my life is like a fucking rollercoaster lately, what with the "am i going to finish? YES! no. YES! maybe? no. ABSOLUTELY!" bullshit. i swear. the day, or maybe 2 days, after i wrote that last bit, about The Plan? well, i then found out that the nice production data that i thought i had? that was going to be my only nice data? since i had the confusing comprehension data with the funny bump? well, it's not so nice. turns out i screwed up when i designed the experiment, and there's a big confound. somehow, i made it so that for the two critical experimental conditions, only one verb from each class was run, instead of both. it doesn't matter if you don't get what i'm talking about, suffice to say that the results as they stand just say that "show" has a higher double object preference than "offer" and "give has a higher one than "bring." which is NOT INTERESTING. at least, not to my line of research.

so i was crushed. CRUSHED. my only good experiment, that took me the entire academic year to run, and the results are useless. i was in the blackest of holes, thinking that it was over, that there was no way i could run more subjects in time (since, let me remind you again, it has taken 9 months to run the ones i've got), and that left me with only the screwy comprehension experiment with the funny bump. not funny ha-ha, either. funny unexplainable.

that was thursday, 5pm. on friday at 1 i had my committee meeting, where i was supposed to be proposing my Plan, and convincing my committee that it would work.

so at the meeting on friday, my advisor had me start out by explaining the motivation for my research, then the comprehension experiment, then the production experiment. of course, all went well til we got to the part where i had to 'fess up about the confound. i couldn't bring myself to do it, so i had my advisor tell them what i had done. they reacted better than i thought they would, and said that i could work like hell and run 16 more subjects really really fast, on the flipped version of the experiment (so the new 16 subjects would run on the conditions that didn't get run the first time, and the experiment would be "between-subjects" which isn't ideal, but hey, what part of my research is?).

so there's an updated Plan.

part 1--this week: to finish grading exams.

part 2--done by end of may: write-up of the comprehension experiment with the funny bump.

part 3--to do concurrently with parts 1 and 2: run 16 subjects on the revised production experiment. also, dig up old data on active/passive sentences where the main effect was that english speakers read from left to right (take me out for beers sometime and i'll explain. but it really is that boring, i swear) and see if, once the reading-left-to-right effect is partialed out, if there's any hints of other tiny effects that are more like what i was looking for.

part 4: analyze data from completed production experiment and write it up.

part 5: fit bresnan et al.'s dative alternating production model to my production data, to see if it can predict the results i got.

part 6: write up background literature review and dissertation's discussion and conclusion sections, after i know what it is that i'm discussion and concluding. reminder that lit review is supposed to be "rich and thorough" to make up for me not having any actual meaningful experimental results, which is usually what one is supposed to have for a dissertation in the sciences. feh. due date: december 2005.

part 7--january 2006: reward for me. either a month-long vacation or, if that is not possible (hopefully because i'm starting work as a foreign service officer), a nice gift to myself. perhaps a pelikan demonstrator piston-filled fountain pen, or any other pelikan fountain pen because i so lust after one, with an accompanying wide selection of inks,

january seems like a really long way away.

on another topic, remind me to give my 15 year-old daughter this column for her birthday, should i ever have a 15 year-old daughter.