5/15/07 

Hi Brian-

FIRST EMAIL:

Sorry for the delay in response; I was out of town last week.  I was 
pretty disappointed in their presentation, because they got a lot fo 
neurobiology facts wrong (and I had invited them to come talk to me 
about their presentation the weekend before they gave it -- it is only 
possible that they did it in such a rush that they couldn't take 
advantage of my offer to help).  They misunderstood the hyptohese that I 
had proposed they test in terms of event kinetics (I even made the slide 
for them).  However, they met with me regularly through the semester and 
gave a very interesting presentation to my group which provoked a lot of 
discussion.  In general, they did a great deal of work.  I would give 
them an A-.  This assessment should of course be tempered by the quality 
of their statistical analysis which I am less well-equipped to evaluate 
or know what to expect.

SECOND EMAIL:

It was good to work with Steve and Drew, and I think that they both just needed to get a better idea of how to put together their findings and present data.  There was a lot of analysis they did that didn't make it into the presentation (too bad!). My biggest problem with them is that I would ask for something and the next week they wouldn't have done it, or they each would have done things a slightly different way (instead of coming up with a reasonable approach that they applied consistently).  They didn't quite get that my time was precious, and if they didn't have a printed summary of their work, that we would spend 15 minutes trying to get it together so I could mark it up and hand it back to them. 

I would be happy to help out again if I had a project for a first year to work on.  Hopefully we will have some fun data to analyze next year.  Contact me next fall or winter.

Cheers-

Alison