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,

I May Regret This...

Starting in March, besides my PhD, during the week I will also be teaching a 2nd year Psychology course, and also helping out and lecturing a bit for a Masters night course. I also applied (and got accepted) to do a Graduate Certificate in Higher Education at uni. Also, I put my hand up to be Postgrad Rep (a person who liases between the students and faculty to highlight relevant issues etc.) this year. Perhaps you may be thinking: 

Go crazy? Don't mind if I do! [via]

"Lozzz123 - are you going CRAZY!?"

To which I say - yeh, probably. However, the course is free for university staff, and it's actually only 4 hours of class every fortnight. It's a great opportunity to learn how to be a good lecturer/course coordinator before I actually may get a full time job doing that (it's interesting that this is not compulsory and although pre-school, primary school and high school teachers all need specific degrees in teaching, most university level teachers don't have any teacher training except perhaps a 1-2 day course, but that's a completely different issue)! As for the Postgrad Rep, I'll be sharing the responsibility with another PhD student too, and besides a meeting or two each week and emailing/talking to any students that have questions it shouldn't be super time consuming. And well, all the teaching/helping/lecturing is good money.

Considering I'll be trying to fit testing for two experiments and trying to write up my thesis in there too (and well, having a bit of a life possibly) it will make for a busy and slightly stressful year.

The thing is though, I actually seem to function better when I have so much stuff to do, that I don't have a choice but to do it NOW. As mentioned previously, when I only have one thing to work on without any immediate looming deadlines, I seem to flounder, get bored easily, and just generally procrastinate and not do much at all (unless you count non-uni activities like cooking and running, which I don't).

I just hope I haven't bitten off more than I can chew this time...! 

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!

Cooking and Running Adventures of Late.

(Not doing both at the same time - though wouldn't that be interesting!?) 

One of the things I've been doing while working from home (well when not actually working), has been collecting recipes. I'm not sure I'll actually cook most of the recipes, but I do like imagining I have, and how they would taste. For this I partly blame Pinterest, as there are heaps of delicious looking meals on there. 

The other day I made chicken, mushroom, spinach and cheese filo pastry. Sorry I didn't think to take a picture, mostly because I learned the hard way that you don't put any pans on the bottom of the oven. It might seem obvious, but it turns out that the bottom of the oven is very hot and cooks things SUPER fast. So mostly I spent the evening trying to get rid of the horrible burnt smell that often fills our apartment (what must the neighbours think!). Husband liked them so much though, that he salvaged what was left of the burnt one (thankfully the main tray was not on the bottom so the rest cooked fine) and still ate it. 

[from here]

Today I made cornbread muffins, with ham, cheese and chives. Again I didn't take pictures because we ate several pretty quickly. So here's someone else's picture, which actually looks pretty much how my ones did (though to be honest, might were slightly overcooked in comparison). Pretty tasty, if I do say so myself.

Another thing that I've had a bit of time to do recently, is go running. As I mentioned last year, it is my aim to finish the couch-to-5k running program. I didn't do much last year, but have been running a bit more this year. I am now up to week 5, which is over half way. I'm enjoying running much more than I expected, and as such my friend and I decided the other week we would participate in the annual City to Surf run in Sydney - which is 14km. It is in August, so if I keep up the running it might be possible I can run a fair bit in it, but I'm still expecting a lot of walking to occur. We decided we must have awesome costumes for the event, so our plan is daggy 80s sports people, who've unfortunately been recently zombified and are therefore not running for fitness, but to chase other racers for their brains. I'm very glad I have a reason to re-wear my bloody shirt from the last time I was a zombie (see below). 

Again, I turned to google in the hopes of a picture, and there doesn't appear to be a zombie from the 80s dressed in sports attire. So, again instead of photoshopping I'll allow you to use your own imagination based on this combination of pictures, until August that is, when I will look like that! 

[p.s. the pic of not-me is from here]

So my questions to you are:

- What have you been cooking lately?

- Are you going in any running events this year?

- Have you ever done running and cooking at the same time?

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]