Today, I had an idea for an experiment. I was walking home from Sonu's place with Lisa, and I realized that it felt like the walk back was significantly shorter; immediately I attributed this sensation to the slope of the path. Then it occurred to me that I have never read, nor heard of, any studies about how time seems to slow down with increased effort or tedious activities. I have yet to look for this in online databases, but if I did a small study, I would refer to it as the "Watched Kettle" phenomenon... from the old adage, a watched kettle never boils. It wouldn't be that hard. All I would need is a stop-watch, a cell phone, and few hundred willing participants. I should probably check to see if this has been done before first.
Maybe I shouldn't put my ideas on the internet for everyone to see... and steal. Who am I kidding? I don't think very many driven, aspiring psychologists are readying my blog.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Monday, April 23, 2007
My Ball!
I was lying in bed the other night, trying to shut my brain off, and my thoughts drifted to rugby. I imagined playing as a prop right before kickoff...
Carpio signals with a nod to the brightly colored referee that our side, the UC Irvine Anteaters were ready to face the Waves. The shrill whistle sounds, causing a visceral fluttering in my gut. The opposition's fly half puts the ball high in a spiraling arc directly towards me. "MY BALL!" Stepping forward, I spin my body around preparing for the likely event of a spilled catch. To my excitement, the ball falls nicely into my hands. I resist the urge to fold it under one arm and charge, my training takes over and I grasp the ball upright between my hands, prepared to take it in any direction. My legs are already carrying me forward, sprinting towards the enormous forward pack swelling up before me, quickly closing the ten-metre gap. One smallish forward reaches me first, but with quick feet and an easy hand-off, I palm his momentum and grasping hands away from me. This one small victory shrinks as the wall of red-jerseyed meat rushes at me. Not trusting my passing ability, I decide to shift the ball under my right arm and lean in with my left shoulder. I hit the first wave hard... too hard. I burst through him and lose my balance, falling on my side. I instinctively push the ball out with my right arm, gently holding it in place as my forward pack drives over me and battles for possession. I get kicked in the chest by my own man, and a tight shot of rounded metal cleats as another boot stomps dangerously close to my head. I can tell the ruck has gone well as the contest above ceases and I see Irvine colored socks just before the scrummy arrives to pluck the ball and send it on its way. Within seconds, I am on my feet and sprinting towards the next breakdown.
Man I miss this game. Even the ragged breathing that follows multiple encounters like this one.
Carpio signals with a nod to the brightly colored referee that our side, the UC Irvine Anteaters were ready to face the Waves. The shrill whistle sounds, causing a visceral fluttering in my gut. The opposition's fly half puts the ball high in a spiraling arc directly towards me. "MY BALL!" Stepping forward, I spin my body around preparing for the likely event of a spilled catch. To my excitement, the ball falls nicely into my hands. I resist the urge to fold it under one arm and charge, my training takes over and I grasp the ball upright between my hands, prepared to take it in any direction. My legs are already carrying me forward, sprinting towards the enormous forward pack swelling up before me, quickly closing the ten-metre gap. One smallish forward reaches me first, but with quick feet and an easy hand-off, I palm his momentum and grasping hands away from me. This one small victory shrinks as the wall of red-jerseyed meat rushes at me. Not trusting my passing ability, I decide to shift the ball under my right arm and lean in with my left shoulder. I hit the first wave hard... too hard. I burst through him and lose my balance, falling on my side. I instinctively push the ball out with my right arm, gently holding it in place as my forward pack drives over me and battles for possession. I get kicked in the chest by my own man, and a tight shot of rounded metal cleats as another boot stomps dangerously close to my head. I can tell the ruck has gone well as the contest above ceases and I see Irvine colored socks just before the scrummy arrives to pluck the ball and send it on its way. Within seconds, I am on my feet and sprinting towards the next breakdown.
Man I miss this game. Even the ragged breathing that follows multiple encounters like this one.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Up Late Again
I am not sure why I like to stay up late, surfing the interweb for nothing in particular, but one thing I am sure of is that I do it too often... and not in a passive, "I find myself staying up late." Pointedly, I am sitting here at 1:45 typing, even though I have to get up and work with my Estancia kids tomorrow. Right now we are in the middle of "A project of change," for our fictional NGO, my group of 10th graders are creating the "Lifesavers" organization, who will try to remedy high infant mortality in the Congo by creating shelters that offer free pre and post-natal care to pregnant mothers and their babies. A very noble pursuit.
I see this project of change as a good thing, which it is (even though it is fictional). However in the dark, shadowy back of my mind there is just a flash of doubt in this virtually undebatable issue. That all of the bad things that happen to humans like high infant mortality, cancer, and world hunger are just nature's way of trying to stem the population.
Fuck nature! Right? You cannot just let nature win like that, if we humans did not evolve to beat nature at its own game then we would still be monkeys, suffering the consequences of our environment.
...
Far too big of a topic to tackle on my first post. The clock strikes 2:00 now in my cluttered dormitory.
This stream of consciousness type of writing is easier for me because it doesn't require any real planning or forethought and I can textually track my thoughts bouncing around, which has to be a good thing, particularly if I want to psychoanalyze myself at all, or glean something from this experience. But who said I wanted to do that? It must be implied in my mind for some reason... too many psych & social behavior classes, and too much focus on metacognition.
One's choice of a college major has a big effect on them as a person. Ryan starts writing a paper in his head anytime there is literature to be discussed and when someone comes to me with a problem, I wonder about their relationship with their parents. I don't even want to be a psychologist.
My "Teachers of Tomorrow" meeting went off quite well if I do say so myself. All of the speakers showed up ten minutes early and we didn't even go past our scheduled timeframe. The representative for Chapman University seemed irritated and bored until got his turn to speak, and then he turned out to be warm and genuine, even though his school was by far the most expensive out of the four universities. The UCI representative(s) seemed devious. I use parentheses because there were two reps for our school, one that did most of the talking and insisted she be able to go first instead of last because we were the school hosting the others. I always thought the host was supposed to put themselves last. On top of this, her spiel sounded arrogant to me, even though she began by thanking everyone for coming and referred to the other guests positively multiple times during her pitch. I had not intended for this event to be a competetion, schools trying to recruit students to their credentialling programs. In my mind, this meeting was supposed to be a tool for our club members to help them start planning on graduate school. It seemed to me that the only speaker that saw this as an opportunity for competition was our's. However, I am not so naive to think that the UCI credentialling program would want these other schools to come waltzing in and snap up their students. Concordia had a good show with two representatives, both women, one young and one older who both seemed very nice. CSULB had the best reception of all though, because the representative, who I had met previously at an info session at her campus in Long Beach, a young energetic woman who seemed frank and not so warm as to seem fake. CSULB also had the edge over the other schools because it was by far the cheapest program in the running.
2:30 is a good time to end this, my first post.
I see this project of change as a good thing, which it is (even though it is fictional). However in the dark, shadowy back of my mind there is just a flash of doubt in this virtually undebatable issue. That all of the bad things that happen to humans like high infant mortality, cancer, and world hunger are just nature's way of trying to stem the population.
Fuck nature! Right? You cannot just let nature win like that, if we humans did not evolve to beat nature at its own game then we would still be monkeys, suffering the consequences of our environment.
...
Far too big of a topic to tackle on my first post. The clock strikes 2:00 now in my cluttered dormitory.
This stream of consciousness type of writing is easier for me because it doesn't require any real planning or forethought and I can textually track my thoughts bouncing around, which has to be a good thing, particularly if I want to psychoanalyze myself at all, or glean something from this experience. But who said I wanted to do that? It must be implied in my mind for some reason... too many psych & social behavior classes, and too much focus on metacognition.
One's choice of a college major has a big effect on them as a person. Ryan starts writing a paper in his head anytime there is literature to be discussed and when someone comes to me with a problem, I wonder about their relationship with their parents. I don't even want to be a psychologist.
My "Teachers of Tomorrow" meeting went off quite well if I do say so myself. All of the speakers showed up ten minutes early and we didn't even go past our scheduled timeframe. The representative for Chapman University seemed irritated and bored until got his turn to speak, and then he turned out to be warm and genuine, even though his school was by far the most expensive out of the four universities. The UCI representative(s) seemed devious. I use parentheses because there were two reps for our school, one that did most of the talking and insisted she be able to go first instead of last because we were the school hosting the others. I always thought the host was supposed to put themselves last. On top of this, her spiel sounded arrogant to me, even though she began by thanking everyone for coming and referred to the other guests positively multiple times during her pitch. I had not intended for this event to be a competetion, schools trying to recruit students to their credentialling programs. In my mind, this meeting was supposed to be a tool for our club members to help them start planning on graduate school. It seemed to me that the only speaker that saw this as an opportunity for competition was our's. However, I am not so naive to think that the UCI credentialling program would want these other schools to come waltzing in and snap up their students. Concordia had a good show with two representatives, both women, one young and one older who both seemed very nice. CSULB had the best reception of all though, because the representative, who I had met previously at an info session at her campus in Long Beach, a young energetic woman who seemed frank and not so warm as to seem fake. CSULB also had the edge over the other schools because it was by far the cheapest program in the running.
2:30 is a good time to end this, my first post.
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