It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything on the blog, but mostly that’s because everything has felt pretty normal and not-blog worthy. But I suppose it’s time for an update (and maybe things have been more interesting in the absence of blog posts than I had thought).
The first order of blog-making business is probably just an update on the lab in general. Things in the lab have been running smoothly, for the most part, though the rate of sign-ups on SONA (the online recruiting system) has been going down a bit over the past few weeks. As I write this blog, I have 59 participants, so it’s hard to say whether or not I’ll reach that goal of 96 participants by the end of my time here on June 29. We will see. I’m still optimistic that we’ll get pretty close to 96, and my hope is to at least make it in the 90’s range.
I’m also prepping for my presentation at Dr. McQueen’s lab meeting next Wednesday. It’s exciting, but also a little nerve-wracking at times. As I was reviewing the literature and typing up my background information in the slides, I was reminded of how much of the research I’m citing was conducted here in Nijmegen. On one hand, it might be good because maybe a lot of people will already know what I’m talking about and it’ll be easy to follow even if I botch the presentation a little bit. On the other hand, if I say something wrong, it might not take very long for everyone to figure it out. While most of the time I feel like I have a pretty good handle on the subject, at other times I feel a lot more self-conscious about how much I really know. It’s one thing to be confident about my study and the content surrounding it when I’m explaining it to family, friends, and participants, because there I’m usually talking to people who really have no baseline knowledge whatsoever. I could be lying to them completely and they’d be none the wiser. It’s a lot more frightening to talk to people who definitely know a lot more than you. But we’ll see how it goes. It’ll probably (and most likely definitely) be better than I’m expecting, since I feel like all presentations are better than the pre-presentation butterflies. But if it goes poorly… Have mercy on me, the inexperienced and less-educated undergrad. 🙂
The bike I bought that I thought was lost forever
Well, at this point I’ve already shared my deepest fears with the world, so I might as well tell a story to embarrass myself further. It’s probably common knowledge that everyone in the Netherlands loves to ride bikes. When I got here, I naturally thought “Everyone else has a bike, so I’ll get one too.” And so I bought a bike the first Saturday that I got here. But when Monday morning came, and I was fully prepped and excited to ride my bike once more, I couldn’t find it anywhere. Where did it go, you might ask? Well, for over a month I had no idea. I thought it was lost to the world, and to myself. But last week, I looked over my receipt for the bike and had a revelation: I couldn’t find my bike because I was looking for the wrong bike. What I remembered buying was a blue Cortina-brand bicycle, but according to my receipt I had actually bought a gray Gazelle-brand bicycle. Long story short, don’t ask me to be a detective or a witness for anything anytime soon, because apparently I’m not the greatest at remembering details…
Looks like I did have more to blog about than I had thought, and I feel like I still have so much to say! Before I end this post, I’ll add in one more fun tid-bit: Last week, I got dinner with some people from the church I’ve been going to around here and I learned a new word: Gezelligheid. I can’t pronounce it really quite yet, but they first told me it means something like “coziness” and then told me that really they can’t explain it. It will be a mystery to me then. But I thought that was something fun to share! As for everything else, I suppose this means you’ll be hearing again from me in the near future, and I won’t be taking another blog-posting hiatus for a while.