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!

Currently listening to…

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“If you trust in yourself. . .and believe in your dreams. . .and follow your star. . . you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy.” – Miss Tick, in the late Sir Terry Pratchett’s The Wee Free Men

I don’t remember how I discovered the Tiffany Aching series, imagined and penned by Terry Pratchett, a knighted genius who was taken from us far too soon (he suffered early onset Alzheimer’s disease).  Nevertheless, this series is so completely enchanting that I re-listen to them every other year or so.  Because a fifth book, The Shepherd’s Crown, was just published posthumously I decided to start from the beginning and will spend the winter break deeply submerged in “the chalk.”

Wee Free Men Hat Full of Sky I shall Wear Midnight  WintersmithThe Shepherd's Crown

The first book features nine-year old Tiffany Aching, an introverted, smart, stubborn girl who wants to be a witch.  She will eventually enjoy the tutelage of Miss Tick (quoted above) and other more seasoned “hags”.

“It doesn’t stop being magic just because you know how it works.”

While the books are astonishing and lovely, they are made MAGICAL by the narration of Stephen Briggs:

Stephen Briggs

I think these stories should be heard, not read.  Do yourself a favor!

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.

On the Needles

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I have a mere three projects left to finish before I can dive into my stash-busting extravaganza: 1) Shannon’s socks, 2) my log cabin blanket, 3) finger-less mittens for Kerry.  Just the other day I finally blocked and wove in the ends of a Clapotis scarf.

Shannon socklog cabin blanket unseamed Kerry's fingerless mitts My Clapoti 1

To err is human…

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When I started this blogging adventure I was hoping to post a bit more frequently, but this is the time in the semester cycle that always finds me frantically making lists of all the things I don’t have time to finish that have crushing deadlines.  All the little balls I have flying around in the air will soon start crashing down on me.

I offer this image, then, of the BEST example of Type I and II errors I have seen (thanks to a colleague for sharing this on Facebook):

Type I and II error example

 

 

The Digital Turntable: Psychology of Religion and Spirituality

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In the next week or so we will consider the subject of atheism in the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality.  This song speaks to the concept of “foxhole faith”, the idea that when confronted with such existential issues as death “no one is an atheist”.  Not sure I agree with this sentiment, but this Regina Spektor song speaks to the larger issues we will discuss in class: Laughing at God

Stashbusting

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Midterm grades were due yesterday so I plowed through the pain and got all caught up with my grading so I could post progress reports for all my classes.  As a result, I am taking a “sloth day”! Three thirty in the afternoon and I am still in my bathrobe and pajamas (I did brush my teeth, however).

While visiting the Shenandoah Fiber Festival last month my friend Janelle (TT 820) and I started hatching plans to use up the “stash” yarn we have hibernating.  Mine is stored in large plastic tubs in the basement and I am a little ashamed to admit that I don’t frequently look at what I have.  I have seriously curtailed buying more yarn in recent years, but my stash hasn’t shrunk much.

So we decided to create some projects, pairing stashed yarn with patterns, hide them away in paper bags (so we can’t see what is inside), and work on them during the following year.

stashbusting

Here we have a photo of 10 project piles and next we have a photo of 10 paper bags filled with said projects:

stashbusting2

I even made my poor husband do the sorting and stapling…I really don’t want to know which project I’ll pick when I get around to needing a new one.  Kinda like Christmas every other month or so!

The Digital Turntable: Psychology of Religion and Spirituality

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In a fit of active procrastination the other day and I was inspired to search the internet for songs that I might use to start my Psychology of Religion and Spirituality class.  Turns out that there are A LOT of songs out there that have some kind of generic religious message.  I am not talking about hymns, Buddhist chants, or “Christian Rock,” mind you.  Rather, I was interested in popular music that reveal some kind of religious theme.

What if God Was One of Us, written by Eric Bazilian and performed here by Joan Osborne

I am not aware of all the details surrounding copyright, but I do own this recording and I am not making any money off this blog…so I hope this is okay.  I intend to post other religiously-themed music from time to time.

Does Your Major Matter?

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When I was in college I took several courses in my University’s Anthropology department.  I did so well in the courses my professors strongly urged me to major in the field.  Because I “could not get a job” with an anthropology major I declined and picked the obviously employable field of psychology (snort)!  But I loved anthropology.  Loved sociology as well.

Nobody ever told me that 1) I should pursue what I loved; 2) it almost doesn’t matter what one majors in; and 3) education isn’t only about “getting a job”!

Today I engaged in interdisciplinary course prep involving mostly history and anthropology/archaeology.  I teach a course in the psychology of religion and spirituality and I believe that we need to look at the development of religion among early humans to put contemporary spirituality in context.  Hence: Gobekli Tepe!  Gobekli Tepe2

About 11 thousand years ago people began to create what some are calling the earliest known worship space in what is now known as southeastern Turkey.  A German archaeology team led by the late Klaus Schmidt uncovered over 200 sculpted pillars installed into the bedrock.  Etched on the pillars are an assortment of animals.  There is no evidence of human habitation at the site, so we know it wasn’t a dwelling space.  The bones of an assortment of wild animals and birds indicate that people probably did consume food at the site, perhaps as they were working.

Maybe it was the first church potluck.Gobekli Tepe3

Gobekli Tepe4

What BLOWS.MY.MIND is that this work was done before the invention of agriculture.  I was taught, and I believe it might still be the predominant theory, that it was the invention of agriculture that enabled the social organization necessary to create other social structures like organized religion/spirituality.  Turns out IT MIGHT BE THE OTHER WAY AROUND!  Perhaps it was religion that brought people together so they could discover that the wild wheat all around them might be intentionally planted and harvested (and, side note:  the women probably figured that out, given that they were likely more skilled in understanding plant life).

I know that I might be over-simplifying all the details of this find and that I am likely not using all the right vocabulary words, but that doesn’t detract from my fascination.   And a good liberal arts education, obtained decades ago, enabled me to plod through the discipline-specific information so that I could synthesize it into a lecture for my students.

I guess it doesn’t really matter what your major is…