![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivka...but then I realized that you might never hear from me again.
Continued problems with Pediatrics, damn it. I called over there at about 4:45 to find out if any potential subjects had been identified for me today, and my contact over there said yes, they had. She didn't recruit for me herself, but someone else did, and that person was going to fax me the information that afternoon or the next morning. (Note: the parents write down all their information themselves, on sheets I provided. There's no preparation involved in faxing it - you just feed the damn sheets into the fax machine.) "Is there any possibility I could get the information tonight?" I asked. "I really need to start making calls and setting up appointments." (And, you know, also we had agreed in the meeting with the Chair that I was going to get the information at the end of each day.) So she gave me the person's direct phone line. And I got their machine. And I left a message, but an hour later it's obvious that the person went home by five and I'm not going to get any names tonight.
The Peds department knows that I'm on a tight schedule, because I told them. All of my subjects need to be collected by Saturday. It really does make a difference to delay getting me names for the 15 hours or so between this afternoon and tomorrow morning, because if people provided evening numbers only (as many do), that means I won't reach them until tomorrow night.
Parents can't do many things on the spur of the moment. If I'm not calling them until Tuesday, then realistically speaking, the earliest I can hope to get them in is Thursday. The earliest. (Ideally, I would have scheduled appointments for this week last week - you know, when they initially told me they'd start getting me names, on Thursday afternoon.) As it is now, I don't have any subjects scheduled for this Wednesday - a whole day wasted. If I'd gotten the names this afternoon, I'd be scheduling for Wednesday right now. Thursday and Friday are already crowded - I've got four subjects coming in on Thursday and five on Friday. And I hate having the week back-loaded like that, because if a subject no-shows on Friday of this week I have no time to reschedule them. I'm leaving on Saturday.
The bitter truth is that I'm the only person in the world for whom this stuff matters this much. It doesn't matter to the person in Peds who's going to fax me the names whenever she gets around to it. It doesn't matter to the subject who volunteers and then doesn't show up. They just don't really care. They have no reason to care. I don't really have the right to expect them to care.
*pounds head against the wall*
Okay: if every single subject I have scheduled right now shows up, and I don't get any more names from Pediatrics, I'll have a total of 37 subjects in my experimental group and 31 subjects in my control group. That's not great, but it's survivable. But they won't all show up. 75% of my subjects showed up last week. If I get the same ratio this week, I'll have... 28 subjects in my control group. That really won't do. If Peds sends me five names tomorrow, and all of them can schedule for Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, and 75% of all the subjects show up, I'll have... 31 subjects in my control group. That's not great. But I could survive it. I think. If Peds sends me five names tomorrow. If I can reach them all quickly and get them scheduled. If, if, if.
This kind of shit is all I think about these days. My mind is constantly engaged in miserable little subject-counting and subject-predicting calculations, around and around. I'm like a mouse at the bottom of a jar, circling endlessly and getting nowhere. Either I'll get enough subjects or I won't. Either I'll get enough subjects or I won't. Either I'll get enough subjects or I won't. Stewing about it isn't going to help either way.
Continued problems with Pediatrics, damn it. I called over there at about 4:45 to find out if any potential subjects had been identified for me today, and my contact over there said yes, they had. She didn't recruit for me herself, but someone else did, and that person was going to fax me the information that afternoon or the next morning. (Note: the parents write down all their information themselves, on sheets I provided. There's no preparation involved in faxing it - you just feed the damn sheets into the fax machine.) "Is there any possibility I could get the information tonight?" I asked. "I really need to start making calls and setting up appointments." (And, you know, also we had agreed in the meeting with the Chair that I was going to get the information at the end of each day.) So she gave me the person's direct phone line. And I got their machine. And I left a message, but an hour later it's obvious that the person went home by five and I'm not going to get any names tonight.
The Peds department knows that I'm on a tight schedule, because I told them. All of my subjects need to be collected by Saturday. It really does make a difference to delay getting me names for the 15 hours or so between this afternoon and tomorrow morning, because if people provided evening numbers only (as many do), that means I won't reach them until tomorrow night.
Parents can't do many things on the spur of the moment. If I'm not calling them until Tuesday, then realistically speaking, the earliest I can hope to get them in is Thursday. The earliest. (Ideally, I would have scheduled appointments for this week last week - you know, when they initially told me they'd start getting me names, on Thursday afternoon.) As it is now, I don't have any subjects scheduled for this Wednesday - a whole day wasted. If I'd gotten the names this afternoon, I'd be scheduling for Wednesday right now. Thursday and Friday are already crowded - I've got four subjects coming in on Thursday and five on Friday. And I hate having the week back-loaded like that, because if a subject no-shows on Friday of this week I have no time to reschedule them. I'm leaving on Saturday.
The bitter truth is that I'm the only person in the world for whom this stuff matters this much. It doesn't matter to the person in Peds who's going to fax me the names whenever she gets around to it. It doesn't matter to the subject who volunteers and then doesn't show up. They just don't really care. They have no reason to care. I don't really have the right to expect them to care.
*pounds head against the wall*
Okay: if every single subject I have scheduled right now shows up, and I don't get any more names from Pediatrics, I'll have a total of 37 subjects in my experimental group and 31 subjects in my control group. That's not great, but it's survivable. But they won't all show up. 75% of my subjects showed up last week. If I get the same ratio this week, I'll have... 28 subjects in my control group. That really won't do. If Peds sends me five names tomorrow, and all of them can schedule for Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, and 75% of all the subjects show up, I'll have... 31 subjects in my control group. That's not great. But I could survive it. I think. If Peds sends me five names tomorrow. If I can reach them all quickly and get them scheduled. If, if, if.
This kind of shit is all I think about these days. My mind is constantly engaged in miserable little subject-counting and subject-predicting calculations, around and around. I'm like a mouse at the bottom of a jar, circling endlessly and getting nowhere. Either I'll get enough subjects or I won't. Either I'll get enough subjects or I won't. Either I'll get enough subjects or I won't. Stewing about it isn't going to help either way.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2002-10-01 06:03 am (UTC)Hm, I'm reading several journals in which the owner is having Dissertation Trials right now, and it's making me exceedingly anxious about moving forward on mine... I suppose I'll be interviewing mental health professionals, though, so perhaps they'll be a little more used to making appointments and keeping them... I can only hope.