Grade Grubber

I got my grades back... looking good! (er, if I do say so myself). Fairly pleased with all my marks except stupid Stats. The exam was very difficult indeed and I dropped two letter grades (!) from the midterms. Not cool. I've decided not to bother contesting it or following it up... if I do well on my dissertation I will do well overall, and I've already got my PhD funding. So no point in quibbling now. Man, though, if stats hadn't mucked it up I'd be gunning for straight As. Even Cognition and Brain, the worst class I've had since, er,... Cognitive Psychology in undergrad (how ironic is it that I've decided I like cognitive neuroscience? I've always detested the lectures) came out all right in the end, as I surprised myself by doing relatively well in the final. (The confusing, misspelled, badly-written final). Maybe they dropped some questions!

Bangor's kind of nice with all the undergrads gone. The other day I had a 20-minute conversation with a nice man called Bill who appears to love people and be desperately bored. (He told me he's 78). All the shop assistants are a lot nicer now too. Such a strange town - it's like two different places when school's in and when it's out. I'm enjoying the out, but will be very, very happy to see my fencers again.

Ooh, and last but definitely not least - my mate Jo got a job! She'd applied for loads and finally got an interview in London. However, she was nervous about interviewing so I sat down with her on Monday and spent hours going over E-Prime (experiment-writing program) and giving her mock interview questions. She's got all the qualifications but tended to answer questions with one word and not really sell herself... so we worked on that, she went down to London, ACED THE INTERVIEW and got the job! I am so pleased. It's a six-month post as a research assistant on a project with alcoholics, just the sort of thing Jo will shine at and useful experience. Yay!