in an ideal world...

What does your ideal world look like?

As I'm sitting here thinking about my thesis proposal my mind is drifting a little, so I'm taking a break to dream about "when I grow up"...

My friends, my sister, and my cousins and I used to talk and dream about what our future lives would be like. When we were about 12, my cousin Olivia and I had big plans of going to law school and moving to New York or D.C to be big movers and shakers, and look fabulous doing it!

...and while we both look absolutely fabulous doing our respective jobs, I do NOT find a career in law or politics the least bit appealing. Elle Woods still inspires me.

At another point in life (only a few short years later) I was dead set on marine biology and was completely convinced that I was going to make my life swimming among the fish (because that's all marine biologists do, right?) and live in a big giant house on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Hawaii...

But in college I figured out a few things: first of all, marine biologists study marine life, but a lot of their job takes place in a lab doing research (which actually often involves a lot of ecology and toxicology), than swimming in the ocean...and that's much more chemistry than I was mentally willing to commit myself to. Also, despite what many might think, most researchers really aren't making "Hawaii Mansion" salaries. Who knew? Finally, it turns out living on Hawaii actually has many more drawbacks than advantages. Like the hellacious flight back to Michigan to see family, and outrageous cost of living, and possible looming threat of a tsunami.

So what is my ideal future now?


Well, I'm kind of living it :) After all, in a few weeks I will be in SPAIN for a conference!!

At least a very important part of it is being lived right now. Ever since I started taking part in scientific research labs I knew that I wanted to be a scientist (see pre-colligiate dream description above). Every day I get excited to get out of bed and head over to the lab and see my friends and debate topics dealing in human cognition; like reading comprehension, argumentation, and other various facets of discourse processes (how people understand and participate in discourse).

But in an ideal future world, I suppose it's my dream to get that coveted professorship at a university in a city reasonably close to the rest of my family. In my truly ideal world my family will live down the street from my sister's family, and our kids will be BFFs. Also my best friend and my twin cousin will live in the same town and we'll see them all the time. Is it a silly dream? Yep. Because I chose a field where I may not get to chose where I go next, and where the work is. Is this ideal world likely? probably about as likely as my Hawaiian mansion dream. But it's a dream. And I've ALWAYS had one (so it seems silly to stop now!). So even if it never comes true, as far as I can tell what ends up being the best fit for me ends up prevailing anyway.

But for now my thesis calls. Gotta go.

The Power of Games

I watched this really amazing Ted Talk this morning while I was getting ready for the day. Typically I watch documentaries or Ted Talks on Netflix while I'm making my coffee and breakfast in the morning --I think it helps puts me in an analytical mood for the day (helpful when one is about to spend the rest of the day thinking, scheming, and cognitive science-ing). Now that I have an iPhone I can stream these talks on my phone using my home wifi as an internet source, and that way the wise words of the brilliant featured presenters that grace the Ted Talk stage can follow me around wherever I go during my morning routine.

This morning as I did my hair in the bathroom, I listened to a talk that was categorized under the "Life Hacks" series. "Life Hacks" are relatively short talks about small ways in which one's life can be improved. Topics include meditation, body language, and (as was the case with this morning) the power of games in our everyday life.

There is no doubt that games are a big part of our lives. They take just about every form possible: pencil and paper games, board games, card games, verbal games, physical team sports, non team physical games, video games, computer games (online and offline). They also encompass all different kinds of skills -- some are strategic, some rely on luck, some are a bit of both. Some games require physical coordination and strategic skill (and those are to be avoided at all costs! ...kidding).
In her talk, game designer Jane McGonigal discussed the importance of different types of play -- how viewing challenges in life through the lens of strategic game play can positively impact quality of life and ultimately perceptions of happiness. While bed-ridden during recovery of a severe concussion, McGonigal invented an internal game she dubbed "Jane the Concussion Slayer" in which she received hypothetical life points for small bouts of exercise and social interaction, slowly working her way to a complete recovery.

While my situation certainly isn't that of Jane's (who was confined to 30 days without being allowed to watch movies or TV, read books, or go anywhere while her brain recovered and healed) games have recently become more important in my life. As I mentioned above, I have recently become the proud user of an iPhone, and spend a good deal of my energy on said phone staying connected to the people who mean the most to me. Much of that contact revolves around the games that I can now play with those people.

These phone games (Words with Friends, Draw Something, Ruzzle, etc.) let me know that somewhere, no matter how many miles away, my mom is kicking my butt AGAIN -- or that my Grandmother just played another word in Words with Friends, meaning she's still awake and that I have time this evening - even though it's late - to give her a call and chat for a while. It lets me know that Eric is still a good artist but always picks hard things to convey with a simple line drawing in Draw Something, and that my sister's drawings of school buses and Hummers look the same.


I think people tend to scoff when young people talk about their phone being their "lifeline", or being the number one thing they can't imagine life without. This topic was brought up on the local radio station that I tune into here in DeKalb last week, and the hosts of the morning show couldn't seem to stay away from an incredulous "are you kidding me???!".
I felt a sudden urge for the first time in my life to call the station and set them straight about the benefits of having near constant internet and cellular access in a society where more often than not, job opportunities and important career or life moves require an individual to pick up and relocate..if only temporarily. My call-in was featured a few minutes later, and got a lot of positive feedback from listeners I know are in my situation too.
We've all got to stay sane, work hard, and in our spare moments...try to beat our boyfriend's mom at yet another word game ;)

My Myspace Account Still Works

And let me tell you, the high school extension of myself as told through Myspace is hilarious.

Because I obviously thought I was way too awesome for life.

First, there are pictures where I think I am a model.

This is me as a 16 year old thinking that I'm totally going to make it big as a model (in my imagination). Side note, I still have that t-shirt, and I wear it to the gym all the time.

The funniest thing about finding my Myspace however, was reading the personal information and making fun of myself. Also, realizing how much has actually changed in all of those categories.

So the first thing I'd like to address is the WTH moment I had when I reread that first blurb, what kind of sassy 16 year old thing is that to say about myself? No details, you should already know me! However, it does smack heavily of the rule my parents gave me at the advent of my participation in social media which was that I wasn't allowed to have Facebook friends that I didn't know (really well) in person.

Secondly, who I'd like to meet. Nice people? Well I guess that's still true, but in terms of people I'd like to meet...I've got a new..more specific list. I'm sure those people are nice too.

Details

Status: Single
...not anymore! I think it would be funny to go back and tell my past self that my future self would meet a really cool guy who likes cars and puppies, and plays guitar, and has good taste in movies and literature, and agrees to wear a bike helmet because you want to wear a bike helmet, and that everything would be more than fine (it would be awesome!) but that just doesn't put hair on your chest.

Here for: friends
yep.

Body type: slim/slender
why was this a question??? who cares?? hahaha oh high school. I do NOT miss you.

Zodiac Sign: Cancer
well, July 15th is still my birthday.

Children: Someday
sure!

Smoke/Drink: no/no
again, this is a stupid question to answer as a teen. Of course the answer to both was "no"! But turning 21 in Grand Rapids did introduce me to the world of craft beers, and it's hard not to cultivate your wine expertise in northern Michigan (because if you haven't gone to a wine tasting in Traverse City you really are missing out on something special).

Education: High School
Now, it's a Bachelor's of Science in Psychology with a year completed toward a masters. A lot changes in 5 years!

Occupation: Being Cool.

Yup. That's my occupation... being cool. I'll be here all week, folks.

so....cool....

excuse me while I go write my mother a thank you note for putting up with my obvious teenage identity disaster of snarky too-cool attitude.

Being Asiala

I realize I haven't bragged about my family in a little while :)

Recently (last weekend, to be exact) my beautiful older cousin got married to my NEW older cousin (in law) in what I believe is safe to say was the BEST PARTY I have ever attended.

Going to this event and seeing my all of my cousins, uncles, aunts, etc. got me thinking about the Finnish heritage that we share, connected by our very un-American sounding last name (which gets butchered by people who don't know us). For the record, it is pronounced exactly how it looks Ah-see-ah-lah (all long aaaahhhh sounds). Every time I register this name on a poster or manuscript for publication I have terrible split second lucid nightmares of future research psychologists referring to me as Ash-i-luh, or worse.

So what makes the Asialas cool??

1) Our Cultural Roots: We are from Finland.

The land of epic poems! (I'll get to that) and Salmon for breakfast.

Above is the beautiful Finnish wilderness that I'm sort of shocked any of my great great's wanted to leave. But that brings us to the number two reason Asiala's are awesome...

2) Our Resilience: we moved to the United States under false pretenses and made the best of it!

Thats right, the individuals that came before us and were responsible for binding us together as a family moved to Kaleva, Michigan as immigrants, uprooting everything they knew to live in a village established by a few other former Finnish citizens like them. The village of Kaleva was established around 1900 (approximately 17 years before Finland claimed independence from Russia).

Where do the false pretenses come in? Well, the land that makes up quite a bit of Northern Michigan, (especially where Kaleva lies) is made of sand, and at the time, clear cut forests. Essentially, those who lived in Kaleva in the early to mid 20th century had to deal with sandy soil, stump land, and acres and acres of flooded plains and swamps. Due, however, to the resiliency of the Finnish/Asiala spirit (but I might be biased), those farms still managed to produced a livelihood the supported the foundations of the family we have today.
And speaking of said family farm...

We still have it! Note: this is NOT the original farmhouse (this is a mansion compared to the original one room log cabin). However, this is the original land -- 100% Asiala roots.

3) We tell a really good story.

Perhaps you're wondering where a name like Kaleva comes from. Like any other culture of the wold, Finland has it's own cultural patrimony that has been handed down in one way or another throughout generations, one of the most important being The Kalevala -- an epic poem comprised of elements of Finnish folklore passed down over many years. It has been noted as one of the most important and significant works of literature in Finnish history (which is high praise coming from a country with a 99% literacy rate). "Kalevala" translates directly to "The Land of Kaleva"and is a work that is noted to be directly related to the development of Finland's national identity and eventual emancipation from the Tzar. Needless to say, it's reasonable to assume that a work like The Kalevala was influential on the people who sought a new life in America in the years leading up to Finland's independence.

The Kalevala is like other important epics. It has a collection of creation mythology, there is an element of magic and mystery, it involves characters who go on quests and endeavors, fall in love, learn skills, etcetera etcetera. And like many written epics, it impacted a nation, and inspired those who chose to plant their seeds in a new place (hoping against hope the sand and grasshopper population would allow them to grow).

And we still let a good story inspire us.

Here is my cousin Olivia, telling us about her sister Celia (the bride) and Jim (the newest member of our family).

And here we are sharing stories about two other very important Asialas

So not to brag...but my family is the coolest family there is.

Apple has all of my love.

It's about that time, and finals are upon us once again. As you can see, that doesn't stop me from updating my blog.

I realize that it's been a while. I've had a ridiculous amount of research-related work to do (and mistakes to fix -- yikes)...and it the moments that I'm not working my little first year butt off, I've been heading back to the mitten to celebrate my cousin's upcoming wedding, and spending some quality time with the family, good friends, and boyfriend.

I have several milestone moments to share with you once finals are over and grades are in, but I have a moment to share one now...so here it goes.

The milestone moment for this post is: My First Tech-Related Full Scale Panic Attack.

When my sister and I were in middle school and high school, my Mom used to walk past the door of our home office and yell "SAVE!" to remind us to save whatever we were working on. While a little annoying after a few years, it DID jump start my obsessive habit of saving every document as soon as I open it. However, all the saving in the world won't help you in the face of a hard drive crash.

When I started grad school, I knew it was going to be important to back up important data somewhere else. Thus, most of my important files are actually saved several places. However, in order for this to be effective, you need to be doing this regularly...and someone got kind of busy, and well...forgot.

So yesterday when my hard drive crashed, I had a small conniption fit. Luckily, the IMPORTANT stuff was saved (to the cloud, to email, to external hard drive, you name it)...but the little things -- my outline for my cognitive psych midterm? My latest picture uploads? Potentially gone. Not to mention all my software and saved personal settings (what the hell was my Skype password again??)

Enter the Mac store.

When I showed up for my genius bar appointment, I found that despite whatever repair needed to happen, I wasn't going to have to pay anything. Which on my stipend was excellent news. The bad news was that the hard drive was done for. Had I really just lost everything not consciously backed up?

Nope. While in the back, the "genius" I was working with found one of my documents that I desperately needed, and transferred it over to the new hard drive for me! On top of that, the screen was cleaned and dust removed from the keyboard. Long story short, I lost a couple of things, but all of the crucial things are back in business and running perfectly.

So..I've learned two lessons this week.

1. Back up everything all the time. ALL THE TIME. And don't get lazy and forget to do it for a week.
2. Buy Apple products because even though they fail sometimes, the people at the Apple store will do everything they can to help solve your problems.

I'm spending some quality time this morning working on backing up my files again, and organizing everything back into better organized folders, and reinstalling all of my software.

BACK UP YOUR FILES.

Netflix

Am I the only one who loves watching T.V in the morning?

My laptop had been my constant companion almost every morning this year as I do my hair, brush my teeth, make coffee, cook breakfast, ect. I dislike excessive silence, so I think this is the perfect solution to my otherwise very quiet solitary mornings.

The things that I watch in the morning while I go about getting ready for the day vary widely; anything from the latest social or economic documentary to the trashiest reality TV show I can find. Hey, say what you want, but my taste is anything but narrow, and I pride myself on the ability to enjoy just about everything.
Furthermore, for those of you who scoff at my reality TV ways, I challenge you to spend the entire day reading scientific publications from a number of journals, or grading a giant stack of APA papers and not want to relax with some mind-numbing trash. Ok, I'm done being indignant.

Anyway, recently I've been on quite the documentary kick, and I'm starting to wonder if I haven't learned more reasonable lessons from those reality shows than some of the messages I'm supposed to be taking away from these documentaries.

This is going to be a short post...it was originally a Facebook status, but it has since grew to the point of being much to large (and fun to write) to make a casual post. So here it is: the list of things I've "learned" from Netflix documentaries.


1) people are overweight and sick because they don't eat organic food exclusively. They also don't exercise enough, so you should force yourself and your family to work out like a fiend or you will die.

2) but people shouldn't worry about being too thin because it leads to eating disorders. Encourage your family to eat what they want without worrying about body image and try to be happy with their personalities instead.

3) don't have babies in the hospital because you will not have as good of a connection with your child as someone with a home birth, and even though we're not saying that people who have hospital births are less good parents...we are.

4) but appreciate the healthcare you have access to, because there are enslaved women dying of diseases in 3rd world countries and being denied basic human rights! And for some reason, sending Meg Ryan and Gabriella Union to interview them is somehow cooler than a non-famous trained social scientist...?


5) the collapse of the world trade centers is not only possibly, but likely a conspiracy of the US government......

I got nothin' for this one, I can't even make fun of this one.

6) schools in the United States are horrible.

7) except that people are going into obscene amounts of debt in order to attend some of the top Universities in the world..which happen to be in the US.

8) the school system will not protect you from bullies, even if you video tape them getting hit repeatedly on a bus.

Things I "learned" from:

 Keeping up with the Kardashians

1) be nice to your friends and siblings and support them when they need it because in the end they will have your back

2) keep the lines of communication open and during a relationship and you might not always be happy, but you will work toward being happy again

3) when you hurt someone, apologize...and tell them their boob is really squishy.

4) sometimes following your dreams is more important than satisfying the people around you

5) put your family first

Here Comes Honey Boo Boo

6) live within your means and spend money on the things you love to do

like hanging out with a pig...

7) find ways to have fun in every situation (even a corn field...thanks Honey Boo Boo)

8) mairnase is not a meat!

9) don't give your kid mountain dew or pure sugar (this was an inadvertent lesson, but a lesson all the
same)

Pretty Wild

10) spend time with people that will influence you positively

11) thank people who give you career boosting opportunities, and then work hard in a professional manner to show them that you appreciate their faith in you

12) call the people you love on the dumb stuff they do -- unless they are writing a blog about reality TV lessons :)

Ok, so maybe I'm a little bias. But sometimes a little dose of reality (haha..see what I did there?) would be nice, social documentary makers! Not everything is so black and white, all or nothing, and do or die. I find it fascinating that not one of these films promotes eating a balanced diet (growth hormones or not), exercise a few times a week, and spending quality time with your kids. Make sure they do their homework, and for God's sake teach them how credit cards work before you send them off to college.

Look, problems fixed, and you didn't even have to make any overly dramatic life altering decisions.

Thanks Entertainment News Network and TLC for keepin it real :)

weird science

My new temporary home is the NIU cognitive lab.

Seriously. I live here.
A week from tomorrow I will be giving my first talk based on my OWN RESEARCH THAT I DID ALMOST ENTIRELY BY MYSELF.
Naturally, I'm really excited :) and this has been months in the making, but I'm finally ready to talk about my graduate advisor's brilliant idea that I took and ran furiously with.

Really...I'm pretty out of breath!

But in order to present research I need actual data. And unlike a chemistry or biology lab, psychological data usually needs to be collected by scheduling individual session in which people come into the lab and do your experiment, and then learn all about why you made them jump through your ridiculous hoops. Seriously, I really envy those whose data comes from a bunch of cell cultures and fruit flies sometimes.

So that's where I am right now... for hours all week I have been greeting participants, explaining the tasks they will be doing, and debriefing them on why I had them do what they did.

I wonder sometimes what participants are thinking when they are completing some of these tasks, because they vary from extremely boring to completely ridiculous! So for your enjoyment, I will explain a couple of methods of cognitive experiments so show you what I mean.

In one experiment in perceptual research, psychologists had participants come into the lab and put on a pair of virtual reality goggles. The goggles were designed either to present the viewer with smooth visual input to simulate moving through space, or simply give them a fixed visual perspective. To make this study even more weird, the researchers had the participants walk on a treadmill for an extended period of time while they were wearing these goggles. Now, the researchers had a perfectly good reason for doing this. They wanted to manipulate the visual input that people were getting as they experienced walking...essentially confusing the perceptual system into either believing the person is putting in the regular amount of effort for walking and moving an equivalent amount of space, or putting in effort for walking and not being able to move anywhere. This has been shown to influence how people perceive distances. But wouldn't this be a weird study to participate in? You want me to do what?

In another study, participants had to watch a feature length movie about a balloon twice in row. This was actually a study I helped collect data on a year ago, and let me tell you -- this movie was not enjoyable the first time around, so you can only imagine how terrible it is after the second time..and the 100th time (seriously, I've seen this film over 100 times now). Anyway, the study had participants watch this film twice in a row and press a button every time they perceive a unit of meaningful activity. What does that even mean? It's totally up to interpretation. Not kidding, the participants essentially don't get any further instruction!

In yet another study, participants had to judge the distance of their body to a very large and threatening spider.
...I can't make this stuff up.

Psychologists are weird.