No pressure?!

Monday: When I got back from my amazing and exhausting weekend in Cork I wasn't surprised that my friends were all planning to go out.  We went to Dicey's and Coppers to celebrate Sham-wow's birthday.  I stayed out until 4 a.m. and had to wake up at 8:30 for work!  I somehow survived the day with a few cups of coffee.

Tuesday:  I met up with AR for dinner at a really great Thai restaurant called Koh that I want to take my parents to, who are coming to Dublin this Monday!  I was sad to say bye to AR but so happy that I was able to spend an amazing weekend with her.  I realized that we both have the same traveling mentality where we want to see everything we can in the limited time available, even if it means that we're exhausted the next day.  It helped that we were on the same page.  Then I went to trivia night at the Woolshed, what has become our Tuesday tradition.

Wednesday:  The Comet, need I say more.

Work:  Cathy gave me an intimidating but exciting assignment, and I'll try my best to complete it in the six days I have left of work.  I just can't believe how quickly the time has gone!  Cathy sent me a data file with LGBTQ youth (Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender/Questioning) responses to several surveys that she administered measuring depression, anxiety, psychological distress, and other relevant categories.  She wanted me to run some statistics on the files and try to come up with some publishable results to write-up, which coincide with past data written about the "minority stress" model.  After reading this article (Meyer 1995) along with several other studies about the subject matter, I gained a better understanding of what her research was all about and the results that she hoped to contribute to the topic.  Cathy told me this assignment would be a great experience for me and said there was no pressure; I could take my time with it. 

No pressure?!  I'm really excited for the opportunity but I'm honestly not confident that I'll be able to complete it in the time I have left.  I've already spent an entire day running statistics and copying them onto an Excel spreadsheet, and I haven't even completed that section yet.  However, I'm going to try my best to make something out of what I was given because being able to publish something would be incredible.  I'm also starting to find patterns in the data which leads me to believe that the results could have a valuable scientific contribution to the research already presented on minority stress.  Even if I'm not able to complete the assignment in time I'm already gaining experience from going through the motions of running statistics and will ultimately learn a lot from beginning (or completing) a report based on the results.  We'll see what happens...