Why Princess of the Universe Is More Qualified for the Spa than Graduate School

So my darling Princess Pointful asked me to do a post for her while she was away. Of course I view this as more of a favour to me than to her, since all her readers are le fab.

Of course there’s always the dilemma of what to write about on someone else’s space. In my little world? Which is not nearly as well-written as this blog? Well, it ranges from the spa, to chocolate, to my dreams of marrying Jensen Ackles. However! My redemption here today lies in the fact that I can actually write something that borderline relates to this blog.

School. More specifically? My honours Psych thesis.

Ahh my thesis. Until very recently, it was my proudest accomplishment. And since I work in a university now, you’d better believe I talked it up in my interview last summer. That thing caused me so much pain, it better pay me back by getting me a job with a decent salary and awesome benefits. I mean I gave birth to that thing. And labour? Was a bitch.
With all that build-up, I know you’re all DYING to know what my thesis was about. So the oh-so-inspiring title: (uh hold on a sec- as if I remember something that I wrote 11 years ago) Crap. I can’t find it. It was something along the lines of: “Religiosity and Neuroticism’s Effects on Death Anxiety.”
Cool huh? I did a thesis on death. Cause I’m all deep and stuff. Yeah. Until you have every Psychologist in the place asking you very worriedly why you want to write about death, and is there anything you’d like to talk about? It was almost as great as the time that I casually mentioned how stressed I was and it was making me want to slit my wrists.
You know what you don’t say to a Psychologist? That.

I didn’t say I was a brilliant 22 year old.

Anyhow. After several well-meaning and concerned conversations, I was well on my way to studying the D-word.
But to do so? I would have to pass the dreaded 4100. Honours stats. In my defence, I did in fact pass it the first time. But only because I was curved up. And since I was an honours student and all, getting a C or D or whatever I got just wasn’t good enough.

Less in my defense? The fact that I spent the first time around composing stories in class about how I was a princess cursed by the wicked stats fairy at birth, and that was why I just didn’t get it. The second time around I did marginally better, but I suspect that it’s only because I re-copied my assignments from the previous year, and not because I learned so much more.
So after two years of that torture it was time to put it all to good use. I had finally reached the show. So I questioned poor innocent first-years all about how freaked out they were at the concept of death, and how neuroticism was the cause, and how they turned to religion for comfort. And after all that data was collected? Then I had to put that 4100 class to good use. Surely they had tutors to assist right? Oh wait. I had already tried that, to no avail. Oh well, it’s only data analysis – how hard can it really be, right?

As it turns out, not hard at all. Cause all that dos-based programming that they had been training me to do in the SPSS from the dinosaur-age the past two years? Apparently no one actually uses that. Everyone actually uses SPSS for windows. All you have to do is click “analyze” (or some other statistic-y word that I don’t remember at all anymore) and it does it for you.

??!!!??
Ahem. So anyways, after I got over that painful revelation – I carried on with the analyzing. And found that my hypothesis? Wrong. Dead wrong.

Now I know that this is still valuable information, and at least I’ve learned that the opposite of what I conjectured is true. Blah blah blah… But it’s kinda hard not to feel like a failure you know?

It didn’t matter so much by then anyhow. By that point I’d decided that the thought of getting my PhD and listening to people whine about their problems all day was more pain than it was worth. So I accepted my mediocre B+, convocated under duress (University Graduations? Le dull.) and carried on with my life.

And given the chance to do it over? I’d totally do it the same. Well…except I’d maybe pay some nerd to do my Stats homework for me. Cause taking it twice? Phenomenal waste of my valuable undergrad partying time.