Did I say this was gonna be fun?

Hmm... well the oh-so-cool classes are turning out to be a major grind. My Masters level Law & Ethics class involved lots of philosophy discussion and figuring out what we believed. We tried to predict what areas would push hot buttons for us and plan for what we would do when it happened in the middle of a session etc. THIS class is all about reading the BOP ethics code and discussing the legal details of expert testimony and so on. Ugh! There is a whole class in being an Expert Witness later on in the program so somehow I didn't expect so much of that here. It's all useful and important but DRY... He has us paraphrasing the entire Ethics Code in a personalized manual, which I am sure will teach me loads, but putting my hands to the keyboard to do it is like pushing identical poles of a magnet together.

Then there's the Research Methods class. It's actually better than I expected since it's all about formulating our dissertations, but the CITIS course on the law and ethics of doing research with human subjects is about as exciting as the Law class. Come to think of it, why not stick it in there, as long as we're yawning anyway?

Family therapy should be fantastic; I have one of my favorite teachers in the world, whom I had back when I was doing the prereq prep for my masters, and who is in large part responsible for my going on this far in school. Unfortunately the cohort personality fuss is making it painfully uncomfortable and for the first time in my life I don't want to speak up in class. Same thing for Cognitive testing, which is absolutely fascinating (we have a heavy hitter of a Neuropsych person for a prof) but full of nasty stinging undercurrents. I'm just about ready to grab some of these children and bash their heads together. I feel as if I'm back in Jr High for fuck's sake!

My ailing parents are, well, ailing and my sister and I are negotiating heavy waters trying to stay in synch on taking care of them. Thankfully we are committed to staying close, but there are times it's not easy. Some days I just want to bury my head in the warm sand and toast my ass, you know? Sniff...

Ok, done whining. I have a wonderful mate, fantastic pets, loving family (ok, some in rather unique ways, but I'll take it!), lots of good friends, a great place to live and I am doing well in a program that fascinates and challanges me. It's not realistic to have every single little thing perfect, is it?

Oh, and I left out that I am doing a project with two people from the cohort ahead and behind me that we hope will result in a paper or at least a poster to present at the 2008 APA conference! I love them both so as we get deeper into the project they should afford me an excuse to escape my own cohort and forge some lasting bonds. WHEE!!!

So there are bright spots for sure. Ha!

Deep breath... I can get two more sections of my ethics done tonight if I kick it.