psycholinguist

Get up, eat breakfast, go to class for between 1 and 5 hours, have a snack (optional), go to a meeting, think about working on thesis, work on thesis (optional), go buy groceries (optional), get back, have dinner, read a bit, do homework, surf the 'net, and go to bed sometime between 9:30 PM and 4:00 AM depending on a) how tired I am and how long I spent on both of the previous items on this list.

I wasn't into too much TV as a kid, but I loved the Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego? cartoon show. Not the game-show, but the one on Fox with Acme detectives Zack and Ivy. I downloaded pretty much the whole series off of the Internet a few years ago and put it on some CD-Rs, which I still watch occasionally. Was also a big fan of Gargoyles. Didn't revisit it until recently, but once I did I found it was just as compelling as I recalled. I shouldn't've been as surprised as I was to learn that the creator was a former English-teacher with a keen interest in mythology.

Fantastic Contraption: really cool hands-on engineering game. Lots of ways to beat each level, but requires a fair bit of creative thinking. Questionable Content: witty, character-driven comic-strip, brightly illustrated. GraphJam: silliness with graphs and charts. Indexed: more silliness with graphs and charts. Totally Looks Like: funny comparisons.

Congrats!

So far I'm definitely visiting two. There's one more I'd visit if I got in. Not sure about a fourth.

Seattle is a great city, but if you move there you need to be prepared for hugely dreary winters. They're awful. Sometime in October or November it clouds over and begins to rain; this continues until about mid-April or May, and then it dries up for the summer and autumn. I'm barely exaggerating. In January you've pretty much forgotten what sunlight looks like. That said, there isn't much snow, there's LOTS of greenery and environmentalism (Seattle once built a park on top of a freeway tunnel), the scenery is just stunning, and their main public library is, without a doubt, the weirdest building I've ever been inside. New York City is, in a word, intense. Every other car is a taxi; people are just waiting for you to hurry up already (example: if you take a few seconds to do up your bag after making a purchase in a store, the cashier and most of the people in line behind you will check their watches very conspicuously); and by the end of a single day there you're convinced that a 20-storey building is tiny. Of course, the culture there is hard to beat, but it's a pretty overwhelming place. I consider myself a city-person, but I, personally, wouldn't want to live in New York. It'd be too much for me. San Diego is lovely. I'm still trying to decide whether to go there myself. Some people don't like the fact that there really aren't any seasons there. Heard mostly negative things about Baltimore, though I've never been there myself.

Agreed!

Me too. I didn't get around to withdrawing my applications to several places, and I should have because now I'm starting to feel overwhelmed. The whole 'linguistics or psychology?' thing is also an omnipresent overhead question-mark.

Understood! I think I'd do the same if I weren't one of them. Heh. (It'd be worse if I'd capitalised my username, though.)

Whether this has anything to do with the recent surge of popularity being enjoyed by the phenomenon most commonly labelled 'the LOLcat' has yet to be determined but is currently under intensive study by several rival teams of researchers.

Goodness! That's awful!

w00t!

Must agree.

I've also been through this twice. I'd wait it out. They probably didn't actually offer you a place; grad-schools tend to be pretty clear about that. But they're curious about you, and they want you to know about their programs: good signs!

Heh. Sounds like the build-up to a reunion-episode of a long-cancelled TV-show! (Have I mentioned that I'm a hyphen-addict?) Hang in there! (Also, is it just me or do Dinali and danil kind of look alike?)

Didn't they do some exchange program with the University of Michigan? I recall it having its very own monkey pit.

Congratulations!

To do in the next ten minutes: 1) Send two emails that I got onto the computer in order to write. 2) Get off TheGradCaf

I haven't heard anything yet.

Yay! Congrats!

* laughs * True!

It's not about being one of the smartest people in your school. It's about having shown the department in question that you'd be a good match for them. Be flattered, tour the place, consider whether to go, and then make your decision. Don't be intimidated; they like you!

When I get really overworked, I'm more in danger of falling into a pattern of working compulsively and being completely unable to relax than one of being unable to do anything. It's extremely productive and absolutely no fun whatsoever.

31. Learn a new language. (Okay, I'm biased. I admit it.) 32. Start work on that novel you've always wanted to write. 33. Organise your computer-files. ALL of them. 34. Make cookies. Repeatedly if need be. 35. Take up a new hobby. Anything. (How about knitting while bungee-jumping?)

The DUS here claims that Berkeley isn't renowned for its linguistics program, so either he's right and the survey's out-of-date, or the survey's right and he's out-of-date.