Preperations

Summer has only begun and already I'm sitting around trying to figure out things for after summer has come to an end. Can't afford to dawdle, because it's too easy to sit back, relax, and boom! All the time you suddenly had is gone. Also, it's also common for unexpected events to occur that suddenly eat up all your free time.

I wouldn't be surprised if my family decided to take another month long trip to Asia again. This time my Dad has been hinting at going to Korea. Most of us are fairly hesitant because of North Korea being absolutely crazy. But that might change and we'll head somewhere else, who knows.

In the meantime, one of the best motivational messages I've taken to heart as of late is the following:

And so I'll begin my work today. Starting with planning for my academic future. At the moment I have 3 options I'm considering: Graduate studies in Psychology, Speech Pathology, or something in Business.

Unfortunately if I want to continue doing Psychology, I'll have to abandon my province, probably head to Saskatchewan. As I've mentioned before the budget cuts have NOT been kind to anyone. Psychology has lost several support staff and I highly doubt they can afford another graduate student.

Though we fared better than Sociology and Anthropology which had to fuse together to stay afloat.

Speech Pathology is another one in which I'll probably have to abandon my province for as well and also to Saskatchewan. Again, the program in my city is extremely competitive and I doubt my GPA can withstand the scrutiny. Seriously, the only benefit I have is that I'm male, and maybe they'll let me in because of how saturated the field is with women.

Or maybe they're all sexist and that's why there are so few men.

Though I'm not sure Speech Pathology is such a good option. It would require me to take more Linguistics and while it wasn't that bad, my friend's girlfriend is a Linguistics major and she had only one piece of advice for me:

"Linguistics is terrible. Look at these notes, look at them. Don't subject yourself to this.".

Ok, so what about Business? An MBA (Master's in Business Administration) requires that I write not only the GMAT but also have 2 years of experience working full-time. Unfortunately as much as I'd like a well-paying full-time job, I haven't been that lucky. But who knows, maybe I'll run into something so good that I won't want to head back to class in the Fall.

In the meantime, a BCOM (Bachelor's in Commerce) while only a second undergraduate degree, only needs me to take Econ 101 and 102. It's only 2 years long. AND that opens me up to all the beautiful internships in the field. And from what I've seen, the Business students have no end of awesome internships.

Something that Psychology failed me on.

 This is relevant to my interests.

So I guess I'll be aiming at taking Econ 101, Econ 102, maybe a higher level Linguistics course? Maybe another Psychology course for interests sake? I don't want to take more than 3 courses, but we'll see what happens.

But the course registration site is always really iffy on the weekends so I'll have to wait until Monday to try and sign up. In the meantime, I have my projects to work on. I know that I'm vague on the works in progress but it's because I don't enjoy talking about things that aren't completed or unsuccessful. It's a pride thing.

I know I keep saying things look like they're about to work (Project Derp is especially notorious for this) and it's true. They show promise, but they all still need a lot work still before I would consider it a success. I think the best analogy I can come up with is finally being able to properly boil a pot of pasta. Good for you! But you still have a ways to go until this becomes acceptable spaghetti carbenera.

So I'll keep working on my projects, online profiles, job hunts, and my two part-time jobs. Especially my projects. I want to have an update where I have more to talk about as opposed to "STILL WORKING ON IT".

Back to classes

Welp, the break could only last so long. And now we're back. Back to the school. Yay. No, really. I'm exploding with enthusiasm here. There's nothing I enjoy than pulling all-nighters and then falling asleep at the front of the class and then drooling on myself.

Not exactly my finest moment.

If you were Asian and male maybe you could be me.

I'm technically done. You know, now that I've got my degree and everything. Unfortunately, these days an undergraduate degree doesn't get you anywhere because nearly everyone has one. So that means we have to upgrade to a graduate degree.

And to do that, I need to do various per-requisite courses to even qualify for some of them. I need at least 4 more courses for Speech and Language Pathology. But taking into consideration what my prof said, maybe I should start looking into Marketing as well.

Which means taking some Economics courses.

This is my understanding of Economics.

I've also been looking into jumping provinces for grad school. But because my grades hover around the B level (as opposed to people with As who can go anywhere) I might have to go to Saskatchewan. For people who don't know the run-downs of the provinces of Canada, it's basically this:

British Columbia: Asians and the ocean.

Alberta: Oil and Canada's rednecks.

Saskatchewan: Flat lands and Native Americans.

Manitoba: Lakes or something?

Ontario: Capital of Canada and Niagra falls.

Quebec: Crazy French people.

Nova Scotia: Fish.

Prince Edward Island: Funny accents and potatoes.

Newfoundland: Fish and funny accents.

New Brunswick: More funny accents.

Yukon/Northwest Territories/Nunavut: Native Americans and cold.

Fellow Canadians may have deduced my home province based on these partially incorrect stereotypes.

In the meantime, I'll be taking Linguistics courses and a friend of mine looped me into a MWF Sociology course which killed my 4 day weekend. I don't even need this course, I really wanted a lax term but my parents kept hounding me claiming that unless my schedule was fuller I'd be wasting my time and my life. And so I caved in and added another course to my schedule.

Ian, this course better be the GPA booster you claim it is. I gave up my 4-day weekend for this.

An Unexpected Hiccup

On my checklist of things needed to get into Grad school was reference letters, and I needed 3. This wouldn't be a problem. I asked Patt, my Conservation Psychology prof, to write one for me and he was more than happy to. Though this was at the pub and we both had a bit to drink so maybe I'll send an email reminder later.

Next was one of my supervisors for my research project. He too was more than happy to oblige me. That's 2/3. So far so good.

And then I got to the Professor who I'd been doing research under for years. We'll call him Prof Cap.

And he told me no.

Ok, I might be exaggerating a bit here and I haven't given his explanation yet. See, he was than happy to write me one, until I told him I was trying to get into Speech and Language Pathology. Then he looked me in the eye and said, "Damian, I don't think my reference letter is going to help you get in. Your GPA isn't that competitive."

Ouch. Harsh but probably true.

Don't worry, there's more.

He goes on to tell me that he's written more than half a dozen reference letters over the last few years for students trying to get into the program. And only one got in, the one with the ~4.0 GPA. Remember that mine is at ~3.3.

Oh and it gets better. One of the people even did research with a SLP professor for a year and STILL didn't get in. If this isn't enough of an indicator that the SLP department (at least at my University) only cares about marks, I don't know what is. 

I mean, I'm fairly certain that knowing that a student can properly conduct research is a better indicator of a good grad student than, I don't know, an arbitrary number on a piece of paper. Just because you can memorize definitions from a book doesn't mean you can do things in real life.

Fairly certain that the department admins look like this.

That being said, ALL of the students my prof wrote reference letters for were women. Maybe I could stand a chance by being male? You think they'd give me a special exception? Hopefully?

Either way, Prof Cap had two pieces of advice for me. Either start applying to the SLP program at other Universities in hopes that they aren't as competitive, or start looking for a different graduate program to get into. I'm definitely going to start exploring these options, I need to make a back-up plan after finals.

Hmmm....

Oh, side note. Patt is also written at least 2 reference letters for students trying to get into the SLP program. And Prof Cap and I think we know what SLP is so popular/competitive. There's a huge demand for Speech Pathologists and it might have to do with the surge of autism in recent years. And we both think it's the new ADHD.

Autism is a real disorder, but whether or not the huge numbers of people being diagnosed with it are legitimate cases found due to better diagnostic methods, or helicopter parents being helicopter parents has yet to be determined.

The GRE

It's about time a proper post has been done. It's also a day late so my bad. I'm almost in the clear (for this week) but earlier this week was not so much fun for me. Mainly for one reason, the Graduate Record Examinations or GRE. If you want to get into any English speaking graduate school for your Masters degree, you're probably want to take this exam.

So while we're on topic, let's take a look at what this exam entails. The trials and tribulations of this stupid test that requires you to pay a third party company nearly $200 so you have a chance of advancing your education.

I was forced to to do this if I wanted to have a chance at Speech and Language Pathology.

Can't say I was pleased.

There are multiple variations of this exam. I only wrote the Revised (aka. general) version so I'm only going to be talking about that one. But I know friends who wrote Physics or Biology orientated versions so those exist too.

Basically, 7 parts: 2 writing, 2 reading, 2 math and the fake part. You have half an hour each of those parts and you can't go back once the time is up. They're all pretty self-explanatory with the exception of the "fake" part. In order to test new questions for future exams, they throw in an extra reading or math section that's worth nothing BUT looks identical to the other parts.

You're wasting time, energy, and effort on a worthless section. You're paying to help them screw over future students. That's so nice of them.

Thanks a lot, jerks.

Writing is writing. Nothing special here. Here's a topic, argue for or against it.

The reading sections consist of reading, vocabulary testing and sometimes both. Reading passages and answering questions is fairly standard, it's the vocab that's annoying. So for example, you'll be given a passage like "Abraham Lincoln was known for his _________ personality." and then you have to pick two words from a list that not only make sense with the sentence, but mean the same thing.

So your word bank will be like "GREGARIOUS. EQUIVOCATE. VICARIOUS. PROSAIC. EGREGIOUS. BLINKERED." Also, you have to get both words right to get 1 point. No half marks here.

Math is math. High school material really. You know, Train A is traveling 50km/h and Train B leaves in the opposite direction at twice the speed, Circle D has a circumference of 9x, determine the diameter of the square inside it, a company's value goes up 10%, how much more funding does Department X get compared to Department Y?

Derp derp.

So comes test day. You'd think I was going to prison or something. Photo ID required, picture taken, dumped in a small room with cameras observing me at all times. They really take this test seriously.

The writing portion is easy. If there's anything I can do it's pull a coherent mass of words out of my butt and have it sound amazing. The first hour is uneventful. Actually I'll be honest with you, the whole 3-4 hours was uneventful.

I finished most of the sections with time to spare and check over previous answers. Now, the thing about the GRE is how it grades your exam. The writing is marked separately out of 6. The reading and math are out of 50 marks and are converted into a score out of 170. Only the grade out of 170 matters. So you could get 27/50 on the math part and that could translate into 146/170.

ME NO MATH GOOD.

The best thing about the GRE is that at the end, they give you your score for the reading and math portions. The writing gets sent for marking and that mark comes 3 weeks later.

I got 156 and 159/170. The average varies from 145-150.

The funny thing is that the GRE study guides have schedules for people to study months or weeks in advance. I started studying for this thing half a week beforehand.

Not bad for half a week of studying.

Halfway Point

It's about halfway through the term. And I have a general feeling about how well I've done this term:

Aging: ~B
Cognitive: ~B
Conservation: ~A
Social Influence: ~B

This is roughly a B+  or 3.3. That's generally how well I've done in my previous terms. But at the moment there's only one word that rings in my mind.

As I've mentioned before, I'm trying to get into Speech and Langauge Pathology. However, it appears the program has gotten a lot more competitive over the years. If you want to stand a chance, you should have a GPA of 3.7 or an A-.

So as you can see, a 3.3 isn't going to be good enough to get me in. I don't expect myself to get A's in all my courses, but at least an A- so I have a fighting chance.

I have to kick things up a notch.

Bam!

All hope is not lost yet. I still need to write the GRE at the end of the month and I really should start studying for it soon. I also should start looking to work or volunteer with something SLP related. Not only will it give me vital experience, but I could use a second job. Especially next term when my schedule will be even more light.

My only saving grace for my GPA at the moment is apparently they only care about your grades for the last 2 years that you were in school. In other words, with a bit more work my disastrous 3 year grades will suddenly become invalid, like they never existed at all.

Seriously though, if that year even touches the rest of my GPA I'll drop to a B-.

Replace Homer with some bad grades and you get the idea.

My last hope is that a lot of my remaining marks for my courses are in the form of papers and projects. Wish me luck on them, I need all I can get.

Status Report

Hello hello. Again, I apologize because I think this is the longest I've gone without commenting on another blog. And at this rate I'm going to continue breaking records until midterms are done. Actually, because of one midterm but we'll get to that in a moment.

Thank you to everyone who has stuck with me so far. Much appreciated.

Online friends are the best. I love you all.

In good news, my lung has (mostly) recovered I think. Just a brief case of things being worse than normal. I honestly can't tell if poor sleeping causes my lung to collapse or the collapsing of my lung taxes my body so much that I'm more tired than usual. Or maybe it's sudden waves of stress. That can causes both so let's just blame University.

Speaking of University. Midterms are slowly being written. Social Influences and Aging psychology has been done. I'm not sure if it's me but the midterms feel harder. I'm doing alright in them but I really want to be hitting A's and A-'s to increase my chances of getting into Speech Pathology. Conservation psychology DOES NOT have a midterm which I am so grateful for.

And then.

And then we have Cognitive psychology.

Yeah... I really, really, really wish I could have crammed a different Science course into my schedule because I am getting torn apart in this class. It's not that the prof is bad, he's enthusiastic, knows the material, he even wrote the textbook and gave it to us free online. Anyone who saves me a few hundred dollars is a friend of mine.

That being said, the material is still very dense, very hard to get through, and the weekly quizzes are kicking my butt. Let alone what the midterm will do to it. It's all written, no multiple choice. The last time I was required to write anything for an exam was years ago. All that training from High School is gone. I am not looking forward to writing a short essay on comparing the theories of how the brain may comprehend and understand the world.

I guess I shouldn't have assumed that a higher level Cognitive psychology course would be similar to the lower level ones. Or maybe I've been studying for this class all wrong. I know a girl in my class who is getting by quite well just by reading the notes. I've been doing the equivalent of slamming the textbook PDFs into my eyes until something breaks.

I still have a day to try and save myself. Wish me luck, I'll see everyone Friday.

Speech and Language Pathology

I've alluded to the Master's program that I've been eying for a while, and now that I've done a bit of looking into it, I think I can talk about it with a bit of confidence. I'm going to be trying to get into Speech and Language Pathology (as if the title of this post wasn't a dead giveaway).

It's a type of medical therapy and I basically help people with speaking problems. This can range from kids with mental or medical problems, or people who have suffered brain injuries in accidents.

I'm a type of doctor right?

To be honest, I'm really not too picky with what I do. As long as I'm helping someone and it's somehow related to Psychology. I originally got the suggestion from a fellow Psych classmate to enter the field and decided to go to a recent conference held by the department to get a better idea of what it was like.

First thing I notice, there is A LOT of women in Speech Pathology. I mean, there are a lot of women in Psychology to begin with, but it's even disproportionate there. Also, very few Asians. Though it could possibly be because maybe male/Asian speech pathologists don't like conferences? Either way, there was about 100 people there, a dozen males and a dozen Asians.

And only one Asian male, yours truly.

I was there mostly to figure out what I needed to have done in order to get into the program next Fall. First off, I need to do the GRE or Graduate Record Examination. It's a standard test for anyone wanting to get into Graduate studies in many English speaking areas. I'm only required to do the standard one but I've heard a lot of horror stories about the exam in general so not looking forward to that.

I'm also going to need to take Linguistics in the Winter, also haven't heard that many great stories about Linguistics. So fun times with that as well. I didn't think I'd have to keep taking courses after I had gotten my degree but what do I know?

Time to buy more of these.

That is assuming that I get in of course. There were a lot of people at that conference and it's hard to say how many were people trying to get into the program. I'd estimate maybe half of them? There are only 40 spots open a term and it's fairly competitive.

Apparently the minimum GPA requirement changes each year (depending on the students that apply and what not) but last year the minimum was 3.7. I'm sitting at a 3.3, maybe a 3.4? I'm hoping to use the grades from the next two terms to bump it up.

Or maybe they'll let me in because I'm technically a minority in this program. Yay for being the rare Asian male.

If anyone has any suggestions or helpful tips that be great. I think TriGirl is also a Speech Pathologist? And I am vaguely aware of other Bloggers off getting their Masters.

I hope I get in, it be nice having some form of direction once again.