(Re)Searching

I get asked a lot if I have to write a dissertation for my program. Yes, I do, and we actually get our entire fourth year to work on it. During that year, I'll still be taking classes but I won't have a job - my job will be to work on my dissertation!

I haven't started any dissertation work yet. (Although I'm going to have to start relatively soon, which freaks me out every time I think about it.) However, I have been doing a lot of research and....drumroll please.... I just submitted a poster presentation for the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies conference, which will be held in New York in November!

It hasn't been accepted yet, and it's a pretty competitive conference (who knew there was such a thing?) but I'm still excited.

Are you interested in what I'm working on? First of all, I work with this professor**  so all the stuff I do is related to marriages and conflict in some way. This project was about how the words couples use during conflict predict their satisfaction. For example, people who use the word "I" and "you" during conflict are less happy in their marriage than people who use assent words (like yes, okay, sure) and "we" words. 

Sound obvious? Maybe kinda. But I'm trying to show that just looking at people's words they use during conflict can provide us with a lot of important information that usually takes a lot o time to find out. 

So yeah...that's the other part of what I do here...besides school, work, and Top Chef marathons.

**There's a link on the website that says "Assess my marriage." If both of you are willing to fill out the questionnaire, it can be kind of fun and interesting!