welcome back

Sigh. I guess it's time to update the blog. I've been holding off until grades came out but apparently Skidmore decided to lie to me and NOT post grades a week after school ended. Anyway... I haven't really had anything special happen to me lately. Well, not since the last post anyway. I've just been reading (A LOT), studying for GREs (A LOT), and working (not so much). There just isn't enough for me to do at work. I saw the amount of reading I'm gonna have to do for Conflict Resolution.... Shoot me, shoot me NOW!!!! There's a whole brick plus 7 books. I ordered two of the books off amazon since they were cheaper than at the SkidShop and one came in already. I started reading it and lemme tell you.... it is BO-RING. It's about how mediation came to be a field. I got through half of chapter one and was like I'm gonna fail this class. I can't even get through one reading when I have nothing better to do. When I have better things to do (like work on my senior sem project :D) how am I gonna focus on this boring book (or any of the boring readings I may have to read)?!?! Man-o-man. I can't wait to start working on my senior sem project. I've been working with two data sets this summer and I'm not gonna lie, I'm SO stoked for both of them. One has a little over a half a million cases while the other has a little over 500..... Jee I wonder which data set I'm working with lol. But I get to watch the latter of the two grow and I get to collect data as well as analyze and put them into SPSS. This is like primary data I'm working with!!! I'm pretty sure everyone else is working with secondary data for their project so that's why I'm going with the secondary data, plus there's more to work with. So let me tell you about it...

It's data about inmates in the U.S. Basically it tells me their basic demographics, what kind of crime they committed, how long their sentence length is, and who has gone to jail or prison before. I've been playing around with it for a little bit and I gotta tell you.... there are a handful of people who have committed a murder and are in prison for less than a year!!!! How scary is that?! OK granted most of my crime knowledge is coming from 10 seasons of CSI... but still, if someone I loved was murdered, I'd want the murderer behind bars a lot longer than a year. Another "fun" yet so not surprising fact: Drug possession and trafficking are the two most frequent, non-violent crimes people go to prison for. Go America.... I can't wait until I get to pick a topic and start formulating a presentation for this seminar. I'm already inspired. I'm learning lots of new terminologies for this data set.... like differences between jail and prison, murder and manslaughter, burglary and robbery.... you know, stuff like that. It makes you really wonder about the safety of your home while you sleep. It's even scarier when you do what I do: work with the data set and then watch either Pretty Little Liars or CSI alone with the lights off.... remind me why I do this to myself again...?? My upstairs neighbors like to freak me out because they're three guys living together and know I get scared easily. One walks super heavily above my bedroom and then one of his roommates knock on my door randomly. They're super fun to hang out with during the day when I don't have to work, but they're mean to me at night :P

My supervisor, Joe from Res Life, and scary Alyssa took me to lunch yesterday. They're a fun crew to hang out with but I feel weird being like 5-9 years younger than them and eating lunch at pizza hut together . I want friends to hang out with!!! Maria, hurry up and get your butt to Skidmore so we can have our wine and oregano date :D I'm off from work for the weekend so I'm pretty sure I'm gonna have a great weekend of reading my oh so wonderful mediation book... My reward for finishing this book will be starting Burned :) I finished Tempted today and I'm incredibly stunned by what happened. I can't wait to start my next pleasure book!!!! And then after that one I get to work my way through the next series.... aka Pretty Little Liars ;) I wanna know what happens next in the tv series and I figured I could read the books to find out.... but I have a lot to get through before I can start those books. LAME! Oh well, at least it's something for me to do for the next two weeks.... I say two weeks because in three.... I START SCHOOL!!!! WHOOOOO HOOOOOO I'M A SENIOR AND I CANNOT WAIT TO GRADUATE IN 9 SHORT MONTHS!!!!!!

Ok now that that's out of my system.... I'm done for a while. Nothing really interesting is happening. I'll let you know about my Psych grade when it comes out :D Until then... Laters!