cog psych on break

What do you do?
People ask me this question every time I introduce myself as a researcher.

What kind of research do you do?
Of course, people are interested in what I research.

Hm… (nodding)… interesting.
People always say this and do this (nodding) when I say I am doing research in cognitive psychology.

No more question does not mean that people understand what I do. It means that people cannot make sense out of “cognitive psychology.”

Cog what psychology?
Some people are brave and honest to ask me this follow-up question. Hey, it is perfectly fine to admit that you never heard of cognitive psychology or you never thought “cognitive” is a word.
After I introduce the concept of cognitive psychology, people will prefer theoretical physics as an easier subject. Which I agree. Human mind is complex.

How much do you earn?
The amount is embarrassing. I am not a clinical psychologist, which usually is my answer as an indirect answer that I am not going to earn a great lot to buy a loft overseeing the Central Park in NYC.

And that’s it. Questions stop right there. It means people do care how much I make and feel sympathetic to my career.

Just paid my apartment deposit, which is more than what I currently get from the graduate school, and about half of what I am going to earn as a postdoc researcher.

Perhaps I should change gear a bit to study decision making and thinking, and I would give people a scientific reason for my decision of being a poor scientist.

Oh come on. It is my life. Mind your own business, people.

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I have been sitting at my desk, pretending working, sipping coffee, reading blogs, listening to fun conversations between Rose and Toby, for 4 days after Spring Break.

Obviously, I am still in a taking-a-break mood. I do want to do something productive to my research career. Things are like running experiments and reading journal articles and writing journal articles. However, life is not as easy as everyone thinks. The IRB lady has not extended my IRB number, which expired 6 days ago. I requested to extend it on Jan 1st this year, but somehow the IRB office has been soooo busy that they simply could not do it faster. Talking about this, Rose complains the IRB lady asked her to send pictures of lab equipments. How blizzard, they never ask pictures of any of our equipments before. It is not like that once the pictures are taken, the equipments are proved safe. Anyway, Rose gets very annoyed and decides to take a walk to her boyfriend's office.

I wish I could do such a thing: go somewhere as I get annoyed. go to someone who can always lighten me up, anytime I want.

Instead, I sit here, waiting for my 2 o'clock appointment. It is a girl who is interested in our department and wants to become a grad student in Fall. Hey, welcome, soon-to-be cognitive psychologist. Well, in her case, she would prefer to be called a psycholinguist, meaning that a person who study linguist processing in cognitive psychology. I admire psycholinguists but I cannot honestly suggest her to come here. The reason is very personal. Since I do want to last long and well in Psychology, I cannot say the reason out loud here in public (as if all psychologists read my blog.) Don't get it wrong. I do like Penn State. I do like Pennsylvania when its winter does not go longer than 3 months. Let me put it in this way: you need to be very passionate in your work in order to devote your time of 5 years to finish the program. AND you need to be very lucky to work with people who make you feel lucky.

For example, I have been loving my passion in cognitive psychology. I am lucky to have Toby and Cathleen as my mentors.

There seems no single word to sum up what I am doing. How to combine "psychologist specialized in visual attention"? I need to learn German, I guess. How about visuopsychologist? Nah... feels like a psychologist who can see. Psychovisionary? Sounds psycho.

Never mind. I don't like the idea of being labeled, anyway.

Check out this comic site of PhD. Now I do have a lo000oot of time to have great time there.
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php