Quirk.

I am afraid of feet. Thankfully it's winter here so feet are covered generally and I don't have to see or think about feet much at the moment, but seriously they freak me out. Generally I think most people's feet are pretty unattractive (no offence), but that's not what bothers me. What I really can't stand is having people's bare feet touch my skin. It actually happens more than you'd probably realise (if feet don't bother you) - under the table when eating, people sitting closely on the lounge or on the floor - it's creeping me out just thinking about it!

AAARGH they're coming right for us!!!! [via]

As someone who studies psychology, obviously I've considered that perhaps I had some sort of foot-related traumatic incident in childhood that haunts me to this day. The thing is, I really have no recollection of such an event. Maybe Freud was right and repression is real, and I'm just that good at making sure this foot memory never comes to the surface... NEVER! 

I also can not endure shoe sharing. The reason I bring this up is that yesterday my sister nicely lent my mother some of her slippers to wear since it was cold, but it really freaked me out. Other people were very shocked and confused at my reaction that I would refuse to give my poor mother some slippers to borrow if she were cold. Sorry Mum but knowing our feet skin cells would be interacting makes me want to vomit. 

Baby feet: allowed.

The problem with telling people is, they then seem to think it's highly amusing to go out of their way to TOUCH ME WITH THEIR FEET. Boy feet are definitely worse, and they are the feet that have been shoved in my face. The thing is though, if someone says they are scared of spiders, do you rush out and find a spider to dangle in their face? I hope not. So what gives? Perhaps the difference is that a spider phobia is really quite reasonable, since well the spider could bite you and you could die (or at least experience some pain). The consequence of people's feet touching me is... tinea or something I guess. Yeah I realise this is a stupid thing to be afraid of.

Ahem. Anyway, sorry about that crazy rant. I will say that for some reason I can tolerate baby human feet (not sure why) and I've forced myself to become accustomed to Husband's feet - though this has definitely not generalised to other people (even his identical twin who genetically has the same feet). 

Do you have any quirks like this that people love to tease you about? Would you try to touch me with your feet if you were to see me in person?

Productive June...

... has actually so far been quite productive (no idea what Productive June is?)! Mostly due to the minor freaking out that is going on in my brain about trying to finish my thesis. Even though this past weekend was a long weekend (woowoo), I ended up going to uni to work on Saturday. It ended up being quite successful, and I'm now thinking I'll do it every Saturday from now on (the excitement never ends here people!). 

I think what happened productivity-wise was I just stopped being in denial as to when my thesis is actually due. While November 12th may still seem quite far away (it's actually 5 months exactly today), I have 8 chapters to write, and specific deadlines each month of when each chapter draft is supposed to go to my supervisor. Not to mention the fact that I'll probably have revisions to make once she's read each chapter! At this stage I'm not sure I will be able to properly meet those deadlines, to be honest.

Because I didn't want this post to just be a boring whinge, here's this thing I found amusing. 

[you can get it on a t-shirt at threadless!]

 

So in conclusion, aargh. 

Q: Are you having a Productive June so far?

Dizzy

Disclaimer: The following post is not a bid for sympathy, more just an expression of my bemusement at events of late.

[via]

I have an ear infection that is causing dizziness. I think. I did go to the doctors, but I'll explain in a bit why I'm still somewhat unsure. Firstly, the irony of the whole thing. 

I have mentioned previously, that one of my 30 things to do before I turn 30 is to swim in the ocean. The reason for this is that I nearly drowned once, and since that time have never gone in the water at the beach above my knees. I basically have stood there for a little bit, started to feel a bit uncomfortable with the waves and just gone back to the sand. However not this past weekend but the one before I'm happy to report that I did go for a swim. Husband and I went for a nice walk on the beach that is not far from our place, and realised it was great swimming weather. We quickly came home and got swimming attire and went back, and I swam! I had a great time (with Husband being told to stay close just in case he had to rescue me), and was especially pleased when later I realised I'd crossed another thing off my 30 before 30 without actually intending to. So the ironic part is, it's most likely that this is where my ear infection is from. D'oh!

So after a few days of dizzy, I decided to go to the doctor. Unfortunately the one I like was not there, so instead I saw this very old dude. Seriously, he had to lean closely towards me to hear what I was saying, and would sometimes go off on waffling tangents. When I told him I felt dizzy, he asked me to follow his finger with my eyes and then said "you have an ear infection" (is it mean I also found it a bit ironic/amusing that the hard of hearing doctor was telling me I had something wrong with my ear?). I haven't actually had much ear pain, but apparently no further tests were necessary and he said "the dizziness might go away in a couple of weeks". Err - great. There's the slight problem of not really being able to go anywhere or do much in the meantime however, but he actually wasn't going to prescribe me anything for it until I specifically asked. Just as I was about to leave, he said "Oh wait, is your cycle regular? BUT DON'T GIVE ME TOO MUCH INFORMATION! You're not pregnant are you?" I found this also amusing, since well firstly I wasn't going to give him too much information, but also surely he's heard it all by now since he's obviously been a doctor for a long time!

When I went to the pharmacist to pick up my prescription, it turns out it was for anti-vertigo medication, and nothing to treat the infection. When I expressed my surprise at this the pharmisist looked at my prescription and said "Oh you saw Dr -----? Yeh he's... interesting isn't he?". Not the most comforting thing to hear! However I will say that I Wikipedia'd Labyrinthitis (cool technical name hey) and since it can be from viral infections, antibiotics may not have done much anyway. So I guess I have to wait, and hope this medication helps until the dizziness subsides (unfortunately a big side effect of the medication is being drowsy).

Irony #3: I actually feel like doing uni work, now that it's quite difficult to do so! 

Question for you:

Have you ever had an illness with a cool sounding name? Feel free to share - but perhaps refrain if it's something a bit overly personal or gross :P

P.S. To answer a potentially obvious question: If you're so dizzy, how did you write this? Well, it took a long time, that's for sure! 

Dear Teenage Lozzz123

So after enjoying both Kirsti and Gina's letters to their highschool selves, I thought I would jump on that bandwagon when I realised I had plenty to say to the teenage version of myself. How this younger me will actually get this letter however, I haven't decided. I'm either thinking time-travel phonebooth...

[via]

...or letterbox that can deliver mail to the past. 

[via]

(Highschool Lozzz123 loves Keanu Reeves, so it's only fitting that I should use the time travel movies he's been in as inspiration).

Dear Teenage Lozzz123,

Psychology Pet Peeve: "We Only Use 10% of Our Brains"

Do you ever remember being told that we only use 10% of our brains, and if we could only figure out how to use the 100% we'd be geniuses, and possibly psychic as well? Considering this concept (or parts of it) has been attributed to people such as Albert Einstein, I can see why it would be believed.

I thought it was one of those things that most people knew by now to not be true, so imagine my surprise when last year the movie Limitless came out, with the premise that you could take a pill to make you use 100% of your brain. To be fair, I haven't actually seen this movie, but hearing about it in the ads made my blood boil so I thought it best to avoid (Bradley Cooper, we're still cool though).

The truth is however, unless you've had some sort of brain damage - you use all of your brain! If you were using 10% only - which part are you using while the rest is switched off? If you think about even some of the things the brain is doing simultaneously - controlling your senses, accessing memories and thinking about the future, planning and executing movements including speaking and walking, regulating hormones, and oh yeh, making sure you keep breathing - well I'd be a bit concerned if my brain was only working 10%! Also, our brains take up a major chunk of our energy resources: up to 20%! If only 10% of it's working, that's a bit of an energy waste and could be considerably smaller in that case.

Like our friend Homer here! [via]

Now please don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you're an idiot or making fun of you if you did believe this previously - to be honest, I kind of thought it might be true until the first week of my Psych courses where they specifically mentioned this is a myth. My pet peeve is more to do with poorly researched articles and movies perpetuating this sort of thing. It also seems to be a particular pet peeve of this guy, who actually wants you to contact him if you find someone stating this so he can correct (yell at?) them.

Ok gripe over!

Question for you:

- Do you have any pet peeves (doesn't have to be psychology-related, though if it is I'm sure I'll commiserate with you)? Feel free to share in the comments.

P.S. Albert Einstein in fact never said that.

P.P.S. To pester me, sometimes Husband says things like: "Oh I guess I forgot to do the washing up, because I only use 10% of my brain" aargh!

Bored people are boring.

Usually in January/February in my PhD office it is extremely quiet. The new PhD students don't start until March, and neither does teaching. A lot of people (not me, unfortunately) take this to mean they have an extended holiday. Also, besides a couple of weeks of summer school, there's no first year psychology students to experiment on. So really, all that leaves to do is writing. 

I am definitely keen to finish my thesis this year, but am expecting it won't be until the end of the year. I don't seem to go very well with long term goals like that. Also, with no teaching or testing, there's no real reason to go into the office as I can read and write at home. 

So here I am, at home. I try to work, but it just doesn't seem to happen. I could always set shorter goals for myself, e.g. write 1000 words today, but I can always rationalise those sorts of things. What happens if I don't write 1000 words today? Well, nothing. My supervisor is working on a paper I sent her, so she doesn't really need to see any other work from me right now. So I don't even have that as a motivation. I guess I need to recapture the initial excitement I had for this project - I was one of those nerds in my office who got started early on their PhD by coming in to work even when my office computer hadn't been delivered yet, and was pestering my supervisor for suggestions of readings to do. How I can feel that again however, I'm not sure right now. It's not that I hate my project now, but I have no new experiment findings to think about, and no new experiments to plan (all the experiments I'm doing for my thesis have been planned, some finished, and others started, but I now have to wait until March to continue).

So I have some questions for you:

- Do you ever have problems like this?

- What do you do to overcome motivation problems?

- What do you do to overcome procrastination problems? 

- What do you think of this picture?

[via imgur]

It's that time again...

[via]

Uni elections. Ugh. No offense to people who care about this stuff, but I am at best apathetic towards politics. Even if I did care however, I'm sure I'd still find it annoying, because it gives people reasons to get in my face and start talking at me whether I want them to or not. Unfortunately, I do seem to have a face that suggests I am a very non-threatening person, so I get approached by strangers A LOT (see post on being a loony beacon for proof). Also unfortunately, I have a lot still to learn about how to be assertive. One year I got cornered by this guy in a stairwell very passionately preaching his particular party's policies until I finally did a little shriek and ran away. 

Not only do we have these people trying to get votes, but there's always many people around uni trying to get people to sign up for charities and such. Perhaps it's because they think uni students care about causes. However what they don't seem to remember is that many uni students do not actually have any money. Now, I am all for charities. I think they're very important and I'm happy to donate to my favourite ones on a regular basis, and I'm glad there are other people who do too. However I do not appreciate the tactics some use to essentially force non-assertive types into giving their money. I myself not that long ago got talked into signing a contract to have money taken from my account monthly, when all I wanted to do was walk past this person to the train station! Adding to this the fact that I don't actually like talking to people on the phone, and was not happily anticipating the guilt trip I'd get for trying to get out of it, I ended up giving money for 6 months! 

The problem is, although they're doing something that annoys me greatly, they're still people. I can't bring myself to be flat out rude to them. I think about how difficult I'd find it to be in their position and approach strangers and try to talk them into something (which I think is why I was a terrible sales assistant). Usually this means I resort to pretending I'm involved in a really engrossing conversation on the phone.

Do other people have this problem? What do you say/do to nicely get them to leave you alone?

Passive Aggressive Notes

Well as can be seen in my 'Websites I Frequent - Sometimes Too Often' list, one of my favourites is Passive Aggressive Notes. Basically, it involves people sending in pictures of weird notes they've come across. 

The reason I'm mentioning this, is that a little while ago Husband and I were looking for an apartment to live in. Two streets away from where we ended up, we came across a place that was kinda crummy, except that it had a pool. But then again - sharing a pool with randoms is a bit gross. Anyway, while on the way out, I came across these notes in a common area and couldn't resist taking a picture. The second one is long, but quite amusing and well worth the read (click to open in new window and enlarge - if in a hurry at least skip to a bit after half way). I'm almost a little sad we didn't pick this place because Ivan* seems like a fun guy.

*different Ivan to this one.

Marking on a Saturday - BLERGH.

[source]

So this semester I have been involved in teaching two courses - a Forensic Psychology course for Criminology Masters, and also 2nd year undergraduate Psych. It just so happens both had their major assignments due within a week of each other. So guess what I get to do on my weekends. Well actually at the moment the answer is procrastinate, of course. 

The one thing that has opened my eyes from marking though, is the variety of students that take the courses. When you're actually doing a course you really can only go by how much effort you're putting in to your assignments. So it's interesting to see the range of assignments from intimidatingly awesome (where I feel like they should be marking MY work, not the other way around), and unfortunately to the other end of the spectrum - laughably horrendous. I of course don't go into marking hoping to laugh, but sometimes it's either that or cry out of frustration. Year after year I go into a LOT of detail about what I'm expecting from the assignments, and year after year there are people who just don't listen to me and do it all wrong. So perhaps now you can understand why I'm off to sweep, do the washing, and whatever other chores I can think of!

This comic sums it up pretty nicely (click to enlarge)!

I applaud you if you actually stuck around for that whole gripe of mine. I'll write about something more interesting next time, I promise (well actually it's subjective as to whether you'd find it interesting but I can only hope hey)!

UPDATE: 3pm, lots of cleaning done, not so much on the marking however. Oops.