Keep up with me, Joneses
I downloaded Bouncing Souls' You're So Rad and Randy Travis' Forever and Ever, Amen for a compilation to send him away with.
There's something I love about borrowing his "Citadel Alumni" Tacoma (2-wheel drive: he plans on staying in the South where it don't snow and he's not the "muddin" type) because I used to dream of owning a truck when I was a teenager.
Of course, back then I wanted a full-size Dodge Ram. A red one.
But I love the raised chasis of a truck. I also love the lowered one of a sports car. But I'm totally bored with the midrange height of a sedan.
So the General is going to be back from the Mid East sometime in May and this will warrant a trip since Mike hasn't seen him since November. It's really cool to think I'd get to meet his Daddy. Mike's mama lives near Harrisburg, PA - which is only about four hours from NYC - so I'm hoping the time and money make it possible for us to swing by Manhattan.
You know, just swing by.
My dear Misfit-reader asked about what things it is I'm up to my ass in here at IU, so I'll refresh all ya'll:
I'm in a joint PhD program in general linguistics and cognitive science. The former is my primary department and the latter is the "angle" with which I approach linguistics.
Most linguists are concerned with production of speech (though it should be noted that this particular program is geared towards either (a) specific languages, or (b) theoretical analyses, anything else is handled by the Speech and Hearing Sciences or Applied Linguistics programs), but in the cognitive science track we are concerned with how the production reflects the perception and processing of input (which is essentially semantically-encoded output from another speaker or the environment). Cognitive scientists fool around with neural models and artificial intelligence a lot, too, which is why I'm in a Math & Logic class this semester.
Both fields are extremely broad and scantilly defined and lend themselves to wads of further research.
Research: I'm getting started in JM's lab working with aquisition. This is my favorite part of language and cognition - because I love children and how perfect a machine they are from the instant their eyes and ears start detecting their surroundings (we're talking pre-natal), and because adult cognition is built ontop of such studies.
Yesterday I observed him testing a child's preference of interpretations for an ambiguous sentence that had three plausible definitions ("The boys are holding two balloons"). JM explained to me beforehand that children and adults tend to prefer a different interpretation, and this kid consistently proved his prediction.
Plus she was cute as hell and smart as a whip.
When I graduate I really don't know for certain what I want to do besides being a professor and a mother.
The idea of doing life-long research and publishing is appealing.
So is teaching at a private university (like where I graduated from) and perhaps becoming the chair of a department.
So is moving to the South, raising a family, running a record-store and writing novels.
The most important thing to me right now is finishing this degree, though. I consider myself a linguist regardless of this degree, and the more I learn the more I feel my *own* ideas spreading roots and making discoveries. Also, I'm in a community of people who love what I love.
Heather is a Slavic linguist.
Ashley is a phonologist-linguist.
And Amelia is a evolutionary plant biologist scientist with a lab and we don't completely understand it.
Those are my three girls which make up my "posse" and it's cool that one is in another department because Ashely and I both now have boyfriends named Mike who study microbiology. We met them at a biology party and we were "cool" because we were the two chicks none of the boys had ever seen before.
(Rules of grad-school dating are: never date an undergrad, and NEVER date in your department.)
But my Michael is going to MUSC to study dentistry.
DMD - PhD
That's what asitwere says we should have on the license plate of our first car.
Or truck.
Summer is almost here and though I'm completely overwhelmed with work to do, I'm in love and I'm where I want to be and though it kills me to know he'll be gone soon I'm thrilled to know I found him and that we're on our right paths.
