Linguistics

Part of living in a university town is subjecting your children to experiments by grad students...or so I think. So, when I got a letter from UT's department of linguistics asking for toddler-aged volunteers I took them up on the opportunity to get out of the house and show the girls campus.

The researchers bent over backward to find a time to accommodate our eating and napping schedule, and best of all--I got to park on campus. Anyone who's familiar with UT will likely avail you with horrendous stories of parking, trying to find parking (usually by driving 5mph while following someone to the spot they're about to vacate), getting your car booted, or having your car towed. So, when I received a parking permit in the mail that allowed me to park in front of the tower I was ecstatic. I was waved right in by guards at the security booths, and made my way to Inner Campus Drive. And, yes, I immediately noticed that college students seem to be getting younger every year. Nothing like toting your two small children onto campus to make you feel old.

I won't give away too much about the study, but let's just say that I think Reese succeeded in providing a data point they will likely eliminate.

After twenty minutes of coaxing her into actually speaking (where does this shyness come from?), she participated in the study but didn't exactly perform as expected. Let's just say nonsense words are not her thing ("It wasn't a gorp, Mommy, it was a koozie with a ball attached"), and that the "hidden" camera was immediately obvious to her. She even asked me later if we could watch her video sometime. I played dumb until she explained to me that she saw the camera mounted near the ceiling.

Afterward, she was rewarded with a book and we had a lovely picnic on the main mall where Reese ran around and listened to the tower chime.

I'm hoping that it will cool off sometime this year and we'll be able to take them down during a home football game to experience campus in all it's rowdy-glory, but man will I miss that parking pass.