Tuesday, March 10, 2009

the day after

I stayed up until 3 am last night playing SimCity. It's just so addicting: just a few more commercial areas... just until I get to N residents... just until I balance the city budget... OMG it's late!

Oops. I still made it to school at a respectable hour but didn't have a highly productive day. I sat down this afternoon to figure out what exactly I need to focus on next. There's plenty to do, but none of it is as pressing as prelims were.

I had an impromptu meeting with Herb today. He said he was very impressed with how I did in my prelims. He said I handled the questions well; the fact that I didn't freak out and was comfortable for the most part made it more like a conversation. Even though Leo asked me questions about critters that I answered completely wrong, I explained my train of thought (which was logical). I actually changed my answers mid-conversation for more than one question, but I guess it demonstrated my ability to think flexibly through problems rather than sticking rigidly to one perspective or answer.

The questions asked by my committee members brought up so many additional factors that I hadn't even considered (and I've considered a lot). Ecology sure is messy. I won't be able to incorporate all of them into my proposal for NSF (nor would that be a good or compelling idea), but I'll likely take them into consideration for my experimental design or additional data collection in the field.

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