Monday, February 09, 2004

Psychology + Experiments + Lab Reports

I've just finished my 5th lab report - the longest ever - 15 pages in 3 days. I'm impressed by myself. Hopefully, I'll get a better mark. The markers are ever stingy. She said the last report was "excellent", "ideas and arguments presented clearly and logically," and it showed "a good understanding of the material", but only gave me a meagre 69.

I hit 75 once. But when will I ever hit 80? 90? 100?

Ha... Maybe never. Maybe I'm expecting too much. 100 marks for an academic essay is impossible. I'm just dreaming. Strict markers here seldom give more than 70. Somemore, its prose based. Like essays.

But whatever, marks are not that important anyway. High marks just make me feel good for a short while, then no more.

I'm tired now after spending so much time and reading so many journals just to write that one single report.

Sometimes, I get so engrossed in it that I lose myself in the labyrinth of psychology terms, theories, hypotheses, statistics, chi-squares, wilcoxon tests etc. To such an extent that I don't know what I am writing. And then I've to re-read my sentences and my stats analyses over and over again.

But I've gotten so used to writing up my lab experiments now, though I've only went through 10 labs and written 5 reports. It's enjoyable though its a torture to do the research and the countless number of readings. I don't want to be a participant only. I want to design my experiments, I want to conduct the experiment myself, I want to test subjects (sounds cool), I want to learn hypnosis, I want to do developmental psych... I want to learn everything...

Just because the human mind and behaviour are simply fascinating and simply captivating.

I'm so intrigued by my course now that I'm considering doing research or PhD in Psych now, though I'm only in my 1st year and I've trouble catching up with my readings even for the BSc.

Am I ambitious? Ha.

But I'm lazy.

And I know I can't do PhD, at least not in the next 10 years.

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