Just Press Pause

Today I learned how to press life's proverbial pause button. Believe me, this is no easy feat for someone addicted to productivity. The decision to rest and do non-required, non-social things like reading a book or blogging as I do now is often accompanied by guilt. To make matters worse, it is now the last stretch of the semester, and I have loads of requirements to accomplish. It seemed like the worst time to rest. Or so I have gotten used to to believing.

My tasks for the next three weeks had already been laid out on my calendar. And I realized that I could keep my work (at least the independent, academic kind) out of my Sundays. As a living, breathing human being, rest is necessary, and doing enjoyable things once in a while is actually healthy.

Ah yes, enjoyable activities. This brings to mind our class discussion last year on Positive Psychology. There is a distinction between pleasurable and enjoyable activities. More often than not, the former brings about instant rewards that have no lasting impact on the person. The latter involves growth and learning, and actually contribute to one's well-being. Put that way, I guess doing enjoyable activities while resting isn't as bad as I make it out to be. It's definitely a lot better than the (too many) hours I've wasted on Facebook and Twitter, and playing (the ridiculously addictive) Bejeweled.

Since I've been talking about rest and slowing down, here's a nice read on starting your day slowly (just pardon the typos, grammar Nazis).

Now I shift my topic completely to something that often bothers me about our country: our lack of collective self-esteem. I ended my last entry (which was much too long ago) mentioning this in passing, but a recent class discussion has made me reflect on it further. Interestingly, that discussion was triggered by a classmate's mention of talangka mentality. My professor, being an active advocate of Sikolohiyang Pilipino was quick to denounce the use of such a term. According to her, this stereotype is damaging to the Filipino psyche (as most stereotypes are) and is in fact a misnomer. If you look at a basket of crabs, they will appear to be pushing others down in order to get up. But in reality, they are helping each other up, as eventually none of the crabs will be left behind. The analogy was a great way to shatter that stereotype. But there are many more Filipino stereotypes that need to be shattered. The sad thing is that we are the ones responsible our own culture's propagation of such negative attitudes and behaviors. With this, we fail to realize the greatness that we are capable of, and settle for what we think we deserve.

Perhaps that last sentence goes for your pursuit of your own dreams too, whatever they may be. (I just might be speaking to myself, more than anyone else. I think it's time to work on that application.)

Schadenfreude

Observations from the past two days have spurned my interest in the idea of schadenfreude. First, I had attended a workshop with elementary public school kids yesterday, and I noticed that they were very quick to laugh at and point out others' mistakes. Then today, I woke up to several videos and a Facebook page lambasting an individual for driving his car into a flood. Of course, these two events have different underlying mechanisms involving different sets of individuals, but both involve reveling in the misfortune of others, aka schadenfreude.

So I did a quick search on schadenfreude, and it seems that research on this focuses a lot on the disgrace of people of a higher status, and in terms of in-group vs. out-group. This gives some light to the second issue that I had mentioned. The person involved is a UP Law student, and allegedly graduated summa cum laude. I also remember seeing him campaigning for different USC positions during my undergrad years, but I did not personally know him. Given this background, it seems his status as a person of high academic achievement actually did him more harm than good. People are feasting on the idea that someone who should be so smart did something so ridiculous. Admittedly, driving one's car into a flood and blaming the MMDA for not giving a warning does not seem to make much sense. But to a certain extent, the latter action seems to be self-preservation at work. It's a very human reaction to one's own mistakes. As to the reaction to another's mistakes, this incident had been taken to a whole different level.

I am not absolving myself of schadenfreude. Sure, I snicker once in a while or judge someone under my breath over some error or another. And yes, I may also discuss such events with my friends and have a good laugh over them. But this is not what took place in the past two days. This person's mistake was made a much too public matter, possibly damaging the person's reputation and psyche in the process. I'm trying to avoid blame these days, but I think that GMA should have also been more responsible in their decision to air that interview. That, paired with the lack of controls on the internet was a sure recipe for disaster.

The case of the public school children I observed calls for a different perspective on schadenfreude. These children not only belong to a lower socioeconomic class, but were also handpicked by their teachers as problematic students. They belong to very large families, and go to a school with similarly populous classes. Perhaps their wrongdoings are much too frequently pointed out by their parents and teachers, and their accomplishments rarely noticed. With that kind of modeling, combined with the desire for attention within the environments that make them almost invisible, they too have become quick to point out others' wrongdoings. I know, it's an oversimplified statement of things. Maybe more local research has to be done on this to clearly lay out the variables that come into play.

On a final note, it's saddening that such a tendency to highlight others' mistakes is stereotyped as a Filipino characteristic, calling it talangka mentality. But in fact, it is humanity that is afflicted by this condition in varying degrees. What a contradiction we make as we are so quick to point out our own weaknesses as a people, including the one that puts the spotlight on the frailties of others. Why not try to pay more attention to the positive instead?

One of the Boys

Contrary to initial expectation, school didn't make me do any more (non-required) writing. But today's discussion on gender in my Social, Emotional and Personality Development class prompted me to do some reflection and writing.

I was reminded of the important distinction among gender identity (identifying yourself as male or female), gender expression (the extent of your masculinity or femininity) and sexual orientation (your preference for a partner of the opposite or same sex). It's fairly easy to answer where one stands on the first and the third, but lines are extremely blurred for the second concept. It depends both on your understanding of yourself, combined with your standards and society's expectations of masculinity and femininity.

Taking these into account, I would classify myself as androgynous. I believe that I display both feminine and masculine characteristics, but I find it more interesting to examine how that happened. Family influences are most obvious - after all, it's a running joke that there are five Ochoa boys in this family (when, as you might know, there are three biological females). The basketball hoop that we have at home wasn't set up for my brothers. It was initially installed for my sister and me. We're also extremely competitive and achievement-oriented. At a personal level, I never owned a Barbie doll, asked Santa for remote control cars, and was (and sometimes still is) fondly considered by my dad as his little boy. Until now, dressing like a girl requires conscious effort, and I am still incapable of putting on (full) make-up. I'm starting to suspect that we were prenatally exposed to high normal levels of testosterone.

Now on a totally unrelated note, you have to watch Discovery Channel's octopus documentary. Apparently, this under appreciated species (save for Paul the Octopus) is capable of observational learning. Who knew that Bandura's modeling extends even to such a seemingly simplistic species? Even cooler is the octopus' neural structure. Apparently, they have a master brain and eight sort of mini-brains on each tentacle, with each acting as a hub of neurons. Anyway, my descriptions don't do justice to the documentary. Watch it for yourself and be amazed!

PS The video isn't from the documentary, but shows some of what I'm talking about.

1 + 1

This blog was created to maintain a habit of writing and reflection. Unfortunately, it's been more of the latter than the former for me. But I have a feeling there will be more output soon since classes have begun, and I have loads and loads of new information to process everyday. I had a moment of insanity and decided to take 14 units of graduate classes this sem, so three hours of every weeknight will be spent in a classroom. Exciting! Anyhoo.

Today was my assessment class, and our topic was about establishing rapport with the child you're assessing. What was particularly striking for me was this: you have to know yourself well, and become aware of your perceptions and biases towards children to assess them effectively. And as we discussed last week, assessment must go beyond diagnosing, and should have a higher purpose of bringing about improvements to achieve one's optimal development. With such an undertaking, it's also important that one remember and understand developmental psych concepts. This brings me to today's focus on synergy.

Crazy workload aside, this semester seems to be an emphasis on synergy. I realize that all the things that I have learned so far, and everything that I will learn this coming semester can actually come together and paint a bigger picture. I'm actually excited to refine my knowledge of research and assessment methods this sem. The practical value of the things that they teach at the graduate level is something that I appreciate immensely. Yes, this sem will be crazy, but probably the most exciting one yet.

Stop, look and listen.

Shooting Blind from UWE Bristol Media Practice on Vimeo.

A few days ago I chanced upon a documentary about the Paralympics. How the English athletes were preparing for their moment of glory and triumph. Thing is, for me they are winning everyday. One of these athletes is Elizabeth Johnson. Seen here in the 2008 Beijing Paralympic games.

 Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images AsiaPac)

Looking at her, she's a happy kid. Flashing her smile and her gold medal. See her swim and you would see that she doesn't have the usual stroke. Thing is, she has Cerebral Palsy. Our friend wiki defines CP as: Cerebral palsy (CP) is an umbrella term encompassing a group of non-progressive,^[1][2] non-contagious motor conditions that cause physical disability in human development, chiefly in the various areas of body movement


In one of the scenes in the documentary we see her trying so hard to pick up a pen. For most of the population, picking up a pen requires no thought at all and its just a matter of seeing it and taking it. 
But for her, it requires an intense amount of focus and determination. In the same documentary, there's a part of it about the England Blind Football team that competed in the 2010 cup. I never knew there was even such a team much less a league. 


What I learned from these athletes is that getting up is winning. I learned to value what I can do even more. I learned that trying things is a victory in itself. I read that Nietzsche had this term "Self mastery". He says that we owe it to ourselves to know every bit of ourselves.  

More Please

Today was supposed to be Day 1 as a full time student, but my class didn't push through. Because I had to wait for color coding to pass, I decided to watch the few TED Talks that I had in my iPod. The talk that struck me was called Addicted to Risk by Naomi Klein, which you can watch here.

While watching this, I felt somewhat ashamed of being part of the human species. Yes, I am guilty of exploiting the world's resources with the illusion that there's more than enough to go around anyway. When it comes to my personal resources, I often worry that I do not have enough for me to survive on. I can't quite maintain the same attitude towards shared resources. Of course, it wouldn't be very healthy to worry endlessly about anything. But we would be doing our planet a favor by at least keeping in mind that the day will come when it can no longer give us more when we demand too much of it. I have no right to be preachy about this, of course. I've yet to give up eating beef or start commuting everyday. But a more conscious effort has to be made. I know I want my kids to live long and still see the beauty that this world has to offer. Hopefully, their generation can also take better care of their home.

Upper Limits

Today, I learned that I can push myself to the limit and live to tell the tale (thank you, P90X!). This is the story of June 2011. Much, much more to come.

With that, I may have quite an academic slant starting next week. Classes haven't even started and DevPsych has already gotten in my head. Like when I watched X-Men last Saturday. I consider it the ultimate mind-blowing movie of 2011 (at least at this point) because of the awesome character development that they portrayed. And at that moment of appreciating how the X-Men came to be, I realized that I find Developmental Psych so fascinating because it is about a person's process of becoming rather than just about who the person is.

During that process, we can get a chance to get to the next level that we want to achieve (at least if you ascribe to stage theories). And that process never really stops throughout your lifetime. That's why Developmental Psychology has become more appropriate than Child Psychology as a field. Of course, I still believe that a large part of who we become are due to how we were raised as kids. That's why I believe in influencing parents as a long-term objective. But change is still possible, but it has to be a more conscious effort. So as (hopefully mature) adults, I hope we're all making conscious efforts to make the changes that we want to achieve.

Crayons

Today I learned that using crayons aimlessly is quite therapeutic. I also found out what cerulean and indigo really look like,and liked what I saw (especially with the former).

Three or Two?

Today's tidbit is not so much new information as it is a personal theory. It struck me while we had triplets playing in Gymboree today (oddly enough, we seem to encounter more triplets than twins). Upon seeing them,I started to wonder how life would be growing up as a triplet. I think it'll be easier than growing up as a twin. Attention and competition will be less concentrated,and you have two automatic companions for life. But if you go further to quadruplets and onwards that might be a resource problem,so let's not go there. That's just me though. Any thoughts?

The second thing I picked up today was something from Nat Geo that A will be happy about: extraterrestrial life just might exist. But I speak in terms of spores and not in the ET phone home sense. In India,they had red rain after a sonic boom (possibly caused by a meteor),and the red particles turned out to be cells. The volume was much too large to have come from trees. This happened in 2001,and the case remains unresolved.

The last is from America's Next Top Model (yes,the first time I watched). Apparently,you can get voted out for being too skinny. Hurray for them! I guess the height requirement remains though. Boo.

And yes,this is what happens when I spend one evening watching TV. That,plus getting a Jamie Foxx jackpot on Ellen.

Because Facts aren't Always What You Want to Hear

Today, I learned from Carla Con that there is no cure for cancer. Yes, this comes from the MBB girl who got an award for her research involving a cancer cell tracker (correct me if I'm wrong). Sadly, this dreadful disease can't be cured because each type of cancer, even when afflicting the same organ, is unique. Thus, for every cancer there must also be a unique cure. Not very realistic. Even then, the treatment can also target a limited number of cells. Even if the majority is eliminated, leaving one percent is more than enough to bring about its eventual return. When I asked why it haa become more common, I got a straight and simple answer: environment.

So yes, there is no cure. Still, we can at least improve our odds. We will all suffer from our eventual demise, but we can also live now. Yes,I know it's become a corny cliche,but it's something we still forget. I know I still have to remind myself. Probably wouldn't hurt to make some lifestyle changes too. Or so I say now. :p

Why Kurious Koalas?

Illustration by TJ ROCAMORA

Today I learned that the koala sleeps for 16-18 hours, eats for 3-5 hours and just plays with what's left of the day. I also found out that the koala is the only animal in the world with a reduced brained size compared to its prehistoric ancestors. Some scientists contend that it's Australia's version of the South American sloths. But Dani counters, "But its so much cuter!" And I agree.

In this blog, we aim to break the stigma of a koala while keeping the cuteness of the marsupial. Its not a bear, people! The Kurious Koalas aim to learn something new everyday. To be inquisitive, to be students for life, learning in every sense of the word. We can be hardheaded and set in our ways and not be open to experiences and lessons. For my entries, my bias will lean towards trivial things that I think will be useful in life. If there was something I learned in Philosophy classes in school, it was "Never lose the sense of childlike wonder. Ask questions and never stop looking for the answers."

Meet the Kurious Koala(s)

May 27, 2011

I learned something new today.

I’ve said that more times than I can recall, whether upon discovering a new quirk about a person I thought I knew well, or at picking up a new tidbit of information that may or may not be useful. But why not make a habit out of that? Learning something new every day, I mean. After all, I dream of becoming a student for life. And my summer break from graduate school should not mean taking a break from my quest for knowledge or meaningful writing. Looking back, my last pieces of inspired writing were brought about by rich classroom discussions about great minds in the history of Psychology. But neither writing nor learning must be confined to the academic year. So here I am.

This is an attempt to return to writing in order to do my mind a favor. My memory has been faltering lately, and I have been lazy in my self-professed life of learning. Unlike the several blogs that I had religiously updated before, this will not be an inward look at my emotions or personal experiences. Yes, there will be experiences here and there, but they will be recounted from the perspective of learning and acquiring new knowledge. Hopefully, this will also encourage both pursuit and production of knowledge on my end, and perhaps encourage it from your end too (whoever you may be). Expect a bias for matters of a more psychological nature, but I will also try to stretch my limits to explore disciplines that are outside of mine. Entries are also not limited to new things I learned, per se. They can also be observations of ideas or theories in action, or an elaboration of existing ideas. Nonetheless, this will be an exercise of the cerebral sort. But yes, a healthy dose silliness and nonsense is also to be expected. This, along with an insatiable sense of curiosity, is something that I have picked up from the kids that I spend most of my time with.

Now to prevent an overdose of self-centeredness or pretentiousness (and also increasing the likelihood of habitual updating), this blog will be a collaborative effort between Aaron Vicencio and myself. He'll also give you a better idea of why this blog is named as such.

Pardon the long introduction that I wrote. My motivation to write comes in bursts.

For now, let’s learn something new. Shall we?

Today’s salient idea was brought about by a visit to Improv Everywhere’s website. As I was watching The Mp3 Experiment Seven , I realized the potential of the internet for mobilizing people. Yes, I’m sure that this idea is not new, especially considering the fact that you’re using the internet now to read this, but how much has it really been used? Certainly not to its full potential. Through this interesting project, they were able to bring people together to do something ridiculous. Not to belittle this event because of its silliness. I probably would have joined in if given the chance. But going back, it makes me wonder why it isn’t used as much for something that can make a profound impact on one’s community or nation? To a certain extent, it probably already is. On the local front, the youth’s widespread participation in Ondoy relief efforts and the clamor for or against the RH Bill come to mind. But more can still be done. How else can we use the internet as a channel for enacting a revolution?

May 28, 2011

Illustration by Noma Bar for TIME

I read Time Magazine’s article on The Optimism Bias just last Saturday, and was once again thrilled to see the marriage of Positive Psychology and Neuroscience. As an aside, I still dream of becoming part of an experiment that uses fMRI to get a glimpse of my brain. Going back, I found two points from the article particularly striking.

First, it says that our minds are positively biased towards our personal future. In imagining a future for ourselves, we are more likely to predict positive outcomes. At the same time, other research findings suggest that our minds are negatively biased towards recognizing cues about our present environment. That is, we pay greater attention to and have a propensity to remember negative details. We are designed to be cautious and realistic while still maintaining our ability to dream.

We are also hardwired to be optimistic, and this circuitry resides in the hippocampus. I used to think that the hippocampus was mainly in charge of our spatial memory. But apparently, it also takes hold of our more temporal experiences – the past cannot be recalled and the future cannot be envisioned when there is damage to this brain region. Isn’t there something beautiful about sharing brain circuitry for both our memories and aspirations?

May 30, 2011

Today I lived like a Koala.

That is, I spent most of it eating and sleeping. And with that, I am moved (at least figuratively) to talk about hunger. This was something I picked up from Gab Laurel, when he posed an interesting question about childhood and hunger. He had asked if we remembered ever feeling hunger when we were kids as we do now. Come to think of it, I don’t recall any such instance. As children (of course, infancy not counted where hunger seems to be a constant waking state), were we really too preoccupied with playing and having fun that eating was not a priority? Seems to apply to sleeping too, when I think about it. Our parents always had to force us to finish our food or take a nap when we refused to stop playing. By adolescence, the situation is reversed and we have to force ourselves to stop eating and stay awake.

At first, I thought that this was brought about by a heightened awareness of our physiological states. But looking at this occurrence again, maybe as kids, we just enjoyed what we were doing a lot more. Playing with our friends was simply too fun that food and sleep seem to be of little importance. Once in a while, it still happens. You’re so engrossed in something and you’ve achieved flow that you forget that you’re even hungry or sleepy. When they are not signaling actual physiological needs, perhaps an increased need to eat or sleep is actually a sign of boredom. We might not be exerting enough mental effort to push away such basic sensations. Now there’s another reason to get off my koala butt and look for a little more challenge.