Category Archives: Psychological Research

Writing Papers is Messy Work

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I have been writing the paper from hell for the last two months…almost non-stop.  If we ignore the ginormous pile of laundry on my bedroom floor, the gross dog-haired, dusty floorboards in every room, and  the back porch furniture overturned in the latest wind storm that has not been up-righted, writing papers is STILL messy work.  To wit:

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What might not be quickly identifiable in that stack is my February bank statement (unresolved), my local tax bill (unpaid), and a knitting pattern or two (unfiled).  You CAN see my beloved iced coffee, a beverage I’ve been consuming like my life depends on it.

In the last two months I have had occasional breaks.  I have only had to miss Gamelan rehearsal once.  i went out for a glass of wine with friends two weeks ago.  I manage make it to the gym only slightly less frequently than I do when I am not under a major work-crush.  But if anybody decides to “pop by” my house they will be left standing on the porch because my house is so gross even I have to avert my gaze.  And will continue to do so until this monster-from-hell gets sent to the journal editor!

10 on Tuesday

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Carole over at Caroleknits.net posts a regular column every Tuesday where she enlists people to blog about 10 things.  I’m new to her blog so I am not sure how it is organized but today’s list is: 10 Things I Did in 2015 That Made Me Feel Proud.  So here goes…

  1.  I survived rejection…LOTS of rejection.  One paper submitted for review was rejected three times and another twice.  I learned a lot from the experience and will attempt to reconcile all the constructive feedback (and ignore the ridiculous).
  2. I lost 30 pounds.  Actually I lost more but the holidays have enabled a few of the shed pounds to reappear.  I’m in it for the long haul, however, and am motivated by health so I feel secure that I will continue on this VERY SLOW PATH.
  3. Although the semester was a bear and I never really felt like I caught up with myself I had some pretty splendid teaching moments this time ’round.  One particular highlight was the very successful Genealogy project my History and Systems in Psychology students completed.  In small groups they interviewed every faculty member in my department and traced their academic lineage back to the “fathers” of modern psychology (either Wilhelm Wundt or William James).  Along the way they met reference librarians (THE MOST important people to make friends with while in college) who fought one another over who got to help with the project.
  4. I discovered a new musical enchantment: Balinese Gamelan!  My friends Janelle and Dan play in an orchestra at my local college and I attended two concerts.  I was so taken that I begged to be permitted to join the group.  I start rehearsing with them in January and hope to journey with the orchestra to Bali next summer for a festival!
  5. Listened to some fairly remarkable audiobooks on the 2015 commute.  Notable among them are: Station Eleven, (Emily St. John Mandel), Being Mortal (Atul Gawande), and a re-listen to The Wee Free Men (the late Sir Terry Pratchett).
  6. I exercised with great regularity, despite a bum knee (that is currently in real need of a cortisone shot).
  7. Oh…and I started this blog.  I’m not a frequent post-er and my content spans both my professional life as well as my personal life, but I am pretty satisfied with it overall.
  8. I cleaned out the linen closet (which had been on my to-do list for more years than I am willing to reveal).
  9. I knit just about every day and twice a month with some of the best darned knitting friends a person can hope to have!
  10. Kept up with social media: got an Instagram account
  11. Whoops…I just remembered!  After a very splendid trip to the Shenandoah Fiber Festival with Janelle (with a meet up with Laura and Janet) I hatched a plan to make a real effort at reducing my stash yarn.  I pulled an assortment from my many bins, paired them with patterns, and had my husband put them in paper bags and staple them.  As soon as I clear the 2015 deck (I have one pair of socks to finish and a log cabin afghan to seam) I will plow into the project bags!

Self-Control as a Limited Resource

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Over a hundred publications have found support for the notion that self-control is a limited resource (Association for Psychological Science).  I think my behavior today is a poster-child demonstration of that idea:

After PROMISING myself I would not purchase more yarn until I finished the dozen or so stash/pattern paired projects I have waiting for me, I walked out of The Mannings (my local yarn shop) with 19 skeins of yarn.  Oh the shame.

In my defense (watch me rationalize here) The Mannings IS closing at the end of the month (sob) and the yarn WAS 40% off.

And I know this bad behavior on my part is fueled, at least a little bit, by the approximately 7,000 papers and exams I still have to grade.  And the two empirical papers I have to rewrite and resubmit for possible publication over the break.

I think I need a doughnut.