I'm trying to be a better blogger, and I will be, just as soon as I stop thinking that how often I publish is more important than the quality of my posts. For those of you with the same problem, here's a test: if you had no blog, would you bother to tell anyone what you just posted? If you wouldn't, why not?

This is just my roundabout way of saying that Bill's Beth is kicking my ass when it comes to good blogging. She's found that happy medium between my daily updates on television shows I'm watching and her husband's complete refusal to post. The unpredictability of their joint blog is yet another reason you should get an RSS reader and stop manually checking webpages every day.

Subscribe to their feed here.

And what have I been up to, you ask?

I'm finishing up week two of our intensive grad school prep course — real classes start next week and no thanks to Lawrence's uncooperative registrar (hard copy signature required) I've finally turned in all the requisite paperwork. I signed up for courses yesterday after a longish chat with campus writing guru Prof. McEnerney.

There are some prejudices I need to overcome, and this time I'm not talking about my general dislike of Californians and Carletonites. For one thing, and this is going to take me a while to accept: the classes with weird names, in departments ending with "studies" no less, are of more use on my transcript than an old-fashioned survey course.

At least if I want to go to a Ph.D. program later, and for now I'd like to keep that option open. McEnerney talked a lot about the "conversation" — the kind of things academics are studying and publishing on right now — and which classes will give me the tools I'll need to participate.

So classes like the ridiculously vague "Phonographic Fictions: Literature & Sound" or the ridiculously narrow "Machiavelli and the Arthashastra," if they approach the problem through contemporary critical theory, are better than good solid upstanding survey courses. And from what I'm hearing, these classes are difficult, not the sort of wishy-washy blow-off stuff we all made fun of at LU.

This then, is what Prof. Dintenfass meant when he said this master's program would be my way of finding out if I have the stomach for a Ph.D. program. But I can't help thinking: if I don't like it and end up doing something else, then who will teach tomorrow's college students Our Bold Hero's literary tastes?

I'll write about the courses I'm in when it's clear that I can take them.

Yesterday was also the first day of my UChicago research study. I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to disclose, since all the forms I read covered my privacy, but the gist of it is that they're looking at different genetic responses to over-the-counter or FDA-approved drug(s). There are four visits lasting from nine until one in the afternoon, with about an hour and a half of downtime for reading, watching movies, etc. I only get $160 for my trouble, but I don't really have to do anything besides take entertaining tests, so I think it's a good deal.

Whatever was in those two green pills (I get to find out at the end of the study — my official guess was "stimulant/appetite suppressant," my second-guess is "alcohol"), it was great. I felt incredibly calm and affable. Thoughts seemed to come easier even if I wasn't doing better on the tests. In the downtime I read Faulkner's "The Bear" and wondered why I'd never gone deer hunting. Proof enough that I wasn't on the placebo.

As I'd assured my parents, the drug's effects wore off before the session was over. I also took home $16 I'd earned in the decision-making game, an advance from my $160. I rule at the decision-making game, though I'm still not convinced the results aren't random. I'm doing three sessions next week to finish out the experiment.

And finally, I'm still looking for an on-campus job, preferably a research assistantship. (You wouldn't happen to have one, would you? Because that would be great!) In the meantime I've already found one job, albeit with negligible hours: starting tomorrow I'm the biweekly distribution guy for the UChicago Chronicle. We'll soon see if I'm better at delivering papers than Jubb.