[whooosh] a friend goes by at 140 mph

I'm back in PA, safe and sound. Tuesday night, I drove up to Baltimore to spend the night, and be there when Steve got in from Hawaii at 10am the next morning. Katherine was going to come meet me, but she didn't feel well, so I ended up having a "Lauren night." I had thought staying in a hotel room alone would be scary or creepy, but it was actually quite fun! I got Panera take-out for dinner, had South Carolina peaches & vanilla ice cream, and watched a special on developmental psychology research on the Discovery Health channel ("The Baby Human"). It comes on again Sat 8/7 from 12-3:00, and I'm going to try to tape it to use in a class of my own someday, whenever I get to teach Child Development. It had clips from research that I was already familiar with, but it was awesome to see actual examples of the studies! It was really interesting, and I got re-excited about my career as a developmental researcher! :-)

Speaking of which, we found out our fall teaching assistant positions. No surprise, but I got Psych 213, Intro to Child Development. The students go to lecture by the faculty member Monday and Wednesday (class size 300+), and on Fridays they are divided into smaller sections of about 30 people. I'll teach 2 or 3 of those every Friday, doing more hands-on things like discussions, debates (things like "Is Spanking Good or Bad for Children?"), and applied learning activites. For example, when the topic is language development, small groups have to form their own language and teach it to another group, without using English, similar to the challenge that a baby has when learning his/her first language. TAs also give guest lectures sometimes, grade papers, and meet with students if they have questions about studying, tests they've taken, or writing papers. I've had a research assistantship my whole time here so far, but teaching & mentoring is one of the things I've enjoyed most about working with my undergraduate research assistants during that time. So, I'm really excited about teaching in a more formal setting.

Katherine & I reached a new height in craziness....on Wednesday, Steve & I were heading back to State College on I-83 North after I picked him up from the airport, and we were 20 miles from York and getting hungry for lunch. I called Katherine to see if she was feeling better, and if she wanted to meet us before she went to work. She couldn't, because she was already on I-83 South to meet Hay's mom for lunch. We figured out that we would pass each other in a while, and periodically updated each other on where we were in terms of mile markers. A few minutes later, she was just north of mile marker 4, and I was just south of it. I was stretching my neck to see over the high median, but I missed seeing her as she passed. :-( However, she said, "omigod, are you beside an orange truck??" and I looked beside me and I was! She thought she had recognized my car, and saw that the driver was on a cell phone, but couldn't really tell it was me. We had a good laugh at that one, passing each other at about 140 miles an hour (we were both going 70 mph)!! It was like those math problems from middle & high school: Katherine leaves York going 75 mph on I-83 South, beginning at PA mile marker 19. Lauren leaves Baltimore going 70 mph on I-83 North, beginning at MD mile-marker 20. The MD/PA state line is between MD-mile 39 and PA-mile 1. In how many miles, and in how many minutes, will Katherine and Lauren pass each other?" ROTFL! :-)