and why you think they’re significant - the project itself may not be important, but it probably taught you a lot

Try to build a story that leads from your personal history to the job you’re applying for

• This is part of where you want to go and how the company can help you get there
• It helps to have a history of work that’s relevant to the job

You should highlight things you’ve done outside of class - things that other students might not have learned

• Personal projects say a lot about you - the things you do in your spare time for your own benefit say a lot about your personal character

Don’t stop at saying “took a course in Java,” describe the things you learned from the course

Having worked for a company’s competitor is still a significant achievement, don’t take it off your resume for fear of offending someone

Be picky about what jobs you’re going to take

• On the other hand, taking an imperfect job is still good for networking and may help to build the skills that will take you where you want to go

Investigate the employer, in particular the people who will be involved with hiring you

• “Tell me what you know about us” is a common question in interviews

Say you’re willing to relocate on your resume, they may forward your resume to another branch and give you a chance there

Non-family member references are your best bet, but if you’ve only ever worked for a family business, look for some non-family members in the organization to give you a reference (if possible)

• At the very least, you want them to be specific about what you did on the job, rather than saying how smart you are or some other generic thing

On letters of reference:

• Opinions were divided on whether letters of reference would actually be read
• A letter of reference is usually written under duress, so their value is suspect
• A list of references on your resume is good, though, because they can contact your references if they want to hear from them
• Personal recommendations from people have a lot of value
• Generic letters of reference will probably only hurt you
• Getting a reference on LinkedIn is really valuable to recruiters who use the service
• Include letters of reference only from professors who actually know you well - the key question is “Will you give me a good reference?”
• Another option is to provide a list of professors who could be contacted, rather than including a bundle of letters of reference - this is even better if your program is closely related to the field and your professors are well-known
• Let people know in advance you’re using them as a reference, and provide them with your resume and the job description
• You can also coach them on what they can say about you, but this could backfire
• If it’s been a while since you worked with them, you can remind them what you did for them
• Character references are useful, but it’s better if they’ve worked with you/for you/were your boss

Decreasing My Misery Quotient

This post has been in the works for a while - part of why I haven’t posted in a while. I was originally going to write it as commentary on academic culture works. Then I questioned whether I could generalize like that, so I thought I would focus on my own behaviour. Then I saw a post on Facebook linking to an article by a student at University of Toronto touching on many of my own points. The article is slightly tangential to this post, since it’s primarily about mental health in perfectionist university students (who, contrary to what some people may think, exist at every university). But it’s a topic I would love to see discussed more openly, so please read it if you’re interested.

        This problem shows up in varying degrees, obviously. There’s individuals like me and most of the people I’ve met - we want the best and we push for it. Then you’ve got people in programs like engineering or architecture, who regularly camp out beside their workstations. A friend with an undergrad degree in one of Carleton’s engineering programs used the same terms as the article does: it’s a “badge of honour” to work that hard. There’s a twisted form of glory in managing to succeed despite taking on far too much work. It’s a stupid thing to do, but we’re bound to respect anyone who studies more than they sleep.

        There’s even a bit of shame, to a certain degree, in being less overworked and miserable than somoeone else. When people like me complain, it’s almost more like bragging - after all, we all know I’m not going to quit. But when you start complaining to somebody who has more reason to complain than you, well, they must be better than you. Not only are they working harder, but they’re likely getting better grades in the process. How dare you complain about getting five hours of sleep for a couple of nights, to someone who regularly sleeps three?

        For the sake of argument, let’s say we want to quantify this. After all, there’s something to measure and compare. The way I see it, there’s four components involved:

• degree of success (inside and outside class)
• success in spite of oneself (“I started the assignment the night before and still got an A+!”)
• level of challenge (can be directly related to amount of work, but there are other types of challenge)
• amount of sleep

        Taking inspiration from the misery index, and to make things catchy (which is important to scientists), I’ll call this value the misery quotient. MQ = (Success + SuccessInSpiteOfOneself) * Challenge / Sleep. Roughly speaking, it’s the amount of success you have per unit of sleep. More sleep makes for a lower value, with higher values being better. Granted, it might be more accurate to adjust the sleep values according to individual differences, and instead measure it as a percentage of what each individual ought to be sleeping. In this case, if we say I need 8 hours/night and only get 6, it’s the same as someone who needs 5 hours/night getting 3.75 hours - a value of 0.75. Keeping the same formula, higher values are still better, but you get way more credit for barely sleeping.

        Anyway, here’s where I’m going with this: I’m tired of bragging about this. I hate that I still default to “complaining” about work. I have more interesting things to talk to people about than not sleeping, or working too much. That, and I don’t like being miserable. So I’m planning to change things up in the future, which will hopefully allow me to sleep more while still doing well and taking on interesting challenges. I could even have a bit of a social life on the side! It’s a simple change: I’m going to take four classes per semester instead of five from now on. That gives me three hours I would have spent in lectures, and whatever other time studying and doing assignments. It fits perfectly well with the timeline I already had - five years for the degree. I’m also working diligently on time management, these days, so I can make the most of the time I do have.

        So here’s how I’ll end: will you join me in lowering your misery quotient? Can you find a way to do what you want to do, without depriving yourself of valuable sleep? It’s one of a small number of things that people need universally, but it’s not a direct survival need so we skimp on it all the time. Some people don’t need to socialize to stay emotionally healthy, and some people don’t need any recreational activity aside from work. But they still need to sleep, and you don’t know how much it affects you if you never take the time to catch up. Give it a try for a month or so, see how you feel on a good eight hours per night. You may not even be able to sleep properly, at first. But it’ll come, and once you’re properly rested, you’ll actually notice when you’re tired in the future. Or you can stay tired and work sub-optimally forever - it’s your choice, I guess.

Kickback: All The Right Reasons

Years ago, when I would listen to songs that made me think of anything related to relationships, I didn’t stop to put into words what the song made me feel. I’d get a vague approximation of some thoughts, and I’d be appropriately happy/miserable/both, and that was all I needed. Now that I’ve got more time between myself and the relationship in question, I don’t get the same feelings, and so I literally can’t remember what it was that I liked about these songs. Listening to them now, I know there was something about the song, but can’t quite grasp it.

        You can see the vague, unformed idea effect in some of the music posts I made back in 2010 - I’d post the song and the lyrics, but not say a whole lot about it. A prime example is this post about Kickback UK’s All The Wrong Reasons. I was listening to the song last night and thinking it meant something to me in 2010, but I couldn’t say what it was. At a guess, I’d say I felt like I was trying to help people so I could feel better about myself - the most cynical way of reading my behaviour at the time. There were a couple people I was “friends” with at the time mostly for that reason, and it took me a while to realize that wasn’t the way to go. But that’s only a guess - I can’t say for sure what I was thinking when I made that post.

        What I can tell you is what the song makes me think now, which you will (hopefully) be glad to hear is much more positive. I was up late writing an essay for my Linguistic Analysis class, and I took the lyrics in a very different way. (Chalk it up to vague interpretations, I guess, when the same song can mean a totally different thing two years later.) I was feeling good about the essay and wanted to reflect a bit on how I’ve changed lately, and where I’m heading in the future. Moral of the story, for the tl;dr crowd - I feel like I’ve gone from “all the wrong reasons” to “all the right reasons”, and I’ve got big plans. Read on if you’re interested! Best if you take a stop by the old post, first.

        "Head’s in the future, but your heart’s in the past" is an apt description of me circa 2010. Things were looking up, but definitely not all the way up. Which is a stupid metaphor if you try to picture it, but it works verbally. “And we’ve seen it all before, you’re holding out for more” follows from that, obviously. Neither of those things still apply to me, which is a good sign. Head and heart are both set on the future, I suppose. Getting to the future I want means working hard in the present, but it feels more and more and more natural as I put out work I’m legitimately proud of. Nobody’s ever going to look at the C++ assignment I’m working on right now, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t make it good and shoot for a mark of 110%.

        The next line is what gets me now, and probably what got to me in the past as well. “When that call never comes it’s time to face what you’ve become - there’s no point doing all of this unless you know you’re having fun.” At the time, there were a lot of things I wasn’t terribly happy with. I wasn’t having a whole lot of fun with the work I was doing back then. Although it got me here, so I can’t complain - but it was all delayed gratification at the time. At least now I get some of that gratification! A little, anyway. Still lots of delay right now. But I’ve recently realized what I should be working towards, although I’d been thinking about it for a few weeks. I said I didn’t have many important goals for 2012, but I take that back now! I’ve got two, which I strongly feel I can accomplish, and which all of my work now contributes to:

• The first: have my name on a publication.
• The second: learn as much as possible, with an eye towards distinguishing myself from the competition.

Both of these are practical goals that will, hopefully, put me in a great position when I finish my education and set out for a job. So - “what have I become”? Someone who strives to be the best they can be. (Time will tell where I’ll fall on the sweet/awesome dichotomy.) I’m not necessarily having fun, but I’m seeing the big picture now.

        From where I stand, that means a number of different things. Most recently, it means improving my writing consciously, the way I used to while I was in AP English. (If you’re interested in that writing analysis tool but not interested in Emacs, I can look into creating an independent version, with the author’s permission.) Going back a few weeks, I’ve started to really dedicate myself to programming well. I’m getting tons of inspiration on that topic as I dig up tidbits of information about Emacs, and inevitably get linked to some other brilliant piece. There’s Steve Yegge and Avdi Grimm over the past few days, who have both Emacs secrets I can steal and general programming knowledge. Meanwhile, Jeff Atwood and Scott Hanselman write about quality of life as a programmer - improving your tools, improving your office, improving your lighting, etc. Aside from that, I’m always trying to synthesize what I know about the seemingly-disparate areas of linguistics (at least, that’s what the separation in course content would lead you to believe). I want to say with some confidence that I’m a linguist - not some kid who “maybe heard about that in university, but didn’t think it was important”.

        In a similar vein, I’m connecting all the dots in this “cognitive science” thing. Philosophy is cognitive psychology, cognitive psychology is neuroscience, neuroscience is linguistics, linguistics is computer science… And the whole conglomerate is cognitive science. I may not use every part of it for the rest of my life, but understanding them all matters. Even if I were to be a career programmer, I’d keep usability testing in mind. Even if I were a linguist for the rest of my life, I know for a fact I’d land in a crossover field - computational linguistics and neurolinguistics seem equally likely right now.

        So what I’m getting at is: I know what I’m doing here, and I know who I am. I can’t tell you what I’ll settle on for a job, but I know what the core components of that job will be. This is where I belong. The lows may be low, but the highs are home.

The benefits of outside perspectives

I’ve gotten some surprising compliments during the past week. Surprising in the sense that I personally don’t see myself the way they were describing me. Since I don’t see myself that way, I don’t talk about myself that way, either. A stranger reading my tumblr would probably think I’m a quivering, anxious wreck that never manages to get anything done. That’s a bit of an exaggeration from the reality, but since I prefer to chastise myself for my failures, failure becomes my public face. Although, the way I think about it, the negative posts are all waiting on a future post that declares my ultimate victory over the original problem. It may not appear today, or tomorrow, but it’ll come! Probably!

        The first set of compliments came from an extremely astute co-worker, when I mentioned that Robert Biddle initially assumed I was a graduate student. She said that wasn’t terribly surprising, given that I genuinely enjoy what I do and I’m dedicated to my work (unlike some people my age). Later, when I offered to put in a couple extra hours of work, she said she’d find someone else “because I work hard enough as it is.” Given that I’m taking five classes, running the lab’s current projects, and developing new projects on top of all that. Not to mention maintaining and updating older lab work and making it as “perfect” as I can.

        When you put it that way, it paints a much more flattering picture of me than the one I present. I’ve been disorganized for months now, but I’m still pulling in 90%+ grades on almost everything, as well as managing my work in the Language and Brain Lab. I genuinely think I could be doing more, but that’s just the (probably unhealthy) work ethic I’ve picked up over the last few years. I keep telling myself to do better so I don’t fall behind the difficulty curve, but so far I’m still ahead of the game. Obviously I’m doing something right. Not only that, but as far as tuition and various other costs go, I’m soon to be financially independent entirely because of my own hard work. It’s not like I’m raking in The Big Bucks, but it’s enough that I’ll likely graduate with zero debt. Looking at it a bit more objectively, I feel a lot better about what I’ve accomplished and where things are going from here. Which is a good feeling!

        She also noted that I carry myself like a grad student, as I’m comfortable in my own skin and bold enough to approach professors and ask to work with them. I actually had someone else recently tell me that that they think I’m outgoing, too, so apparently I can make a decent first impression. While it’s a kind thought, I don’t think I really agree with them. Truth be told, I mostly manage to seem “comfortable in my own skin” and outgoing by keeping myself distant (at least, emotionally) from people. Which sort of defeats the purpose, I think. Granted, Google’s definition of outgoing is “friendly and socially confident”. I can see how someone might think I’m outgoing, from that point of view (but I usually associate outgoing with extroversion). I’m perfectly happy to talk to people once a conversation’s been started, so there’s a slightly-qualified version of the friendly part. As for socially confident, that’s definitely just a matter of appearance. It’s not like I’m confident in my social skills, and starting conversations still freaks me out. I’m mainly just surprised that it’s not utterly apparent to everyone involved that I’m shy and frequently awkward.

        All that aside, I’m doing alright. Lots of work to do, just need to juggle it the right way. My difficult/time-consuming classes are at least interesting this semester (introduction to brain and behaviour, programming in C++). Sadly, I have one class that’s a bit of a mystery. Thus far, it’s been almost entirely review of other classes I’ve taken. The prof isn’t giving much in the way of hints about what the exams are going to be like, and he’s not a good enough teacher to consciously emphasize important topics. In fact, he regularly says (and I quote) “they told me not to do this in teacher school, but I do it anyway”. Yeah. So either the exams will be completely trivial, or I’ll be blindsided by questions about unimportant details nobody in their right mind would put on a test. The midterm is a week from tomorrow, and I expect it will be an exciting adventure - just like every other time we enter that classroom.

Summer job!

I have exciting news! The title probably spoiled it, but the news is this: I applied for a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council summer research grant with Dr. Robert Biddle as my supervisor and we were accepted! That means working full-time at Carleton for four months, starting in May. Also nice is the fact that the award is enough to cover my tuition and books for next year, assuming I keep my entrance scholarship (I will, if this semester goes as well as the last).

Here’s the story: I found out who the eligible supervisors were, looked up their research interests, and contacted a few. I saw “Games and Hypermedia” on the side of the HotSoft webpage and that was pretty much all I needed to hear. Although, I had seen Dr. Biddle’s name before on a pretty neat project involving security and some awesome hardware, which would also be fun to work on too. I wound up walking over to the lab, knocking on the door and asking to speak to Dr. Biddle. After talking for a while and providing a transcript, we did our respective paperwork and found out a week ago that we’d been successful!

I dropped by yesterday after officially accepting the award and got a bit more information on what I might be working on. The initial plan is that I’ll work with Elizabeth Stobert, a PhD candidate working at the lab, on experiments related to security and usability. Later on, I’ll probably take a more active role and possibly start a project of my own. All in all, it should be pretty awesome.

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On an unrelated note, I’ll also be working on a computational linguistics project with a linguist doing his PhD in cognitive science. He’ll bring the linguistics, I’ll bring the computational. This is probably the area I’ll have my eye on in the future, though usability testing is a fascinating field as well. If all goes well, I’ll soon have exciting news about that! If it doesn’t go well, the exciting news will just take longer.

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On the subject of research, I’ll be posting a little blurb soon with details about my work at the Language and Brain Lab during the fall. Plus some snazzy photos of me looking like I actually belong in a research lab. It’s a bit more esoteric than computer security and usability, but I think it’s genuinely awesome. Stay tuned, folks.