I'm a Researcher!

New exciting thing in my life--I'm starting work at a research lab in the Psychology department this year under one of the Psych professors I had last semester (for Stress and Coping--my favorite class) and again this semester (for Research Methods...not as fun). He primarily studies emotion, and has a few studies going on in his lab right now, headed by grad students.

At first I thought I was just going to work as a Research Assistant and be a confederate (the person in the lab who pretends to be a subject to influence the real subject in studies of social interaction) or the person who enters data. But nope! In one of the studies about stress and distraction in aiding recovery from stress, I stress out subjects by making them do a task as fast as possible. I'm not allowed to smile and I feel really mean, but it's kind of fun to watch them get scared when I walk in the room >:D I feel powerful haha.

The second study is about reflection. I am one of only 2 Research Assistants being trained to conduct the study. So it is a little more stressful...because after training, shadowing, and being shadowed next week, I will be able to schedule and lead subjects on my own. WHOA. I feel cool. 

Okay, so maybe that doesn't make me a researcher, really. I'm still just the Research Assistant and not the Principal Investigator or anything, but it's still way more than I thought I would be doing! 

The downside is that I have to work/train in lab at 8:00 AM four days next week. So stay tuned on how I feel after exhaustion hits ;)

RL