I’m back at work. I’m brushing up on my statistics toolbox and teaching myself programming in R. I found an online course, and today I watched three weeks worth of lectures. Granted, some of the lectures were very basic (I’m supposed to know the basics of R already, we had a 1,5 week module on it during the first term of the master’s programme). But when talk about programming environments and lexical scoping turns you philosophical, and makes you think of parallel universes and worlds within worlds, then you know it’s time to call it a day. The brain can only take so much.
I’ve also been reading a lot of scientific articles. I’m supposed to write up a report on where we’re at with the project, with complete Introduction, Theory and Methods and materials sections, and I’m collecting references. The range of subjects is insanely wide, due to the wide range of data that we’re planning to include in the analysis, and it is making my head swim. I feel like I’m a canister being filled with information. Or rather, like Hermione’s enchanted purse in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – on the outside, it looks conveniently small, but inside it’s enormous, possible to fit anything. But, the more you fill it, the trickier it becomes to find what you actually want. I wonder if I will ever be able to synthesize everything that I’ve crammed into my head. Right now, I feel like it’s just a huge mess.
But outside, it’s finally turned cold. The world is so beautiful when it’s snowing. It turns soft, breaking the darkness.
Katja Malmborg 