Time Strategies

(Photo from Vimeo)

The schedule we agreed will likely work best for me is as follows:

Monday: Reading A & B

Wednesday: Storytelling & Blog comments

Friday: Project & Project Feedback

I will work for 2 hours on each of these days. With how my schedule looks at the moment, I will work in the mornings, which is usually when I think the most clearly anyway. If my internship interferes with those times, I'll shift it to later in the day, or change days if I have to. Right now my schedule is pretty open since I only have 2 classes on campus, so I will be available to do work much of the time. 

I read The Psychology of Checklists, because I love making them, and I like that other people think it's a good strategy. A couple of years into college, I started having breakdowns about how much work I had to do for my classes and how overwhelming it was to figure out when to do what, and my husband talked me into using a checklist. I use Google Keep, which is pictured in the image above. I keep a list of homework with due dates, so that I can cross off assignments as I finish them. I have had people ask if I want to work on an assignment together, and we plan on it, but if they procrastinate too much I end up doing the assignment alone, because crossing things off the list reduces my stress level. I also keep my grocery list, a list of days my daughter has off from school and important appointments, and other little notes of things I need to remember in Google Keep.

Last semester I used Keep less for homework and started writing all of the important due dates for papers, test dates, etc on the calendar on my laptop. It's a Mac and I don't have an iPhone so I can't sync them, which is disappointing, but I usually have my laptop with me in class and other meetings, and when I don't I can just jot things down in Keep. Then I enter those things on my calendar when I get home. Before using these techniques, my entire desk was covered in post it notes, which worked well unless I forgot to bring the grocery post it with me. I think keeping a list in my phone and/or on my laptop is a bit more efficient. I still love post its, though.

Technology Tools

I was not familiar with Blogger until this week, so it's been a slight learning experience. I have used Wordpress in the past, but this works a little differently. I had an awful time getting the text in one of my posts to format correctly. After a couple of hours of not being able to fix it, I got it close enough, and published it. I'm still kind of mad about it, because it looks so different from the rest of my posts.
I'm a current Tumblr user, so I am probably going to use it for my project. I think it would make a neat little site for it.

I avoided Pinterest for years, but finally had to make one to find art therapy ideas for my projects last year. So many things you search on google come up as Pinterest results and you can't browse that stuff without an account. I find that irritating, but I finally made one, so I might use it for this. Not really sure. Most often I would just make a bookmarks folder for the class/project/topic, and keep everything together in there.

I have a piece of image editing software called Affinity Photo. It's been difficult to learn to use it because it works pretty differently from other programs like Photoshop. I spent some time this summer working with some images and got fairly comfortable with that basics, like cropping and resizing, so I feel a little better about that.I haven't used any of those web-based programs to create graphics, but I have done similar things in Photoshop and Affinity.

I have never had a class that published all of its assignments on a blog before. I think it will be fun, but it is way different from any other class I have taken.

My art brain immediately thought of art supplies when you said "tools", so here are some of what I think of as tools.

(Photo from Wikimedia)

Thoughts About Class Assignments

I think that the readings will be interesting and hopefully useful for project ideas, and the project both terrifies and intrigues me. Writing stories every week sounds both fun and scary. I worry I'll have a hard time doing the actual writing, so I'll have to build in extra time for it in case I can't come up with an idea right away. It's probably also good that I started the course early, because that will give me a little extra time if I get behind on it. The blog comments and feedback don't really excite me, although I see how they can be really useful.

Out of the extra credit assignments, the ones I find most interesting from the descriptions are H.E.A.R.T. and Famous Last Words. They sound kind of fun, so I may have to make time for those. I'm also still curious to see how growth mindset can fit into my semester, so I will probably take a look at that as well.

(Photo from Also Into Cats)

Growth Mindset: I love cats!

(Image Information: Photo from Pinterest)

I found the videos about growth mindset to be very interesting. I agree that we teach our kids all wrong. I wish I had thought of this sooner before mine was halfway through high school, but she has plenty of school left. I can always start encouraging some of this now. To be honest, I think it will be more difficult to apply to myself. I'm sure there are ways that I can, but it's hard to look at things so differently after this many years of school, and when most people in this country praise good grades over how much effort went into it. You also tend to get praised at work for higher number of sales and so on. I think our society would be better with this mindset, but I think it might be difficult to adapt to it. I am interested in learning more about growth mindset this semester even if I'm not sure how it fits in for me yet.

A class I'm a little worried about this semester is my psychology capstone experience. I'll have some kind of internship, but I have heard really conflicting things about what that is. Some have said they interned at Griffin Memorial Hospital, which I think would be fantastic. Others said they volunteered at the boys and girls club and it was like a babysitting job. I think that would be really lame and not tell me if I'll like working in the field or not. I'm also concerned about how time consuming it will be, because I want to work in another psych lab this semester. Hopefully I can make both work at the same time without going crazy and while still being able to accommodate my daughter's schedule.

That said, I love cats and really like the growth mindset cat pictures. I think they can be incorporated into my life pretty easily. Maybe I can have Mario pose and make some of my own, too. I chose the cat above for two reasons. One, I think that's a good motto for this class since we will be writing a lot this semester. And two, I have been writing fan fiction and most of my readers are in their teens and early 20's. They tend to be critical in not very constructive ways. I try to remember that they are much younger than I am, and that some of the things they say and do make sense for their age group and aren't necessarily meant to be harsh or hurtful. But some days it just plain hurts, and I feel really discouraged from writing at all. I think the only way I'm going to get through the rest of the long story I've been writing is to write without fear, and not worry about what anyone else thinks or wishes I did instead. 

My Introduction and What I Did This Summer

I always feel like a boring person when I write these kinds of posts, but here we go. This will be my final semester at OU as a psychology major. I spent the majority of my summer working at the Connelly research lab on campus, helping run an I/O psych study on workplace behavior. I/O is not a part of psychology that I'm particularly fond of. There's nothing wrong with it, but it isn't my thing. Even so, I really enjoyed the people who work there, and the students that participated were all really nice. I am trying to get a position in a lab that focuses on personality psychology for the fall, because that's where I feel the most connection. The best thing about psych is probably that there are so many different aspects to it, so you can choose all kinds of things to do with your degree.

I also spent quite a bit of time with my teenage daughter this summer. It makes me happy that she still likes to hang out with me. I didn't spend this much time with my mom at her age, so I take it as a complement that she enjoys doing things with me. I think my favorite night this summer was when we sent my husband to a late movie with his friends. My daughter and I went to the store for snacks, then played games together until he got home around midnight. We also have a very cute cat named Mario. He's 18 years old and has some health problems. He has a bit of an attitude, but he's so cute that it's impossible not to love him. He likes to wear bow ties for Halloween every year. This year he also wore one on his birthday.

(Photo from my personal collection. Mario, April 2017)

I'm a grown up, I guess, but I really love playing video games. My husband plays them more than I do usually, but I have certain ones that I really like. This spring and summer I spent much of my free time playing Persona 5. It's so fun. I also write fan fiction for Persona 4 and Persona 5. I plan to bring some of those characters into my project for this class. I think it will be really fun if it all works out.

I'm sad that summer is just about over. My daughter goes back to high school tomorrow, and on Monday she starts as a concurrent student in college. I was hoping I would graduate before she got there, but she started early, and I was a bit late. I am studying for my GRE and working on an application for the psychology PhD program. I'm not sure how that will turn out, yet, but I'm going to do the best I can to make it happen. Most of my other classes this fall are psychology courses, which is good because it's why I'm here. The best class I took last semester, and maybe ever, was studio art therapy. There were a couple of papers, but other than that we just picked art projects and sat in a big room making art for the entire semester. It was relaxing and fun, and I loved having to buy art supplies and have ongoing art projects with deadlines. I don't make enough time for it when it isn't for a class, and that just makes me sad. The last project I did for that class, I folded about 300 paper cranes, then assembled some hoops that I strung lights on and hung the birds from. I nicknamed it the bird chandelier. I intended to make 1000 cranes but couldn't finish in the time I had. I plan to someday come back to it and finish them all.

(Photo from my Personal Collection. Paper Cranes, April 2017)

**Note: Thank you so much to everyone who has left me comments. I appreciate all of your kind words. I may not get a chance to reply to all of you but I do read them and every one of them makes me smile!

Storybook Favorites

I was a little afraid of this project, but now I'm kind of excited. I barely scratched the surface of the list of storybooks in around an hour's time, but I have ideas now, and that makes me happy. Here are a few that I liked.

Storybook 1: Stories of the Shadow People

What I like about this site is how mysterious it is. The author clearly was all in on making the reader feel curious, and they were committed to their role as narrator. I really enjoyed how instead of introducing themselves as a student, their introduction already had you deep into a story. I also like the black and white aesthetic of the blog, and how mysterious the images are. They really go well with the stories. This was my favorite image on the site, which was included in the introduction.

(Photo by Pexels)

Storybook 2: The Villains' Side

Again, on this site I liked that the introduction was about a character. I felt like I was already reading the stories even though I wasn't yet. I liked that they told their stories from the perspective of the villains. It was unique and creative. I think the choice to use dark colors on the site really worked with the villain theme as well. My own storybook will likely also be dark if I go with the idea I am considering.

Storybook 3: Diaries of the Late and Great Imposters

I absolutely loved some of the ideas used in this site. I love that they wrote journal entries from the perspective of the characters. They used real con artists for this site, and I think that was very cool. I didn't think the look of the site matched the content very well. It wasn't unattractive but it felt unrelated to the stories.

I think for my own storybook I may have some thieves telling stories by writing journal entries. I think I will need to read plenty of myths about tricksters and thieves to put this idea together. I would like to base my stories in mythology, Japanese most likely. I'd like to use characters from a game I have been playing as my characters, but tie them together with mythological tricksters and thieves. 

Favorite Place: The Wichita Mountains

One of my favorite places in Oklahoma is the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. I didn't grow up in this part of the country, so when my husband suggested we go camp there to take pictures of the stars for my daughter's science fair project on light pollution, I had no idea what to expect. It turns out to be not only beautiful, but one of the only places where I can completely relax and leave everything behind me.

(Photo by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Having no Internet connection doesn't bother me in the slightest when we're in the mountains, hiking, spending time by a campfire, and looking at the stars. 

(Photo from my personal collection. Stars over Camp Doris, October 2012.)

(Photo from my personal collection. The Wichita Mountains, May 2013.)

Someday I hope to have more time to spend in the mountains, and other great camping and stargazing sites around our state. We have crossed Robber's Cave State Park off our list, but there are many more places I would like to visit in the future.