A Friday Win

Yesterday felt a bit more successful than the rest of the week.

After contacting several people in K-State's Psychology department and getting nowhere (apparently, Psych professors are nearly impossible to get in contact with), I was finally able to get an interview with Dr. Gary Brase. Dr. Brase specializes in the psychology of decision making, and has experience in the study of social decisions, so I thought he would be a good person to talk to about my topic, figuring that he could apply his knowledge of social decision-making to the idea of making decisions about a person being a friend or a potential mate.

As it turned out, I couldn't have found a better source for my topic.

Since I hadn't been able to get in contact with Dr. Brase (that is, like many others in his department, he never got back with me after I contacted him), I opted to just stop by his office since I had some spare time on campus on Friday. As luck would have it, he was in his office with the door open, so I popped in and introduced myself. He told me he could squeeze in an interview with me in about 90 minutes, after he finished teaching a lab class, so I headed over to Hale to do some deeper investigations on his research and prepare some good questions for the interview.

When I walked into his office, Dr. Brase introduced me to Maya Wang, his undergraduate teaching assistant, and informed me that he and Maya are in the beginning stages of the very first formal research on what is, essentially, the friend zone.

I was shocked, and quite frankly, thrilled beyond belief.

While they didn't have a ton of solid information on the friend zone just yet since their actual research won't begin until the fall, Dr. Brase and Maya shared with me their thoughts, hypotheses and observations on the topic, and I think the information that I got from them will add a lot to my project.

Feeling like I had made a great success (and also exhausted from the long week and subsequent work shift I had following the interview), I opted to take Friday evening off and invited a friend over to watch a movie.

This morning, I got up, made some bacon pancakes like a champion, and will probably spend the majority of my day working on the project. I have one last interview set up for Monday, but will probably finish up typing transcripts today and do some writing on the project itself.

I should have a good long section of time to work on it this afternoon and evening. Gotta stay up for a 1-3 a.m. work shift at the rock wall, as we're playing host to a high school after prom party tonight.

Here's hoping I survive the long day!
Melanie