Week 5

How on earth is it halfway through the summer ALREADY!?  This is NOT OK.

Ok, anyway, I spent most of this week diving into the pre-PEACHES data!  My first pass through the data was a gender analysis, looking for any interesting differences between males and females.  I found some interesting results!  First, females at Stanford are much more interested in high-level technical management (especially when compared to the Mechanical Turk general population).  There were several measures on risk, and in general, males are a little more willing to take risks than females.  However, there was a big discrepancy with a question asking how likely they were to move to a city away from their extended family.  All but 2 females answered moderately likely or extremely likely.  I think this is odd and interesting and will be curious to see if there is an explanation for it.  Finally, there is some interesting work to be done with the narcisism question, and I will be talking to Mark Schar next week to figure out how to analyze it. 

I also went back to the PEARS open-ended responses, where I compiled my findings into a Powerpoint to present at our weekly meeting.  I got to present on both the PEARS and the pre-PEACHES data, so it was just fruit salad from me! Anway, most of the PEARS respondents were further explaining their work and their pathways, some explaining their engineering identity problems or giving their timelines or just explaining their job titles.  Many people also had feedback to their schools, with some good suggestions and some people just complaining.  The most interesting to read response was a person essentially just ranting about what's wrong with America (but hey, we *did* ask them if there was anything else at all that they wanted to say!). 

And then of course those school reports!  I finally started running the numbers for the other schools and creating their charts, which is exciting - it really is getting closer!! 

As far as fun things, last weekend I ate nothing but deep-fried things at the State Fair-  blooming onion, bdeep fried cheese curds, deep fried cinnamon roll, and deep fried cookie dough.  I'm actually going back up again this weekend, and will be at the Fair again, though this time it's to help my robotics team demonstrate robots and talk to people.  But it means I'll get to try another deep fried food!  We also watched Batman Begins and The Dark Knight in preparation for The Dark Knight Rises coming out, which we're seeing next week.  Oh, and I got a GRE prep book.  But that's NOT FUN at all, haha.