Stats.
For anyone who doesn't know, while I'm here in Australia working on my PhD in Psychology, I'm still enrolled in an online Masters program through Penn State University in Applied Statistics.
So far, it's been OK. I spend maybe 6-10 hours a week on stats homework/studying/exams, which is easily done on the weekend. But the rest of the week, dread and guilt hang over my head. I know that I need to get my homework done and whenever I sit down to browse Facebook or catch up on the latest episode of So You Think You Can Dance, that awful little voice in my head goes "you know, you should really be doing stats homework..."
The summer semester at Penn State just ended on the 14th - and I was looking forward to a little non-guilty downtime. Until I looked at the next semester's syllabus and realized that classes started again on the 23rd of August. One week is not enough of a break!!! I spent this past week in denial, until Thursday night when the guilt started setting in again. The first homework and quiz assessments are due on Monday and Tuesday, so the rest of this weekend will be spent working on stats - woohoo...?
Mostly I'm just unnecessarily whiny. I'm learning useful things and it's really important to me that I have a strong foundation in statistics so I can perform quality research. Just starting semester 4 of 6 (or 7...), let's do this!
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Where are the pictures of fish???
We've been back from the conference for a full week now. It's been a bit of a crazy week trying to get all caught up after a whole week away. Still not quite there yet, but today has been a much welcomed day of recharging (read as: didn't change out of PJs all day)...
As promised, I have one more day in Cairns to share - arguably the best day in Cairns! Our last day, we booked a trip out to snorkel in the Great Barrier Reef. What a magical place.
I didn't bring along my DSLR because it would have been pretty useless, but luckily Nick had a fancy waterproof camera and I've stolen some of his underwater pictures. It was absolutely incredible!!
As promised, I have one more day in Cairns to share - arguably the best day in Cairns! Our last day, we booked a trip out to snorkel in the Great Barrier Reef. What a magical place.
I didn't bring along my DSLR because it would have been pretty useless, but luckily Nick had a fancy waterproof camera and I've stolen some of his underwater pictures. It was absolutely incredible!!
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| I could have stayed forever... |
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| Lots of coral, lots of fish |
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| Such pretty colors |
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| There were a bunch of enormous chubby sea cucumbers |
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| Nick even took a picture of me snorkeling :) |
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| Hello beautiful parrot fish |
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| A GIANT clam! |
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| Shark!!!! |
Nick even captured some cool videos. I've only chosen to upload a short clip from one of them:
Friday, August 14, 2015
The Daintree Rain Forest
Spent the day exploring the Daintree on a small group tour. It was a very good day - with lots of sleeping on the bus (oops...).
Pictures are better than words though, so here's a little peek at what we did today!
We also got super lucky and got to see wild cassowary along the road! Apparently there are only about 1000 left in the wild, all living along the northern border of Queensland/Western Australia. They think there are about 60 living in the Daintree area. I didn't take any photos because he/she was behind some bushes, but I've pulled a photo from the internet for anyone who doesn't know what a cassowary looks like:
Pictures are better than words though, so here's a little peek at what we did today!
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| The only way to get to the Daintree from Port Douglas is by ferry. They must make a lot of money carting everyone back and forth every day. |
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| Crocodile boating tour with our guide Ernie. |
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| The view on the croc tour was stunning. The photos on the boat tour were all taken by Nick - he was very excited about looking into the camera eye piece... |
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| We saw some crocodiles! Maybe 4 or 5? |
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| Kayaking in the Daintree |
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| Pauleen didn't want to go so Nick came with me as well so I wouldn't flip the canoe :) |
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| Spikey but pretty vine plants along the walking path. |
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| Courtesy of the Cassowary Recovery Team |
Thursday, August 13, 2015
Day 3&4 - A bit of sleeping in...
On Wednesday, instead of waking up and getting to the conference for the 8:45am plenary talk, we opted to walk along the beach to the conference center. Took my camera along for some photos. Cairns sure is beautiful!
In the evening after the conference, Tiffani, Pauleen and I went to an aboriginal dinner event hosted by the conference. It was a pretty cool experience.
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| The fire was burning pretty colors - apparently some chemicals. |
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On Thursday, we were originally going to take the day off from the conference and go visit the Daintree but made the ultimate decision to skip Friday instead since there is only a half-day of talks tomorrow anyway. It was a good choice. We saw some really interesting talks today about Learning and Cognition - and Jess and Nick went to one super interesting one about slime moss.
Since we're skipping tomorrow, we've officially finished all of our conference activities. It's been an incredible experience. And my PhD topic has changed about a half million times - oops? I do need to write a research proposal in the next couple days though so I should probably get on it.
Looking forward to exploring the Daintree and going snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef tomorrow and Saturday before we have to go back to real life though!
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
Day 2 - Poster day!
So tired...
What a day of learning and making friends. Except our brains are now completely fried. I had my poster session this evening and had great discussions with lots of people doing research in non-human animal visual illusions and others who are either doing or have done research in dogs. Exciting stuff!
It's bedtime now. At this rate, I may never share any of the cool information I've learned the past couple days. Oops? I am taking notes though, so that must count for something!
What a day of learning and making friends. Except our brains are now completely fried. I had my poster session this evening and had great discussions with lots of people doing research in non-human animal visual illusions and others who are either doing or have done research in dogs. Exciting stuff!
It's bedtime now. At this rate, I may never share any of the cool information I've learned the past couple days. Oops? I am taking notes though, so that must count for something!
Day 1 - First Day of the Behaviour2015 Conference!
What an incredible day of talks. The day started off with a plenary talk (one by an invited speaker that all the attendees go to) about social relationships between baboons. They'd found that the amount that a baboon engaged in social interactions with other baboons was correlated with infant survival rates. Makes a lot of common sense but very cool to see data - especially data from two different sites thousands of miles apart in Africa showing baboons living in surprisingly similar social structures.
After the plenary talk, it was morning tea and we got to put up our posters. Obviously mine is the best one because it has cute photos of Audrey and Baxter on it... (just kidding!) There were some very cool posters hung up yesterday. Ones about whales, chipmunks, chickens, and everything in between! The official "poster sessions" are Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, where we've been asked to be available to discuss our posters with people.
The actual day of talks is organized into "streams" or "disciplines" - sort of. Basically there were seven meeting rooms where talks ran concurrently, each with a different topic of focus. There was a Communication room, a Learning and Cognition room, etc. Each person giving a talk had 12 minutes to present research and 3 minutes for questions (at least that was the aim).
The night before, we chose a bunch of "must see" talks, and just filled in the rest of the time with other talks that were taking place before/after the same rooms. It ended up being that we just happened to be sitting in some pretty cool rooms! Although I'm not sure that it isn't just that ALL the talks are super interesting.
At lunch time, we had scheduled to meet Dr Kazuo Fujita from Kyoto University. He is one of the leading researchers in non-human visual illusions and has done extensive research with pigeons and chickens. We went to grab food with him and a bunch of his students who were at the conference as well (10 of us in total!). Turns out service in Cairns follows the easy, laid-back model..where we don't get our food before it's time to go back to the conference!!!
Actually, it was only an issue because we were in a bit of a rush and just didn't have the time to sit, relax, and enjoy the beautiful weather (and we were hungry of course). Tiffani had been scheduled to give her talk on a Diabetes Alert Dog project at 2:00pm but was told that day that she'd been bumped up to 1:45. So we ended up having 15 minutes less time for lunch.
It's Tuesday morning now and time to head off to the conference again. Hopefully the internet will be working tonight so I can actually have time to write about some of the cool stuff we've seen!
After the plenary talk, it was morning tea and we got to put up our posters. Obviously mine is the best one because it has cute photos of Audrey and Baxter on it... (just kidding!) There were some very cool posters hung up yesterday. Ones about whales, chipmunks, chickens, and everything in between! The official "poster sessions" are Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, where we've been asked to be available to discuss our posters with people.
The actual day of talks is organized into "streams" or "disciplines" - sort of. Basically there were seven meeting rooms where talks ran concurrently, each with a different topic of focus. There was a Communication room, a Learning and Cognition room, etc. Each person giving a talk had 12 minutes to present research and 3 minutes for questions (at least that was the aim).
The night before, we chose a bunch of "must see" talks, and just filled in the rest of the time with other talks that were taking place before/after the same rooms. It ended up being that we just happened to be sitting in some pretty cool rooms! Although I'm not sure that it isn't just that ALL the talks are super interesting.
At lunch time, we had scheduled to meet Dr Kazuo Fujita from Kyoto University. He is one of the leading researchers in non-human visual illusions and has done extensive research with pigeons and chickens. We went to grab food with him and a bunch of his students who were at the conference as well (10 of us in total!). Turns out service in Cairns follows the easy, laid-back model..where we don't get our food before it's time to go back to the conference!!!
Actually, it was only an issue because we were in a bit of a rush and just didn't have the time to sit, relax, and enjoy the beautiful weather (and we were hungry of course). Tiffani had been scheduled to give her talk on a Diabetes Alert Dog project at 2:00pm but was told that day that she'd been bumped up to 1:45. So we ended up having 15 minutes less time for lunch.
It's Tuesday morning now and time to head off to the conference again. Hopefully the internet will be working tonight so I can actually have time to write about some of the cool stuff we've seen!
Monday, August 10, 2015
Day 0 - Arriving in Cairns
We've made it!
Almost didn't. Flying is hard - it was a bit of an exciting morning...but when is travelling ever easy?
Anyway, Cairns is beautiful. We arrived in the early afternoon and went for a nice walk along the promenade and had lunch by the water. The weather is so nice - warm with a sea breeze. I could stay here forever!
We're off to the conference this morning, excited to learn things!
Almost didn't. Flying is hard - it was a bit of an exciting morning...but when is travelling ever easy?
Anyway, Cairns is beautiful. We arrived in the early afternoon and went for a nice walk along the promenade and had lunch by the water. The weather is so nice - warm with a sea breeze. I could stay here forever!
We're off to the conference this morning, excited to learn things!
Tuesday, August 4, 2015
Warm weather, here we come!
It's here (almost)! I've been waiting all year (read 5 months) for this conference in Cairns, and now it's really about to happen! We are leaving on Sunday morning for an entire week in Queensland where it is WARM and SUNNY. I'm hoping to be very active in terms of blogging next week but of course this will depend on internet access...and evening activities. I'm sure I'll be learning a lot at the conference so I'd like to write about it - and share some cool experiences too.
It's been a bit of an odd week. We've just started getting participants training their own dogs for our study. It's a good feeling that all of these dog owners are so keen to volunteer for our studies, even when we are asking for 12 week commitments! I don't know if I would do something that... I also just found out that a lot of school admin stuff was supposed to have happened shortly after I enroled - but somehow never did. Hopefully now everything is finally on track and I can be less confused about what is expected of me and just get on with my PhD!
On to more exciting news, our two new PhD students are coming in September! Both of them are named Sarah. Sarah B. Sarah B with blonde hair. Oh dear...we'll have to figure something better out.
This week is going to fly by with everything that needs to be done before we fly away to Cairns (it sounds like it's pronounced CANS of soup, but like how Americans pronounce "cans", not how Australians pronounce "cans"...). Pronunciations are hard. That reminds me of a new thing I learned recently. I've only just discovered that 'sultanas' are raisins - but only because in Australia, Kelloggs makes Sultana Bran instead of Raisin Bran :)
It's been a bit of an odd week. We've just started getting participants training their own dogs for our study. It's a good feeling that all of these dog owners are so keen to volunteer for our studies, even when we are asking for 12 week commitments! I don't know if I would do something that... I also just found out that a lot of school admin stuff was supposed to have happened shortly after I enroled - but somehow never did. Hopefully now everything is finally on track and I can be less confused about what is expected of me and just get on with my PhD!
On to more exciting news, our two new PhD students are coming in September! Both of them are named Sarah. Sarah B. Sarah B with blonde hair. Oh dear...we'll have to figure something better out.
This week is going to fly by with everything that needs to be done before we fly away to Cairns (it sounds like it's pronounced CANS of soup, but like how Americans pronounce "cans", not how Australians pronounce "cans"...). Pronunciations are hard. That reminds me of a new thing I learned recently. I've only just discovered that 'sultanas' are raisins - but only because in Australia, Kelloggs makes Sultana Bran instead of Raisin Bran :)
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