Wednesday 26 February 2014

Day 48: Adam Grant's guest lecture

What went well? 

  1. Professor Adam Grant gave a guest lecture during positive psychology today. It was pretty surreal to be given a lecture by one of my "academic heroes", whose work I admire so much. Appreciated the brief opportunity I had to express my gratitude to him afterwards too.
  2. Professor Grant autographing someone's book. #celebrity
  3. Had a really nice philosophical conversation with a fellow exchange student at my dorm. We were talking about education as investments, and how that isn't the attitude in France.
  4. Had a lovely Skype chat with my friend from wayyyy back, Sam, who's at Indiana Wesleyan University. We're going to try and catch up over Easter and go see the Amish lands in Pennsylvania.



What did I learn? 

  • According to an exchange student, there's a law in France that basically says that everyone has the right to work no more than 35 hours a week. What?
  • I am still trying to develop tolerance for discomfort, namely while pondering difficult questions about Buddhism. Procrastination happens when I feel like it's too hard. #deliberatepractice #grit
  • Adam Grant was one of the first students to ever take an undergraduate course in positive psychology when he was back at Harvard. He thought it was fascinating but also hated it because he felt that positive psychology was too much about the individual, "me", what goes on inside my head, my experiences, and he was more interested in what makes up most of our life - our interactions with other people. Hence, he went into research on prosocial behaviour.

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