Education for the Nation

Well I am fresh from participating in a psychology study through McGill for extra credit for one of my courses. It was such a good experience that I felt the need to share it with you. I won't go into all the details but it was about how speech perception affects speech production. Anyways, when I had finished, the experiment was explained to me and I just thought it was the coolest thing.

This was a big deal for me because recently I've been contemplating applying to do a joint honours program. This would (to my understanding) require me to be involved in some sort of research, which I have been very apprehensive about. I had written research off as something I was not interested in and would not be good at.

However, today everything just sort of seemed to fall into place in my head. All of my courses seem to be encouraging careers, or at least involvement, in research and I have been frustrated by that in the past. But after participating in this study, my understanding of research was completely transformed. I suppose I already knew that even if I don't want a career in research it could still be relevant to what I want to do and that I could learn a lot from the experience, but today I actually came to believe it!

I've also started to tutor a grade 9 student in math. Last week he was complaining about how his homework doesn't relate to anything in the real world and I was so excited to inform him that in fact it does relate and if he continues with school, he can focus in more on things he really enjoys, but that it's important to have a general knowledge to get started!

So all this to say I am super excited about my education right now! I have so much learning to look forward to in the next few years! I realize I sound like a major nerd (which to some extent I am), but I am also writing this as a reminder to my future, in-the-middle-of-exams grumpy self!

As a side note, I had a wonderful Skype chat with Clo last weekend which reminded me of the children's CD she introduced me to called  Emilie Jolie. I will be listening to it non-stop over the next little while.

So, happy studying to my fellow students! Thirteen days until Reading Week!

Explanation: a "wug" is the mascot for the society of linguistics undergrads at McGill (SLUM), and is  commonly used in studies with young children to test if they know how to pluralize words. Thus it fits my current enthusiasm for linguistics, research, and learning!