operant conditioning

I am currently training myself to develop a number of habits, for reasons somewhat ambiguous even to me. I just know that I like being kind of quirky, and that means having weird habits. In order to achieve this goal I have been employing the psychological concept of operant conditioning. Here are some of the things I'm working on:

• take calcium gummies > brush teeth > go to sleep. I have a lot of difficulty making myself go to sleep because I just want to stay awake and be productive or think, even when the lights are off and I should be resting. So I'm trying to wait to take my calcium until I'm very sleepy so that in the future when I take it my body will immediately want to go to bed. So far this has been entirely inefficient. 
• feel nervous > bend fingers. I tend to rip my nails a lot because a) I have weak nails (see:needing calcium gummies) and b) I get bored/nervous and need something to do with my hands. So recently I've been bending my ring fingers as far forward as possible, giving me a distraction and my hands something fun to do (I feel so flexible afterwards!). Status: way too successful. I find myself doing it unintentionally a lot. Unfortunately I'm still ripping my nails, but the positive externality is that the new habit has been really helpful in identifying times when I'm feeling stressed out (as opposed to just bored) due to me intentionally only doing it when I am stressed. Perfect! I love being able to analyze and understand myself. 
• write the letter "a" > put a hat on it (like they appear in times new roman or basically any legit font). I actually gave up on this about two years ago, but I spent a year training myself to do it very consciously so that by the end of the year it came naturally. I thought it would be good because I think that sometimes they look more professional, but I realized that it was just too much work (I have two of them in my name...I'm not about spending up to 20% more time every time I write my name). When I one day stopped doing it, I congratulated myself on a successful year and never looked back. 
• get bored? > drink camelbak. all day erry day drink my camelbak. I used to be really bad at hydrating myself, but ever since the purchase of my camelbak I have seen a significant increase in my water imbibition. I even reach for it (and sip it) when there's no water left (a few drops of water are better than no water...?). I just need to remember to fill it up more often/motivate myself to go all the way downstairs to the water fountain, and I'll be able to call this a success. 
• lock car > sing the chorus to Miike Snow's Animal. I'm not sure why this started but it has been wildly successful. I sometimes start singing it without noticing that I just locked my car and it may take me a few minutes to understand why it's playing in my head. The sound of my beeping lock just reminds me of the song, ok?

Habits that would be more useful but less interesting:

• any kind of exercise
• reading before bed
• reading when I wake up
• good posture
• always eating breakfast
• etc.

And obviously this is one of many instances in which I prefer interesting to useful.

day in the life

I'm going to tell the internet about my day. It wasn't a particularly exciting day, and it's actually not an accurate depiction of my summer because I usually decide to get dressed and do things with other people (coffee dates, gym, grocery store, bank, work, lab, meals, etc.), but not today. Nope. Today was a stay-in-bed day and I am so grateful for that. Sometimes you just need a day of rest!


10:30-12:30
Woke up from a dream about my sister calling me and making unusual demands which I couldn't satisfy, all while being attacked by a cat (and I think a bear) and at the grocery store. It turns out my friend was calling me to let her in the building, so I had to wake up and let her in. Did my daily bible reading, wondered how many more lists of names I was going to have to read. Did some life/IV organizing! Made a master agenda for the fall, thought about goals, sent some emails, played with some google docs. Read all of my journal thoughts from the past semester and pondered them.

12:30-2:30
Ate a delicious sandwich on free bread from The Crust! But then found out the turkey may have been starting to mold. Felt a little funny, but probably only for psychological reasons. Did some facebook stalking. Watched the season 2 premiere of Falling Skies and played minesweeper.

2:30-3:30
Did some Monroe things re:recruiting participants for my experiment. (See, I do research.) Finished reading Ordering Your Private World which totally confirmed my need for rest today.

3:30-4:30
Napped.

4:30-now
Read another chapter in The Hobbit. Blogged about my research. Started writing this post.


Now it's time for dinner (bagel bites and salad with Taylor) and then more relaxing!

patience

Random thoughts on patience:

• Can you be patient for something you're unsure of? Or is that just trusting God/being peaceful?
• Patience is like a muscle which requires exercising to improve its strength. But sometimes we're called to exert more than we think we can handle.
• Patience and peace can cause each other or be intricately related, but they're not the same thing.
• God was first patient with us (love is patient...only God can perfectly love).
• Corollary: true, pure patience (not self-interested) can only come from God.
• Why is patience so important in love? Is it about respecting other people? Is it about respecting God's timing? Is it about forgiveness--being patient with faults? Is it always temporal, or can it be about something less tangible like being patient for someone's maturity?
• Patience can shed light on an abundance of other topics in our lives or virtues which we aspire to attain. So many things require patience first. Patience is sometimes just about letting go of the illusion of control.

Hmmmmm.

4th of July

I love the 4th of July. It's the perfect day of summer: everyone wears the same colors, everyone enjoys the warm nights, and everyone gets crazy by trying to plan the best celebration ever. Some of the my most vivid memories come from the 4th, from midnight swimming to getting stuck in a museum exhibit featuring lots of bones during a thunderstorm/power outage (it was pitch black and I was a little more than terrified). But the most interesting 4th has to be from my childhood:

Circa 1996 we celebrated at my grandma's house and we all took family pictures and my sister and I wore matching dresses. We had these dolls named Rachel and Rebekah who had matching dresses as well (which my mom made). Rachel was about the size of an American Girl doll and she had curly blonde hair and a squishy body. Rebekah had lighter blonde hair in two braids and she was a little bit bigger than a Barbie. Now Rebekah was the best doll in the world. I have no memories of her aside from this day, but for at least the duration of the day I was obsessed with her. In our family pictures my sister got to hold Rebekah (I think because she was the littler doll) and I had to hold Rachel, and I was not happy about it. I was upset and didn't want to be in the picture but my parents somehow made me sit down and hold Rachel (I think I cried a lot before relenting). But there was one thing that they could not make me do: smile. So in our family pictures, instead of making an angry face or sucking it up and smiling, I just looked passively away from the camera into the distance with a meaningless expression. Hipster child in the making.

Almost every 4th since then has been spent with my sister in some fashion, whether in our neighborhood or in DC or in Williamsburg (the first year I went to DC she stayed at home and we got rained on forever--I think that's been our only separation). So it's very strange to me to not have her with me to play cards and find overpriced food and go for a swim...I'm missing her a lot. :/

Anyway, personal and historical significance, it's just a great day of summer. There's a lot of pressure on it to be the best day ever, but random adventures make it the most fun and it's one of the few times when I support a complete lack of planning. Also, the fireworks in CW this year may have been the best fireworks I've ever seen, no pressure 2013.

halfway there!

The year is halfway over! Recently I've been worrying about a lot of things that are coming up...applying to graduate school, figuring out how to balance my time when it's senior year and I just want to hang out and do senior things, to honors thesis or not to honors thesis (I'm turning it into a verb don't even worry), Urbana, NomCom, apartment; you name it and I've been worried about it. Last year I felt really convicted to "be where I am" and that thought occurred again to me when I realized that the year was only halfway over, and yet I was sitting here worrying about the next six months...in reality, I think the next six months can take care of themselves as they get here.

What reminded me of this fact (aside from it being July--I couldn't get my calendar to hang up so it's not even a new page that's reminding me) is that I'm reading through the Bible this year with Katie (/Katie's home church). We just finished the book of Psalms and are about to start reading it again (everything else we're only reading once). I thought about where I would likely be the next time I finished reading Psalms--at Urbana, my grad school apps will be done, the new IV exec will be decided, sleepover month will have been a success and (I hope) most of my friends will still like me and still hang out with me. I'll be content. Or maybe I'll be miserable, or maybe I still won't know what I'm doing after college, or maybe I'll be voted out of my apartment for making too many cupcakes. Wherever I am, I'll be praising God.

How do I know this? Because the God who inspired the Psalms doesn't change. He is praiseworthy all the time, and his goodness does not depend on my happiness (or on my existence--hey, the world could end before I even get my Christmas presents). Even if I'm in a different place than I expect, God will be just as good. I will have the same need for grace (probably more of it). And I hope that my desire for him will be stronger than ever, despite the uncertainties I'll continue to face in 2013.

It's so easy to say that I trust God but hard to put into practice, but hopefully blogging about this will remind me every time I read a psalm to put my faith in the Lord and not in myself--not in my contingency plans, not in my rationality, and certainly not in my ability to keep calm and carry on throughout the challenges facing me.

interesting things

One of the reasons I haven't been posting a lot on my blog is that I'm pretty sure my life is devoid of interesting things. I'm not experiencing a new culture or making a huge transition, and you might think: this is strange, since Marisa had possibly the most boring summer ever last year and still managed to entertain people with her blog. I guess that's because I was blogging about thoughts instead of experiences? In any case, I started to feel particularly boring, so here are some things that I've been up to and I suppose qualify as interesting, if you're really into the slightly mundane aspects of life:

• I took the GRE last Saturday, and everyone wants to know how I did and where I want to go to grad school, and I have neither of those answers. Of course I immediately looked up the initial score they gave me (it's a computer-based test, so they give you an estimate of how you did immediately upon completion...scary!)--but I don't really know if it's good enough for where I want to go, since I don't really know where I want to go. (This is all regarding obtaining a PhD in economics.)
• I purchased checks for the first time! They're pretty cool, and I actually know how to write them thanks to the IV checking account. I'm so grown up. I had to go to the bank twice to accomplish this.
• I'm keeping a super organized account of my spending for the summer, which basically serves to make me feel like a terrible person all the time. I love keeping a budget but I just keep spending money and I can't stop because they're all necessary things. 
• I discovered this really neat website, TeuxDeux, which I can use for my daily tasks (laundry, library, emailing, etc.). It's really clean and organized and much better than Google tasks or sticky notes at keeping me on-task.
• I finished watching Community! Sad day.
• I read like half of Jane Eyre the day before/of my GRE test, because it was the second half and I needed to know what happened. I think Charlotte Bronte examined part of my soul before writing that book; yes, it was that good.
• My legs hurt all the time from standing at work/occasionally working out. I've also learned that I can read The Hobbit while on the elliptical...score!
• There was a minor ant infestation in our room in Bryan last night, but it was pretty contained...just frightening.
• There's a new store in New Town that's basically a novelty/candy store which is really cool, but I haven't bought anything there yet.
• Taylor (roommate) and I developed a checklist of things to do over the summer, which we will eventually make it though, promise! Mostly they're related to food, but also of note: go to the zoo (this weekend!) and get buff (by the end of the summer, as measured by our pull-up ability).
• Research is going swimmingly--we should be ready to recruit participants come second summer session (which is to say, July). Until then it's experiment design and coding time! I've been spending a good amount of time in my lab working on this either in the morning or afternoon any given day, depending on my work schedule or other important commitments...like coffee dates. :)
• Relevant (my church) is going through some changes, which is nice to see--they just announced their new leadership team and are looking into a new building. Although it's a smaller crowd without most of the students, it's been fun to hang out more with the regulars/adults.
• I joined a small group that's studying the fruit of the spirit, facilitated by none other than Catherine Townes! (Sidenote: she has a really cute apartment! I shouldn't have expected any less.) It's exciting; I love that in the summer you do have a smaller group of people around so that it's easier to spend time with people you might not have time for throughout the year.
• At work I've learned how to chop all kinds of foods! Also, yesterday I gave in and made myself a falafel pita because everyone else was (don't worry, we still had to pay...half-price!). It was super yummy! I tried like three things I hadn't ever eaten before, but they were really good! I think I'm growing up, but actually. Like, I even got green peppers on there. So now I know that I can fully recommend this pita, in addition to the others I've tried (which are only the caesar and buffalo chicken...eeep). But I just want to eat all of them all the time!
• I'm trying to cook more but it's difficult when I work a lot at dinner time. So far Taylor and I have made fajitas, bacon/cheese bagels and lots and lots of pasta, but when I cooked with Jamie we did manage to include some vegetables. On the bright side, we just eat sandwiches for lunch so that's always something yummy and cheap to get by on (99 cent bread!).

That's mostly it for Williamsburg--some rain this afternoon, some people visiting soon, and lots and lots of sleep. Maybe boring, but I'll take it.

things I still don't understand

• the Libor-OIS spread
• Tim Tebow
• hummus
• why I stay up so late
• why I regularly dream about pokemon
• why Adam Levine's voice is so soothing
• pre-meds
• color catchers (I don't trust them)

...to be continued.

(part one)