"i love it when you talk statistics to me. it gets me excited in ways i can't explain"

i'm getting better at stats, which i feel is a huge accomplishment. i may still fail the homeworks because while i understand what's going on when sanjiv does it, i usually find a way to mess it up on my own. it's usually a really dumb error, which makes me feel a little better, but still sucks. i do, however, finally get MCAR, MAR, MNAR, and several of the options to deal with them. AND i finally think i understand homoskedasticity v. heteroskedasticity. AND i think i may have successfully calaculated a regression by hand. woo-hoo!!!

in other news, the dept. is still intact. good for us. we'll see if anything happens now. i had a lot of fun after the meeting when we were all hanging out at ABC. we're a great bunch. i didn't actually drink and have to say that people are funny to watch when you're sober. i say this knowing that i've been at the other end of the comment. yeah. moving on...

aside from that goodness that resulted, i have to admit that i'm a tad bit annoyed with the bs politics. it's stupid petty, insecure crap that's starting to get annoying and in my way. i just want to sit people down and say, "hey, the dept is not about you or you or you AND DEFINITELY NOT YOU, or you or you..." seriously, people, this is higher ed, in case you didn't notice. most of us graduated middle-school, which means there are no popularity contests, no playground fights, no purpose to all of this. get your s**t together and BE AN ADULT.

okay. i think i'm done.