Berkeley Blog: lectures, holy garb

Lecture & Social Annoyances:

There's a guy that sits in front of me in my CogPsy class that tends to fall asleep after about 30 minutes or so. Before he's out, there's about 10 minutes where his head bobs and bounces, down and up, and to the side. It makes me smile, because he looks like a buoy in rough waters. This class has unfortunately become a mine-field of noises and distractions. In one lecture, I counted 100 coughs and 10 sneezes. There's a guy that sits to the right of me that has some sort of "tick" that forces him to make two small coughs every 5 minutes. When I listen to recorded lectures at home, his coughs are highly irritating. In between the human noises, you can hear loud keyboard typing and other electronic devinces turning on and off. I am surprised by how hard is to concentrate in some of these lectures. I do have a hypothesis though.

I would suggest that at a University, opposed to a junior college, the classes are of such difficulty, that students tend to be more tired, sick or restless during lectures.  In addition, many students live on campus and use big lecture halls to eat lunch or chill while they wait for their next class. In my Human Rights class, there's a guy who spends 35 minutes eating his lunch at the beginning of class and then sips hot tea very loudly from a thermus for the rest of the lecture.  I asked him curiosly why he does not take notes, and he said "I'm not enrolled in this class, I"m just auditing." - Which is a fancy way of saying, "I'm bored and need a comfortable place to eat." Auditing seems to be just an excuse to sit in a class you aren't involved with and bother people. Maybe I'm just older, and get easily distracted...

In my Mental Illness class, I was surprised to hear that there is still much debate over the factual nature of mental illness. Many believe that certain illnesses are "made up" by the government in order to force citizens to purchase drugs from Big Pharma. The last thing citizens need to be told is that they are brainwashed into "believing" we need help. There is already so much stigma surrounding mental health that I fear the progress made by my generation will be squandered by the next generation's apathy towards government. Please listen to science.

Religious People are hot:

There are probably more religious groups at Berkeley than political ones. At every turn, I see a new "holy book" being carried by a "holy person" in "holy garb." It's quite interesting to see such religious diversity. I find it to be intellectually rich and very satisfying. Furthermore,  there is something sexy about a woman in religious garb. Clearly it's not because they show skin, in most cases they are more covered up, but their clothes represent dedication and humility. I remember way back when Sinead O'Connor was toppin' the charts and she was being teased for her shaved head.  Her attitude at the time was to neutralize her physical beauty in an effort to humanize herself and her voice. I'm not sure if her efforts paid off considering her eyes, not her hair, are her best features but I latched on to her courageous rebellion against the norm... Qualities I still find sexy as hell.

Book Learnin'

In Cognitive Psychology, the main focus lately has been on Mental Imagery, which is the idea that our brain behaves in similar ways while we process a "real" object versus imagining (or dreaming) of one. There is still some debate on the subject but it seems to be true in many cases. One example is studying how the brain responds to questions like "How many windows does your home have." To answer this question, participants tend to make a mental picture of their homes and imagine themselves going from room to room. On fMRI scans, this process shows activity in the motor sections of our brains, suggesting that even though we aren't actually walking around our house, our brains "think" we are.

Human Rights is focusing on American's role in defending against genocide since WW2. Apparently, we haven't been too good. In Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia, Kosovo, millions have been "cleansed," sometimes caused by our involvement into political structures we don't understand, and we haven't done much to stop it. Personally, we need to let the NGO's, NATO and the U.N take the leadership roles in international affairs, because we cannot trust our elected leaders to understand diddly squat about foreign affairs anymore. Times have changed since Presidents were required to be involved into foreign affairs, those duties are now for the Secretary of State. Presidents these days make light of being ignorant to international affairs. Recently I heard Republican Presidential hopeful Herman Cain boast that he doesn't know the names of foreign leaders and the only thing he needs to know is that communists are building nuclear weapons... Not someone you would want to be the head of  humanitarian assistance to a foreign country, I think.

Stigma & Prejudice is focusing on the subject of Personality & Cultural Psychology and its many theories like the idea that stigmatized groups tend to internalize and blame themselves for the discrimination.