Getting performance reassurance = WIN

Had a decent-length talk with my advisor today; most of it was about directions I could go with new experiments, and about the things I could do with the data I already have. Basically, I've done plenty of analysis with what I have so far; the next step is in taking the brains of the birds that have already been euthanized, and checking to see if I did, indeed, hit the places where I thought I did. That will take a while, so in the mean time, I'm to run more trials on the bird I already have, and hopefully start up on a new bird after that. Whee!

The other part of our chat was with my progress so far, and for the most part I liked what he had to tell me; namely, he approves of my staying at work longer, and is very impressed at how much better I've gotten about being dedicated to my work and analysis. What he wants from me, though - and what I totally understand - is for me to be a lot less reserved and conservative about any ideas I may have regarding what I should do in my experiments and what I could be doing for my analysis. He thinks I have a lot of good ideas about my graduate work, but that I should be more forthcoming with my ideas; namely, any time I have something to suggest or bring up, I should go to him immediately to see what he thinks. I have to admit that this has been a problem for me ever since I've been in grade-school; I'm a shy person when it comes to figures of authority. Hopefully, however, his words of encouragement will fill me up and convince me to break free from silly, introverted Dave and eventually become a more confident individual. So yay :)

That's about all there is to report so far. Wedding stuff is getting there; I just need to crack the whip on my parents' roles in the matter >_> Otherwise, things are going as well as can be expected, I suppose; I'm pretty happy on a number of levels, though, so it's hard for me to say anything objective at this point =D