personal revelation

Well the first part isn't about my "personal revelation" essay... I just got back juries, and I'm glad it went well despite my reed's deadness and how my jaw wouldn't stay still. If only I had a second time to play it, so I could make it better.

So for those of you who haven't taken PSY 161, we had to write an essay where we apply material we learned in class to our lives. And here's part of mine. I wrote about cognitive dissonance This below, is part of my essay, which I hope Dr Elliot finds funny. :P

In addition to cognitive dissonance after decision-making, cognitive dissonance also manifests in procrastination. I am trying to work on this “personal revelations” essay, but I am distracted by a game from www.addictinggames.com. I know I should be working on this essay, but the games are just too tempting. I feel a sense of inconsistency in my mind; my desire to get my essay finished does not match with my behavior as playing games will not get me closer to my goal. To reduce this dissonance, I tell myself that getting distracted now will allow me to focus more later on in the day. By adding cognitions, I reduce the dissonance because I have a reason to play games now instead of writing this. For this particular assignment, I may also alter the importance of the discrepancy. Usually, I try to perfect my work, but since this essay is graded on a pass/fail basis, I may start viewing this essay as less important. I think that playing the game is more important so I can relax, take my mind away from things, and not stress out about school, rather than staring at this word document stressing out about how I am to fill up two pages. Changing the importance of this assignment reduces the stress I may have on getting this done. (Believe me, I do work very hard in PSY 161 though, contrary to what this essay may illustrate.) Occasionally, I change my behavior in midst of my distraction and actually start writing. Changing my behavior also reduces the dissonance I was experiencing before, as my behavior now will get me towards my goal. Through these years of college, it seems that these methods for reducing cognitive dissonance has worked. Thank goodness that I have not changed my attitude yet.

sun!

The sun is FINALLY out, after going into hibernation for half a year! It makes me happy! I spent at least two hours outside behind Hoyt reading BCS yesterday (lets say, I only read about 15 pages being so distracted by awesome outsideness). It's scary how people are EVERYWHERE sitting on the Academic Quad, so I had to go somewhere with less people. And today I walked from orchestra to CVS and back to GLC and it was soooooooo nice. The high today is 87! Yay!

summer

So I'm officially going to the UTMB SURP program this summer for researching something really cool (they haven't told me yet). So from June 2 - August 8 I'll be on an island really close to the beach! That sounds cool, but the last time I've been to Galveston was prolly over 10 years ago, so I can't remember how cool or not cool it is (so someone tell me?).

The day after I said "yes" to them, I got accepted into the Univ. of Florida REU, which I had really wanted. I was thinking right before I said yes to UTMB, that I should just wait until the next day to see if something else comes up (their deadline for a reply back was April 1, and I sent them an email on the 31st of March). Oh well, because the mind is great, and wants to reduce dissonance and tension, it went through this process of decision justification and now I'm over it. Or something like that (maybe I should get better at applying psychology stuff to my life so I can write a good personal application essay for 161)