The title of this chapter was one of the ideas I was considering for decorating the top of my graduation cap. Kind of cute, kind of funny, perhaps with a double meaning. Why did I choose to major in psychology? There are so many majors and I have a number of interests, so why that? It had long been my belief that one gets an education to become an educated person, not to get a job, but that has changed. Today specific classes and majors are often required for many careers. Once you get too far along on your educational path, you may be fairly stuck. I devoted a lot of time to figuring this out.
One idea was to major in elementary education. I would love to be a first or second grade teacher. I think that I am gifted in that way, too, so I would be using some of my greatest strengths. That is one way to live a rich and satisfying life, to use your strengths in your profession. I still remember one of my teachers telling me what an excellent reader I was when I was young and how that little affirmation made me feel so good about myself. I was good at something! I love to teach kids how to read, and even more importantly how to learn to love reading. I had been a scout leader for years, both with Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, so I already knew that I enjoyed working with kids, and really, I had been practicing this since I was a kid myself. It seemed like a no-brainer. But I kept feeling sorry for my potential future students for having the “old” teacher. Kids love to get the new young teacher, and many parents may feel the same way. I did not want to finish my education and then be faced with agism as I tried to get a career going. And then there is the fact that I have a rather painful limp from an injury, so not only would I be old, but also somewhat slow. Could I keep up with the youngsters? I decided that at this point in my life, teaching young kids was not the best choice for me. That’s okay. There are plenty of other majors that are appealing to me. With my love of literature, I considered an English Literature major for a brief moment, but I kept returning to my twenty-plus years of interest in psychology. I took career and academic assessments, and psychology was always in the top tier for me.
There were a couple things to consider. One is a concern that it may be too emotionally depleting for me. I am an empathetic person and there is no way that I know of to turn that off…or even to turn the volume down. Another concern is in order to do any of the things I would want to do with a psychology degree, I would perhaps need to earn a PhD. I am a lifelong learner, but I did not plan on being in college for seven or eight years or more. Still, you never know where life will take you. I took the plunge and went down that interesting, illuminating path. As I am writing this book, I should be more than halfway done with my master’s program by now, but Covid had something to say about that. An area of concern now is that by the time I am fully back to “normal” and the pandemic is hopefully more under control, will I be up for several more years of academic life? We’ll see, but for now, I am living my life focused on being successful on my healthy life plan and working towards a full and complete recovery from the nightmare of long Covid.
Many years ago I started reading books written by the brilliant psychologist Dr. Martin Seligman. He has a direct style that I appreciate, and his books have an almost timeless relevancy about them, which is good since he has been writing books for nearly half a century. He has worked extensively on depression, learned helplessness, and positive psychology. He took a more proactive approach to psychology by wanting to help prevent depression before it started. He is a proponent of positive psychology and a leader in that field. I have the deepest respect for Dr. Seligman, and I just love the way his mind works. I appreciate that he is always in there swinging away and trying to gain greater understanding with strong determination and good sense based on experience, education, and sound science. The knowledge acquired from his studies has helped to make the world a better place. I thoroughly enjoy studying his work, particularly his most recent work on positive psychology.
In Dr. Seligman’s book What You Can Change…and What You Can’t, he takes the position that attempting weight loss is, well, to loosely paraphrase it, basically a waste of time. He has been dealing with weight issues for a number of years and after researching the issue, he has decided that weight is something you can’t really change. Obviously we disagree on this issue. He clearly states the different attempts he has made over the years to try to lose weight, but the weight always found its way home. The problem here, in my opinion, is that he did not make true lifestyle changes. He went on diets. Numerous diets. Some that sound like they may have been fad diets. Not at all what I am doing here. I believe it is possible to lose the weight and keep it off. People yo-yo diet because they stop their weight loss regime, go off their diet, and frequently go back to their former patterns of eating. I’ve seen it happen many times…I’ve done it many times. They often discontinue the exercises they began while “dieting” as well since they feel they are no longer on that program. This is also an unhealthy choice. It is unfortunate for me that he took this position; the first time I read this book I was devastated. I felt doomed to a life of obesity. But now that I have been diligently working on my plan and realize its great importance to my life and longevity, I am determined to show that it can be done. And done without spending a lot of money or jeopardizing health by eating some nutritionally deficient fad diet for the sake of expediency. It was never my desire to be on opposite sides of such an important issue with the one I consider to be my psychology superhero, but the cost of people living their lives at an unhealthy weight is just too great. He is totally right, in my opinion, about the importance of being fit and that implementing an exercise routine into our lives will help us in that regard—a very important goal that will help us reach a healthier weight as well. Once a healthy weight is achieved and new eating patterns established, refraining from returning to former eating patterns becomes the next phase. For those of us who have been severely overweight, nothing will take priority over this. Reasonable weight loss is a possibility. I am doing it right now and once I attain my weight loss goal, I will never be obese again. Other than parts of the issue of weight loss, the rest of his book is great! I read it twice, which is something I seldom do.
You may or may not know this already, but Yale University, yes, I said Yale University, the ivy-covered walls in New Haven and all that, offers FREE college classes online. You can take these classes at your own pace during whatever time you have available. I am currently taking Music 112 with Professor Craig Wright. These are actual classes that are taught at Yale, by Yale professors. You do not receive college credit for these courses, but they are perfect for those of us wanting to learn from top members of their respective fields, and who may not otherwise be able to access quality education. This is where I first discovered Dr. Paul Bloom. That is, his humor, wit, and intelligence were long known to others, but it is where I first became acquainted with them. I took his online introductory psychology course. Participating in this course helped reduce my apprehensions regarding returning to college as an older student and helped me feel better prepared for my academic future—and it was just plain fun. Dr. Bloom helped me to realize that this was where I belonged. I thought “These are my kind of people!” This appeared to be just the right fit and what I had been searching for.
I fondly think of Dr. Bloom as a little bit of a shock jock. That is said with the greatest respect of course. Shortly after completing his introductory class, I went to Barnes & Noble to check out his books and his most recent release was sitting right there on the shelves. It was more than a little surprising to see a picture on the front cover of two adorable, chubby baby arms labeled “good” and “evil”. Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil is his work on the issue of morality. He likes to shake things up. Then his next book was titled Against Empathy—you’re killing me here, Bloom! Babies are evil and you are opposed to empathy? I like to think that it’s more of a matter of semantics: empathy vs compassion. Nearly a potato-potato scenario. And his latest book, the one I am currently finishing, The Sweet Spot, is not as one might imagine about hitting a tennis ball in just the right place on your racquet, the sweet spot, but more about the need for pain and suffering in our lives. While not the main focus of the book, the initial few pages mentioned BDSM several times. There are a great many acronyms and while I am well acquainted with the DSM, which is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, by the context it did not appear that they were in any way related. Innocently I Googled it. This was an unfamiliar term to me. Let me just say that my interests lie elsewhere. It will be interesting, maybe a tad alarming, to see what type of ad choices will be offered to me in the near future. BDSM has to do with one form of the self-selected pain Bloom discusses, and another reason for the aforementioned shock jock designation.
One of the important issues he discussed deals with what I believe to be true about sugar and its addictive qualities, and his professional opinion regarding this is most welcome. He said that “glucose influences reward circuitry in the brain.” Basically that means that sugars tell our brains to make us feel good, at least temporarily. He flat out states that “sugar is a drug.” Exactly! I did enjoy the book a great deal and love to read most everything he writes. Bloom explores his ideas by more than simply regurgitating study after study; he is open about his personal thoughts, strengths, and weaknesses. His writing is honest and down-to-earth, at times a trifle, just a wee trifle, shocking, and always educational and thought-provoking.
Some of us are fortunate enough to cross paths with exceptional human beings during our lives. That is how I view the professor that I had for Developmental Psychology and Biological Psychology. The first class that I took with him was just weeks after I filed for divorce. I sat towards the back of the room, like I did in all my classes that first semester, and did not utter a peep unless forced to by being placed in a small group. But after class I would approach this kind soul and ask questions maybe not as much linked to class material as to my struggles, probably not disguised very well to an intelligent person with a trained eye. Eventually I just told him about what I was dealing with at the time, and he was gracious and helpful. He helped me to look at things with a broader perspective and to look at what I had to gain more than what I had lost. I felt so trapped in regret, mired in the foolishness of idealism, but he helped me to see my life more clearly and just how much I had to be thankful for. I feel indebted to this wonderful professor and will always be thankful for him and his wise compassion.
Communication Studies is what I selected for my minor for the obvious reason—I had to learn to communicate better. I was so excited for my first day of the semester after transferring to the university that I got to class early and now I sat in the front row! Not only because now after completing two years I was feeling more confident, but also because it was too difficult to get my swag rolling bookbag up the steps of the large auditorium! I must pause for a moment. I just realized that texting and communicating with emojis so often is leaving us without words to sufficiently and succinctly convey our meaning as I just went to insert a laugh emoji! Anyway, I was sitting there, huge smile on my face, surrounded by young students who didn’t seem to share quite the same level of enthusiasm as me, when in walked our super cool professor with the rad hair and cool clothes. In a few minutes she had all the tech stuff set up and ready to go, but while she did that, she played Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” and set the bar impossibly high for the rest of my professors that semester. So here I was geeking out with my rolling backpack, sitting in the front row, but I didn’t care one bit. This felt like what I had been waiting for for so many years and I wanted to take it all in. I loved this class. I talked in this class.
The differences between psychology classes and communications classes, besides the obvious difference of material covered, is that one is lively and talkative, and the other is often so quiet that you can hear a pin drop from the next building over. One is made up of more introverts and the other of more extroverts. Can you guess which is which? This is an unofficial study based solely by my observations, therefore completely meaningless, but I think I would be correct in my theory if we were able to conduct an actual study. My communication classes did help me to become one of the more talkative students in a few of my psychology classes, but compared to communication majors, I was still a bit more reserved. One big change in me is that I felt much happier. I accepted that I was more of an introvert, and that was totally okay. There is nothing wrong with either introversion or extroversion, they are just different, and both are necessary. I did learn how to communicate more effectively, and I no longer felt like death was imminent before I gave a presentation.
Throughout my years of study, I was fortunate to have had so many wonderful, learned professors, dedicated to their professions and to their students. I enjoyed every class, well, all but one. I guess there is one in most every student’s academic career where they wished they had never stepped foot in the door of a particular professor’s classroom. To be frank, one unprofessional, boring prof who speed read from the slides, was habitually late for class, made mistakes on the syllabus, study guides, assignments, and exams…basically wasted my time. It was evident that this person desired to be someplace else, and I was in complete agreement. It got to the point that my frustration level was so high that I only showed up on exam days for the rest of the semester, me, a totally dedicated student who typically only missed a class due to severe illness. I did learn one important thing, and that is that if I am ever so fortunate as to become a professor, I will know exactly what not to do. I still got an A in the course.
Why psychology? Well, it helped me to find answers to a number of the painful questions in my life, and if not the answers, it led me down a path of greater understanding. I was able to make peace with myself and with those from my past who contributed to the pain I had to contend with. I envisioned eventually combining industrial-organizational psychology with positive psychology and finding a niche for myself where I could be of some positive use in this world. Ultimately, my psychology degree helped me to realize that I could become the healthiest version of myself possible, and that I have whatever is needed to live a full and rich life.
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