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)

dream

So I had this really weird dream last night, I won't be able to explain it coherently because I can't even follow it myself. It all started out here at school where we find out we're fourth in the housing lottery. Then I had to go somewhere to do something and I had to walk back to campus. Except as I was walking back, I went the wrong way and got to this really sketchy part, and eventually it ended up with a bunch of people dressed up like Halloween. And there was some dude, that I knew or something, and started talking to. Eventually found his house, and then there was a tornado warning! Then I thought, dude I have to go home! So bam! Magically, I appeared back at home in Austin, where my mom wanted us to all shower before we had to go hide from the tornado. wtf right? So after my sister finishes showering, and after I see that the tornado was around Dallas (which is 3 hours away, so that's one crazy tornado) I decided I had to shower really really fast. And you know in dreams, when you're pressed for time, you end up doing things really slowly. So as I was showering, I kept thinking, shoot the roof is going to get blown off the house (my bathroom's on the second floor) and I kept showering really slowly, and thinking goodness, why am I showering?! But whatever, I finally finish, and wooooooooooosh zooom! We were in some place that's really colorful (in my dream, I think I said it was Cornell, but it was nothing like Cornell). And so there was a seperate room in the bigger room, and so everyone was in the smaller room and getting ready to watch some movie. And then my alarm woke me up (typical of how all these dream stories end) and I thought shoot, 262 exam today.

:P

Why so hungry?

So it's back to the normal school routine again. Oh joy. No more spring break :(

Vanessa got me to focus for a bit tonight which was pretty funny. She's like "work on your paper for an hour, and then take a 10 minute break." Of course, that's pretty much impossible for me, so I told her "how about 10 minutes of focusing, then break?" I guess I'm working my way up, and soon I'll be able to focus like bam bam bam!

Also I'm in the midst of deciding what summer program I want to do... and still waiting to hear back from the others. So far I'm 2 in 2 which is exciting I guess. So right now, if I don't get a better offer before April 1, it looks like I'll be at UTMB in Galveston for the summer. :)

Annabelle on how I should turn down Stony Brook:
Annabelle: your institution is ballin
Jen: haha
Annabelle: but not ballin enough fo me

Snowman

Today I made my very first real snowman! And the cartoons were right, you acutally do roll the snow balls! I didn't realize that snowmans would be so fat and heavy so we couldn't roll the snow balls as big as they are in the cartoons (relative to the cartoon characters).

We're like one happy family!



We couldn't find people around GLC to take a picture for us, so we had to make some sort of snow thing to put the camera on.

In need of Friday

So it was a bit of a crazy weekend. Did the BCS project with Lisa on Saturday, and played with play dough with a way creative 6 year old girl. Good times. Then I had tea with Alison, Lisa, and Katrina. I was bad at drinking tea, because I could smell it, but when I drink it, it just tastes like warm water! Then I was waiting for the bus back to GLC, but it never appeared so I ended up walking back in the dark with snow flying everywhere and all over the ground.

Yesterday was.... all over the place. I get an email from mom saying that she was thinking about coming up and visitng for part of my and my sister's spring break. I've learned (especially this year) that I'm not good at hearing stuff like this, and so last minute so I pretty much went crazy in the afternoon and then had to pull myself together so I could waste 4 hours of my day to go to Eastman to play 5 minutes of junk in a concert (that ended up pretty good). It annoyed me how I had all this stuff planned, that I'm going to have to change things around, and have to entertain my mom (because I'm sure she wouldn't like doing kid things like playing Guitar hero all night). And it gave me the sense when I first got her email that she didn't trust me with Charlie or something, even though I thought we've demonstrated enough that we're good kids. Anyhow, then I got back and decided that I should call home to get everything figured out and at least know details. So mom is coming here on Wednesday, and she's taking Charlie and I to Ithaca on Thursday to see my sister (who hasn't really existed all semester). I'm really excited about seeing Cornell again because the last time was a little depressing with everyone being gone and everything being closed and other stuff. And then Charlie and I are coming coming back to Rochester Friday night and going to Niagara Falls with Max and Janelle and whoever else on Saturday. :) I'm glad things worked out in the end, I just need to learn not to freak when I get news like this and have to change my plans. I really hope things aren't going to be awkward.