Flow

Today in my Theories of Personality class (Personality Theory?? who knows what it's really called...) we learned about the coolest thing. It's called "flow." I learned about it a little in another one of my classes and it spiked my interest. In my psych classes when I learn about different things there are some concepts I can really understand and relate to, and some I doubt exist or have a hard time grasping.. (like the Oedipus Complex--children being romantically attracted to their parents, as mentioned in my last blog... WEIRD) But "flow" was different. When I first heard about flow we were talking about what makes people happy and successful in life. Researchers have been studying this for a while I guess and they would page (with beepers--remember those??) "happy" people throughout their day and the people would have to report what they were doing and rate their level of happiness. The researchers found that people are happy when they are 1. doing something they love and 2. doing something they're good at. If you love your job but you're not good at it, you're not going to always be successful. If you're good at your job but you HATE it, you're not going to be too happy. So this is like flow. When people are doing things they love, they're good at, they have pretty cool experiences--flow. Okay so that's flow in a nutshell and there's probably a million other factors that contribute.. but oh well, that's what I took from it :) I think that's why I loved my previous job so much. I worked with kids that I loved, I taught and spent time with them and really believed that I was making a positive difference in their lives. And, according to my boss and other staff I was good at it. It was difficult but I knew I was capable of doing it and progressing and doing better each day. That's another part of flow and being successful. You're doing tasks that are challenging but not TOO challenging, to the point where you feel like your skills are unmatched and you're unable to complete the task or do it well. So today in my PT class was good. Thought-provoking and interesting. Flooooow. Kinda like listening to U2 or your favorite songs lol. That's all for now :)

Marchy March

Yes, pigs are flying, and I am blogging again for the SECOND TIME in a month. In a week, actually :) I guess I'm just feeling very bloggy lately. Bloggy: Feeling the need to write/talk about things in ones life.

So today, despite the fact that it's 9:45 am, has been a great day. I was absolutely dreading my Spanish midterm for one reason. It was an ORAL interview. Dun dun dun! We had to sheepishly enter the professor's dungeon and be interrogated by her with complicated questions with words we've never heard before. If we answered a question wrong or pronounced a word incorrectly, we were severely beaten. Okay so it wasn't that bad, I guess.. In fact, it went quite well. Thank goodness my teacher is friggin' awesome and she makes even the most shy and quiet and scared to death of public speaking people (like myself) feel A-OK. But yeah, so it went so much better than I thought it was going to. My grammar wasn't great but I knew most of the questions she asked me and could answer them pretty well. I might have the grammar of a 10 year old Spanish-speaking child but oh well, I'm getting there :)

Today I saw the cutest squirrel as I was going to my interview. It sat up in this tree and just stared at me. I got my phone out to take a pic and it just sat there lol. I got a few weird looks but who cares, it was so cute!

(hahaha this is such a small picture of such a small squirrel...)

Also, today we started discrimination training with my rat, George. We're now teaching him to only do the behavior when a stimulus (flashlight) is present. Once again, he's so dang smart. Only took him a couple of times to recognize the contingency and do what we were trying to teach him. Oh little furry animals, they just make my day!

Today I have an exam in Theories of Personality. Can I just say how friggin' weird that class is??? When I decided to take it (even though it is required for my major) I thought it'd be informational; I'd be able to decide why people do things and act the way they do. But no, right now we're learning about theorists from the 1900's who believe that children fall in love with their opposite-sex parents and they want to marry them and be romantically involved with them. Also that children (particularly babies) are obsessed with the breast because it represents comfort and love and safety... WTF. It's so weird.. But, um, interesting? Some people are so coo-coo.

That's about all I wanna blog about.. my bloggyness is running low now, I guess I've satiated that need hahaha. Time to go study :)