Preface: I do these writing exercises where I listen to really loud music and free-write in WriteRoom without editing anything.

i don’t even know what to type to this one. it’s like a flood of 8 bit sounds mixed like some sort of final fantasy cave but with a pulsing back beat and i have no idea what to do. groovesharking sabrepulse? god damn, i should be writing code, or writing R, or writing a protocol, or writing something, so i wrote this, am writing this, as some sort of way to make the words flow out of me, like douching my brain with some kind of horrible acid chiptune rock douche flavored like jolly ranchers and ecstasy and happy hardcore piped through a nintendo or something and I’m gonna go deaf. caro studies some sort of pdf or work or something and I’m left to pretending I’m a student or that I’m worth it academically when I really don’t feel so much like it but I’ve had no training never taken a graduate class just sitting in the lab and before I even have a handle on the current research in the lab the chair the leader my advisor the lab PI says here’s a framework for a first year project by the way this famous person is interested so weigh her recommendations as you like even though you’ve never heard of her or read her work nor do you know anything about the background of this study or my study but hey you’ll have a first year project, data, and probably a published paper before most people in your cohort have a god damn idea what the fuck they’re gonna do and you’ll be an outcast and no one will feel like they’re equal to you because of your head start but they might not know that or care about that but you’ll never have a true cohort or friends you can count on or hang your head against when you feel defeated or the weight of academia or the tilting ivory tower collapsing on you and in you and around you but that’s okay because i thought this up on a whim or so i make it seem so take it or leave it then listen to this grad student here because he knows what the fuck he’s doing after all he’s been in this game for three years and already has a good handle on his research paradigm which this fits into kind of well and he’ll guide you kind of but how much credit goes to who and how do you divvy up responsibility or methodology when you can’t even cite a source relevant to this and he can spew forth a cavalcade of worshipped and refactored and backed up studies from so many fields that may be related to this that it all piles up in your head like a devil god damn pancake stack and my eyes are the syrup and they’re dripped dripped dripped all over the pancake papers and we fry in some toy frogs and dinosaurs and they melt together into a constellation of thoughts and citations and productivity software and somewhere in the middle of this plastic morass I’m screaming to get out but i know i have to eat my way through the sides and will fall out of that ivory tower somehow and whether or not i land on more pancakes and a supportive marshmallow and a cup of coffee made of neural networks and computer models and artificial thoughts and practical drives and something that can work on its own and stands without me will eventually lead to me coming back and climbing that pancake tower until i get to the top and shit out a big pile of butter papers coated in whiskey and cake.