Apologies for being out of touch, friends. Things have been busy as the term came to an end. Now Oxford is filled with young interviewees seeking admission to the University, and I am leaving to explore France and other parts of the UK. As a side note, admission to Oxford basically comes down to two …
Category Archives: Psychology
Page Turner
One afternoon I make it my mission to explore Oxford’s libraries. This is easily imagined but less easily done because there are no fewer than one hundred libraries in the city. They range from the massive and historical Bodleian–which is legally entitled to a copy of every book published in England–to private libraries in each …
Brooms Up
“Brooms up!” says the referee, and we all sprint for the center of the field. It’s a race for the four balls, chasers running for the Quaffle (an under inflated volleyball) and Beaters for the three bludgers (dodgeballs). There’s mud in my face so I can’t really see, but I charge ahead enthusiastically and slam …
Welcome to Oxford
The city of Oxford has many things going for it, but being easy to navigate late at night is not one of them. At least, that’s how I feel on my first night at the University of Oxford. The rest of the “freshers” and I have been released into town after an evening of orientation, …
Laughing Club: Fake it Till You Make It (a wrap-up of PY281, Personality)
I’m pretty sure the people walking past Tutt Science this morning thought my class was going crazy. There we were, standing in the quad in front of the science building, maniacally laughing as we playfully charged each other, our mouths open to a roar and our eyes squeezed together. We were pretending to be tigers …
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The Myers-Briggs Personality Test
Yesterday our entire class took the Myers-Briggs personality test. I found out that I am an INFP, which means that my primary way of dealing with the world is Introverted Intuitive Feeling Perceiving. I was actually very impressed at how accurate the results seemed to me. Perhaps it is the horoscope effect (where all predictions …
Let Freedom Ring! (And if you make it to the end of this post, you will be rewarded with a video of pigeons playing ping-pong.)
“Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!” Martin Luther King Jr.’s words, spoken almost 50 years ago, still inspire me today. But what if freedom couldn’t ring anywhere? What if freedom simply didn’t exist, at least not in the sense that King meant it or that we envision it? For B.F. Skinner, a …
Sibling Birth Order
The other day in class we talked about sibling birth order. Alfred Adler was the first one to propose that our personality is at least partly determined by the order in which we are born. These are some of the possible qualities he associated with each birth order: 1. Oldest child: nurturing and protective of …
Stop Shoulding All Over Yourself! (A Short Discussion of Flow and Human Potential)
When I steal the ball in an intramural basketball game, break past my defender, and sprint for a layup, I won’t hear you if you scream my name. When I pole-vaulted in high school, launching myself 8 feet in the air to clear a plastic bar, I never heard my parents’ cheers, no matter how …
Youngest Children Storm CC! (and other thoughts from week one of Personality)
Take a closer look at Colorado College’s website. You click the “welcome to CC” link, and the following words appear: “Welcome to doorways, horizons, and adventures. Welcome to the beginning of the rest of your life. Welcome to Colorado College. Start exploring now.” These preliminary welcome statements, along with the rest of CC’s advertising, market …
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