let's stumble towards success and pack some snacks for little breaks

V: is this a step towards or away from self-actualization?
me: ohhhhh do not even get me STARTED on Maslow
me: >:(
V: I want to get you started on Maslow.
me: then I will never get to showering or eating, and then I will never get to your beta
me: is that what you want
me: because if you say yes, I will legit give up cleanliness and food and go on a rant about the failings of psychology as a scientific field
V: It's like you don't know me at all. YES, i want to listen to that rant. Gladly and raptly.
me: okay
( much cussing and capslocking, not much respect for current psychology curricula )

I really enjoyed this article. It's about the relationship between money and happiness, and how people are happier when they spend money on social interaction and experiences than on material things. I'd very much like to hear what others think of it.

Besides as a career, I mean. These are things I'm interested in and would like to gain a rudimentary knowledge of, or acquire basic skills in, at some point during my life. Some of them will have to wait until I have the time and money to commit to them; others are a matter of reading a few Wikipedia articles. If you have any advice about any of them, or recommendations of resources, I'd be glad to hear them.

Skills:

Motorcycle operation and repair. I can ride a motorcycle, but I obviously haven't practiced much, and I want to learn a LOT more about what's actually going on under my butt when I'm doing it and how to fix it when it goes wrong. I'm going to buy one sometime, and being a responsible motorcycle owner means knowing how to take care of the bike.
Massage. I give a good backrub, from what I hear, but I'd like to take some classes and get licensed.
EMT training. I want to take an EMT class. I spent a ten-hour shift in an ambulance for an honors project a couple years ago, and I really enjoyed it. Clark offers classes; I'd have taken it this semester if I'd known how little homework I would have.
Programming. The HTML I use for LJ is about everything I know right now.
Go. I started getting back into it a few months ago and it sort of tapered off. At this point, the best thing for me would be to play tutoring games with someone better than me on a regular basis.
Glassblowing. I went to a marble festival thing in Kansas City and watched someone blowing glass, and was immediately drawn to it. I want to be able to do that.
Gardening. I want to cook with produce I grew myself. I actually might grow some basil or tomatoes on a windowsill or something this summer.
Gymnastics. I can lean backwards into a backbend, and stand up again from it most of the time. I can't, and would like to be able to, do the splits, cartwheels, and handstands.
Martial arts. I loved my karate class at Penn Valley. I always came out of it feeling confident that if somebody jumped me at the bus stop (which they might have done, it being Midtown) I'd be able to kick their ass. I miss that feeling.
Juggling. I can't do much of anything besides three-ball cascade, which is pretty dumb considering I've been around jugglers and going to juggling festivals as long as I can remember.
Metalworking. I've known a couple of blacksmiths, and I want to try that. I also took a silversmithing class once and made a ring for myself, and that was fun, although there wasn't nearly enough fire involved.

Languages:

French. I want very badly to go to France and immerse myself in the language until I'm fluent. In the meantime, my LJ is set to French, and I have a few books and some music in French to keep me from completely losing what I have.
Japanese. I never got much further than the Hiragana alphabet, but I'd like to learn more.
Sign language. I took one semester when I was twelve. I've still got the alphabet, but not much more.
Arabic. I know nothing, zip, nada. But it looks cool and I want to speak it.

Subjects:

Computers. I use them all the time, and I know embarrassingly little about how they work.
Linguistics. I'm not completely ignorant here, but I'd like to know more.
General world history. I don't feel like I have a good overall grasp of how humanity got to where we currently are.
Twentieth-century Latin American political history. I don't know much about this at all, but what I do know fascinates me.
Canada. It's right there. I want to be more aware of it, both in a historical sense and in current-events terms.
Geography. I need to take more Sporcle quizzes.
Physics. I have some knowledge of physics from other subjects, but I've never taken a class in it. I'm going to this fall--I'll need it to study neuroscience.
Astronomy. Clark offers classes, but my schedule for senior year is packed with requirements.
Ice hockey. Eventually I'd like to be able to play as well, but for now, I just want to know more about it, both the nuts and bolts of the game and as a cultural phenomenon, teams and players and so forth.
Herpetology. Snakes rock.

Ever since Kate moved out, I've been wanting to get one of those big pillows with arms and turn the other bed into a couch. I don't have the time or money to go out and buy a pillow like that, but as fate would have it, I spotted one in the trash can by the stairwell a few days ago.

( Of course, it looked like this. )

I rescued it, dug a needle and thread out of my random-crap drawer, and got to work.

( Ta-da! )

We've talked about self-efficacy a lot in my social psych class. At first glance, it seems like an unnecessary synonym for self-esteem, but the more I think about it with regards to my own life, the more I see the difference. It's one thing to assure myself that I'm good enough; it's another thing entirely to do things well and feel capable because I did them well.

I think that's why abstract, pointless things like honors designations and good grades don't really make me feel good about myself. I mean, they do to some extent, but it's mostly because I know they should. Something little like this, though, finding a pillow in the trash and fixing it--not perfectly, perhaps, and I hope the textiles-inclined among my flist don't look too closely at those seams--that kind of pride feels more real, more honest.

I've been called a crazy irrational tree-hugger without any respect for facts, and I've been called a cold scientific-minded student who can't accept anything without published evidence. Some people tease me about being vegan and enjoying pagan gatherings; others hear a description of the Whole Earth Festival and express astonishment that I would be caught dead at such a wifty event.

I've been aware of this odd discrepancy for some time, but it's been particularly noticeable recently because of the ramifications of certain people perceiving me as one way or the other. I've been learning about self-presentation and judgment of others in social psychology, and that's definitely helped me understand what's going on here. People behave differently in different situations. In a classroom situation, or with people who are more analytical in general, I'm going to try to be as rational and objective as I can, and I'm going to question people's assumptions. If I'm at the Gaia Goddess Gathering in the middle of the woods, I'm not going to argue cartography with the chick in the tie-dye scarf who's drawing energy and passion from the south. Scientific research isn't about wifty stuff, and hippie culture isn't about empirical testing. And people who see me in one of those situations are not likely to see me in the other.

The most interesting thing about this for me is that they're not making a mistake by seeing me one way or the other. The way I present myself has everything to do with others' impressions of me as a person. The problem only arises when someone refuses to acknowledge evidence that other aspects of me exist (as has definitely happened from both sides of this particular dichotomy). That's the fundamental attribution error, and it's a pain in the ass.

I desperately want to reread The Phantom Tollbooth now.

My big brother Cordell has launched a blog about his adventures as an intern in Japan: Travels of a Yellow Hat. He's pretty funny sometimes, and it's interesting to hear about his experiences, so you guys should check it out. Warning: he is a fan of retina-breaking shades of yellow and orange, and the site design reflects that.

Yesterday, I found myself conducting an impromptu circus school in my dorm room. Being the juggling expert for once was nice. Later, one of the girls I was teaching and my roommate's boyfriend compared running speeds. I'm no running expert, but I know that "7:15 mile, but that's after my ankle injury--I was a lot faster before" and "Five-something, I don't remember exactly" are Impressive.

I just had my first class: Qualitative Methods in Psychology. I like it okay, but I suspect I will end up using chiefly the sort of psychology the teacher explicitly said the class was not about (formal experimentation). Observation and interpretation are all well and good, but I'm uncomfortable with drawing conclusions about populations based on case studies. I mean, I can live without concrete hypotheses in some situations, but I need decent sample sizes if I'm going to be doing any generalization. Still, observation and interviewing skills are important, and in any case, I should learn the basics before I start writing anything off.

Turns out I need to apply for a fifth course even if I'm just auditing it, so I'm going to do that for Quantitative Methods (statistics) and just sit in on the Entrepreneurship class instead of officially auditing it. I checked with the teacher, and he's cool with that.

This is hardly scientific, but I'm trying it anyway.

[Poll #972043]