Day 101: I just increased my limitations

What went well?  

1. I guess I essentially took the weekend off since my friend was visiting me, and I had a great time hanging out with her and catching up! I didn't get any meaningful work done, but, that's not a bad thing because work always gets done, especially when the deadlines are looming. Hence, limitations (in time, resources, energy) make you more productive.
2. Visited Liberty Bell and Independence Hall! I can't believe I've been in Philly for 3 months now and only just went properly into Old City to see the historical sights.

3. Had the most efficient group-work experience ever. Wrote a 1400 word paper about the issue of self-immolation by Tibetan Buddhists as a form of protest - from the standpoint of a student of Buddhist ethics, with a group of 5 people, in 1.5 hours. Penn kids are efficient! Especially when we don't care because it's not graded and was sprung on us on Friday at recitation =.=""""""""" How can they dooooo that!!! Anyhow, it was a positive group-work experience :)

What did I learn? 

• More about American History in one afternoon than I did my whole life. I had actually been oblivious to the fact that America was formed from British Colonies. Wow. #ignorance
• Philadelphia is a super-historical city.

Day 96: Passover Seder

What went well? 

1. Productivity is back (for the moment! everything is anicca (impermanent), after all...no grasping!), apparently. Got about 4200 words on the page for my Buddhism paper, with about 4.5 hours of work. A lot of this was direct quotes so I haven't actually paraphrased or "written" it properly yet, but it still feels good to get everything I think I want to include on the page, and to refresh my memory on the ideas - that's one thing I've found with this research - it's hard to keep track of all these complex ideas at the same time, and yet that's what's important for drawing connections. Will need to think about a system to deal with this issue for future work, especially things like theses and journal articles.
2. Went to a Passover seder, organised by a classmate. It was really interesting to gain some insight into Jewish culture, because I really don't know much about Judaism, and am actually quite interested in different religions now (not in converting to anything, but in understanding what people do and what it means to them). It was great to have this new experience. Also, I appreciated this:



3. Got a lot of potential RSVPs to my solo recital in two weeks! It will be lovely to have the support of friends there.

What did I learn? 

• Asana looks like a great tool for project management & organising communications. My mentor in Melbourne emailed me this morning about it, asking if I thought we should use it for our journal article project, so I checked it out and thought it looked great - definitely saves a lot of emailing and keeps communications in one place.
• Kosher (Jewish dietary restrictions) everything exists. Including Kosher coke?!?!?! (no corn syrup)

• Bits and pieces about Reform Jews and how they differ from Orthodox and Conservative Jews. The overall impression I got is that Reform Jews take a much more modern approach to their religion, trying to make it relevant to the modern context, and not taking the Torah as the law and direct word of God, but understanding that it was written by humans, for a certain time & place, even if it may have been divinely inspired. So even though it's still important to them, they interpret it with these considerations in mind. Reform Jews are also a lot more progressive in terms of welcoming gay/lesbian Jews, and also in terms of feminism.
• Even more impermanence. You know how it was absolutely gorgeous these past few days? No more!!! Storm. Wind. Cold. A massive worm massacre too, washed out by the rain...ew.

• A man was shot to death last night about 4 blocks away from where I live. But, as my friend puts it so eloquently in a Facebook status:



*snaps*. Oh god, I'm snapping! That is an American thing to do too btw.

Day 82: So grateful

What went well? 

1. Woke up to an email from my mentor in Melbourne, explaining the details of a project she wants her team of five undergraduates to help her with - co-authoring a journal article reviewing school-based positive psychology interventions!!!!!! I had kinda been fantasising about publishing stuff as an undergraduate especially since hearing about Amy Wrzesniewski's insane achievements (6 papers as an undergraduate)...and it looks like those dreams were actually closer to reality than I could have ever hoped for! I'm just so grateful and so inspired by my mentor's generosity and kindness in giving us this opportunity. It's incredible.
2. Went to a really interesting talk this afternoon by David Moser - "Is Chinese character writing still a basic skill? The new digital Chinese tools and implications for Chinese learning". It was so thought-provoking and so relevant. See below.
3. Got another email from my mentor telling me that the positive book chapter I helped her to edit last year, "Balancing the curriculum: teaching gratitude, hope and resilience", has been published! It was really cool to see the final product.

What did I learn? 

• In China, there's a problem: "Character Amnesia". Even native-born Chinese are finding it difficult to remember how to write everyday characters in their own language, and resort to pinyin to fill in the gaps. Why? Digital tools (e.g. digital dictionaries, Pleco, OCR, speech-to-text) have reduced the need to actually produce characters by hand. The Chinese government has gone to serious efforts to try and promote more emphasis on writing characters, with a lot of attention in the media about this issue and even spelling bee-style game shows on CCTV. David Moser suggested that this is futile though, as digital tools are the future. Instead, he argued that digital tools are both the problem and the solution. If we can write using digital tools and have our reading assisted by digital dictionaries and OCR automatic character recognition, why waste that much time memorising characters when you could just be trying to expose yourself to as much text as possible to acquire vocabulary? Recognition is key, not the physical production of words. Importantly, he's not suggesting that we get rid of characters, but just decrease the emphasis on writing and increase the emphasis on recognition. His talk definitely emanated a lot of the American values of pragmatism, efficiency and individualism, and probably the Western universalist perspective, but it was a compelling argument nonetheless, and has certainly influenced my ideas about how to best go about approaching my Chinese learning. I guess my goals would be to be able to have deeper conversations with family in China, as well as being able to talk to people about (and within) my profession in the future. So, based on his talk, I think some good ways to go about improving my Chinese vocabulary for these domains might be to try and read a lot of this kind of material (supported by digital dictionaries) and also do translations of these (again, with digital dictionaries). But I've asked him for more advice on this, so it will be interesting to see what he says.

Day 80: Obsessed

What went well? 

1. Had lunch with a friend, and had a good conversation about singing, Penn culture (hypothesis: students are frazzled because they are so motivated and ambitious) and new trends in accommodation...e.g. micro-apartments...
2. Put together my comparison table for my mindfulness in education paper, comparing two mindfulness curriculums and a positive psychology curriculum. The next step is to get a clearer sense of how they can work together.
3. My reflection got posted on the UniMelb psychology website. I also really enjoyed reading all the other prizewinner's reflections. It's so interesting to read about how everyone got into psychology and to read about how passionate they all are.
4. I think just listening to Diana Damrau sing yesterday and watching La Sonnambula has helped me improve my practice with Ah! non credea a lot. I feel like I'm really starting to "get" the piece and the nuances in it, and I've only really just started working on it (literally one lesson so far!!). A lot can be accomplished when you're really obsessed with a piece (it is well and truly in my head all the time and I just want to sing it a lot)...and inspired.

What did I learn? 

• It's not so straightforward to try and put together a model of how mindfulness and positive psychology work together in education. They support each other and common goals in many ways, so there are many many connections on messy pages of notebook at the moment. More notebook method required.
• It's kinda hard picking up where I left off with a major research project. It's only been two days since I last did any work for my Buddhism paper, but it took awhile to figure out where to go with it tonight, and what to read. To overcome this issue in future, it's important to write an action step for the next session whenever I end a current session working on it. So, I have an action step telling me what to read next, which will be helpful. It cuts a lot of meandering and fluffing about and being paralysed by it.

Day 55: Harvard is hell for some

What went well? 

1. Buddhism mid-term went very smoothly.
2. Interesting sociology colloquium on what merit means in admissions to elite universities in the US & UK.
3. Really interesting guest lecture (Dr Laura Kubzansky) in positive psychology today on the relationships between positive psychological functioning & physical health.
4. Stouffer fellows night with my Buddhism professor as the dinner guest! It's always interesting to hear his stories, and this was no exception. Man, he has had some of the weirdest and funniest experiences. One of the stories he shared was a linguistics class he took as an undergrad at Boston, where the class ran from 12am-5am (yes, AM) once a week, by this totally weird professor, and they always drank lots during it. LOL. It's like something out of the movies?

What did I learn? 

• A new term: "diversity bargain". Students at Harvard & Brown are happy for race to be considered in admissions (affirmative action), so long as it benefits them - i.e. if they get the benefits of increased diversity by having the opportunity to interact with people from different backgrounds, but not if they self-segregate, and certainly not if said student hadn't gotten in because someone from a racial minority got in ("If I hadn't gotten in, then..."). I thought this was intriguing.
• Most research in the past pertaining to the relationship between emotions and physical health had focused largely on negative psychological states (e.g. Type A personality, depression, stress) & physical health, but only recently have they started to collect data on the relationship between positive psychological states (e.g. optimism, positive affect) and physical health. And yes, there is a huge effect!!! Not just wishful thinking. One study (I don't have the reference here) showed that participants who had high optimism at baseline had a 56% reduced chance of developing cardiovascular disease compared with the pessimistic participants (all were healthy at baseline). Another study showed that emotional vitality reduced risk of cardiovascular disease by 28% and optimism by 31%; these effect sizes are substantial as they are similar to the effects of diet interventions. I'm actually quite interested in perhaps looking at this line of research in the future - health psychology/public health.
• My intro Buddhism professor hated, and I mean hated Harvard. He did his Masters degree at the School of Divinity, and said that he felt physically sick getting off the train each morning to get into campus - hated everything about the place - the students, the buildings, the food, the weather, the city. I was quite taken aback. This made me think back to the discussion we had in our lab meeting the other day about institutional culture, and this is adding to my growing realisation that this is something that will be very important to consider. Whatever grad school or post-doc or faculty position I choose in the future will need to be backed up with solid motivations and solid research into the culture, not just because they're commonly accepted to be the "best" institutions for research or whatever. So, why did he hate it so much? "Imagine a room full of alpha-males and alpha-females who are trying to be alpha-males, all striving to show that they're better than each other, and that this is encouraged by the professors. And professors can't even be professors because you can never access them." Another story he told us was this time a student came up to him (this would have been about 15 years ago) and said, "I have a problem." He says, "Ok, let's talk about your problem." The problem? She got a B+ on a paper! It was the first time she'd ever gotten a B in anything, and she was all like, "What are we going to do about this?" Obviously, the professor was like wtf?! (not literally, but probably thinking that) and basically said, "I dunno." So she pressed him, and he was like, "Why don't you talk to the President about it? I'll come to the meeting." And she was like, "Ok, I'll do that. But you're not going to be at the meeting." Prof: "Too right I'm not. Because you're not going to get a meeting! You'll be laughed at if you call her." So then the student asked, "Why did I get a B+?" And he said, "Now you're asking the right question. Can you tell me why you shouldn't have gotten a B+?" And she couldn't answer it. Fascinating. Just fascinating. I can't believe how naïve I was (and to some extent still am) and susceptible to the "halo" of Harvard as the ideal destination, a priori. More critical thinking required. As an aside, he did love UC Riverside! From what I've heard, I'm liking the sound of the institutions on the West coast.

A few random pictures from the day

"Good luck on exams! Stay positive! It's almost SPRING BREAK"

I never noticed that the building behind Hummus was this awesome!

Colourful flowers at the grocery store

Day 51: Magic Gardens and Casting Call

What went well? 

1. Magic Gardens Trip!!! Bottom line: If you're in Philly, you should go. Seriously. I loved this place. It was super colourful and creative and expressive...look! Also, the whole trip (transport, entry, food) was covered by Stouffer. Thanks again, Stouffer!






























2. Auditioned for Opera Scenes. Sang Ach ich fühl's from Die Zauberflöte. It went really well, and the organisers gave me some really encouraging and positive feedback. Mindfulness definitely helps my singing, in terms of staying completely focused, in character, and putting the intention and deliberateness behind every phrase and word. It was this intensity that they commented on. Really looking forward to finding out what scenes they choose, and what I'll be singing!
3. Still got a lot of work done. Prepared most of my flashcards for my intro Buddhism mid-term on Wednesday. Just need to finish doing that, then plan my practice essays, and then memorise the key ideas (and page numbers for citations, yeah I know, what??).

What did I learn?

• I really enjoyed meeting new people on the trip today. Had some nice conversations, discovering commonalities. That's kinda the thing with just being willing to sign up for activities and opportunities by yourself - it just makes you more open to starting conversations with more people, thereby creating more opportunities for meeting awesome new people!

Miscellaneous thoughts 

This actually belongs more in yesterday's post, but it's something I've noticed in general at Penn. People here are frazzled. That's the word I would use. I walked into my lab meeting yesterday, and man, everyone was frazzled about everything they had to get done and all the pressures on them. And it's not just the students, as we were discussing in our lab meeting - this culture of frazzledness is pervasive, including faculty and researchers alike. I wondered if it was just a feature of academic careers per se, assuming that they're all high-pressure jobs where you fight to prove your worth for tenure, publish or perish etc., but apparently it is not the case. Rather, it really depends on the prestige and culture of each institution. Hence, it is something I will really have to take into consideration in future when thinking about graduate schools, post-doc positions and eventually where I would like to end up working. I don't know if I'd be willing to completely sacrifice work-life balance/stay long-term in an atmosphere described by a fellow peer as a "dark cloud" (I haven't really felt it, being just a temporary outsider, but have noticed the effects on others' morale and wellbeing) for the (numerous, actually) advantages of a top institution, but maybe it's something worth doing for a few years if it's an important career move. On the other hand, perhaps I would thrive in such conditions! Some do (or seem to, anyway). Stress per se isn't bad - it's our beliefs about stress, and our resources (especially social and psychological) that ultimately determine how we fare. I seem to be thriving here, but again, I have chosen a relatively light courseload and am under a lot less pressure in terms of grades. So I'll try and talk to some more faculty & graduate students and see what their impressions are.

Day 50: Buddhism is uber confusing

What went well? 

1. Had a really productive positive psychology lab meeting, where we made progress on making decisions about the study design of a new intervention that we're going to pilot. I'll basically be trying to draft up a detailed methods section next week.
2. Saw my intro Buddhism professor briefly to ask some questions about Buddhist ideas about rebirth. It was simultaneously helpful yet confusing, but nonetheless a stimulating & enjoyable discussion. It's one of those subjects, I guess...
3. Went to a Philomathean society meeting, and the main presentation & all of the mini-presentations by prospective members were all very high-quality. 

What did I learn? 

• There's going to be another person joining our positive psychology lab, who has a background in marketing, social media, project management etc. She's a professional who now has an interest in positive psychology so wants to volunteer to help the post-doc we're working with out! This seems to be such an American thing. People are so willing to give so much of their time and expertise for free to gain experience over here, whereas it seems like that's not something that generally occurs to people in Australia and New Zealand. I'm really looking forward to meeting her.

Day 18: Really good news!

What went well? 

1. Ok, so this is a huge WWW for me: I'll be starting as a research assistant at the Positive Psychology Center next week!! I am super duper excited and really grateful for this opportunity to gain some real research experience. I'll be spending at least 6 hours a week getting involved in the various projects (this awesome social media project is one of them), and am really looking forward to it. Did I mention that I'm excited?!?!
2. Ancient Voices rehearsal reminded me of how therapeutic singing can be. I think it produces a comparable endorphin/dopamine rush to exercise, for me anyway :P
3. My Intro Buddhism lecture was really engaging and interesting again. The professor taught us about the early life of Gottama the Buddha, and he really told it like a story, filled with hilarious modern-day analogies, dramatic reenactions and exaggerations, and gruesome details. This professor seriously has talent in engaging (and even entertaining!) his students.
4. Got a couple more parcels in the mail, and enjoyed mindfully popping the HUGE bubble wrap.
5. Started the morning with a group meditation session that a classmate organised.

What did I learn? 

• Schools are seen as both a scapegoat & saviour for societal problems (e.g. obesity, poverty, violence), and this tendency is particularly strong in the US.
• Ascetics back in ancient India sure engaged in some weird practices in their quest for spiritual salvation. Like, holding their arms above their heads until the blood drained out and the muscles died, tearing their eyelids out and staring at the sun until their retinas burned out, repeatedly running themselves into a stake...super weird.
• Society really doesn't like it when norms are broken. My professor for Sociology of Education told us a story of how for a sociology assignment, he had to go and break a societal norm (not a law). So he went and tried to pay more for an item at a store (e.g. insisting on paying $5 instead of $3.50). The shopkeepers were at first confused, then just bewildered and uncomfortable, and then completely pissed off upon finding out that it was for an assignment, and basically told him to get out. Uncomfortable!! People just don't know how to react when norms are broken. Another suggestion for the assignment was to ask someone on a plane if you could finish their unfinished meal. Hahahaha. Imagine the reaction...how would you react? Anyway, the point of the story was that Durkheim, the father of sociology, argued that though we may claim to be individuals, in the end, we're all conformists, and it's a good thing (otherwise how would society function?)!

Miscellaneous bits & pieces

I think the pavement on 37th street, between Spruce & Walnut Streets, is petty neat because it's paved with Benjamin Franklin's sayings. Here are some:

"Lost Time is never found again."

"Little Strokes Fell great Oaks." I LOVE this one. A simple reminder that even the most onerous tasks can be broken down and conquered by constant, persistent small steps and efforts.

"Genius without Education is like Silver in the Mine."

Also, here are a couple of things I find weird about American culture:

1. When you say "thank you", sometimes they'll respond with "uh-huh" or "mmhmm".
2. It's very common to eat in class. Not like eating in class is expressly prohibited in tutorials (the no-food rule & norm is pretty strong in lectures), but most people don't eat in class in Australia. But it seems like it's totally normal and ok to do so here. I still find it weird though.

Day 11: Martin Luther King Day

Today was Martin Luther King Day, so I joined a few people from Stouffer College House on a trip organised by a GA, to a celebration at the African American Museum.

He said, "Beat me at Connect 4 and you can choose anything from this table." I lost.

Artwork by Ellen Tiberino. This one's called "Health Care." I found her work really disturbing, shocking and therefore powerful.

Another one by Ellen Tiberino.

We watched a Civil Rights Hip-Hop performance at noon. I waited too late to get a free ticket from the front desk, so the GA very kindly insisted on giving his to me! But in the end, he was allowed in too, after they checked to see if the auditorium was really at capacity. It really illustrates the way that giving isn't always zero-sum and can expand the pie. I was glad that we both got to see it, because the performance was really powerful. I thought it was a really effective way of communicating the messages of oppression and protest.

So much cuteness! Check out those pigtails. #awwwwwww. BTW, all of these kids could dance 200% better than me. A few of them could legit breakdance.

When we left, the line was even longer than this. Hence why we got there before it opened in the morning!

This evening, I went to my first Ancient Voices rehearsal. Everyone was really friendly, and the group stayed in tune really well. I think I'll enjoy being a part of it. I can also get 0.50 credit units for singing in the group (won't count towards my degree at UniMelb, but I'll get an extra grade on my transcript).

After rehearsal, I spent the next 2.5 hours at the library, arming my academic arsenal with books for that 6000 word paper. I think I am now well-equipped:

I think I cleared the shelves of anything to do with mindfulness and Buddhist meditation.

They even have mini shopping trolleys at the library for ridiculous people like me. It was pretty embarrassing checking all the books out. But at least I've basically gotten the (physical) resource-accumulation phase of research out of the way. More journal articles to download!

Anyway, here's where I'm at with the topic I'm planning to explore. As I wrote to my professor:

"After some reflection, I remembered that it was Western psychology (I'm a psych major), and in particular, a mindfulness meditation course, that drew me to Buddhism in the first place. So I'm thinking about investigating how Western psychology has drawn from Buddhist teachings to form secularised mindfulness practices, as seen in programs like MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) and (MBCT) Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy. I might consider how modern day mindfulness differs from the way that traditional Buddhist meditation is described and portrayed (i.e. how it's been interpreted through the lens of Western psychology), and what is lost and gained by this approach. I've started gathering some sources and there seems to be a decent amount written on this topic (but I'll need to identify the "gap")."

What went well? 

1. The GA giving up his ticket for the Civil Rights show so that I could have the opportunity. It was such a kind act, and it ended well for both of us!
2. I was looking for a particular book on the shelves of the library, and couldn't find it. Just as I was searching for it in the catalogue on my phone, the library assistant walked by with it since she was in the process of re-shelving the books.
3. My professor likes the topic that I'm planning to explore in my research paper. And he replied really quickly (10 minutes). People are ridiculously efficient around here.
4. The security guard at Stouffer buzzed me in since I was carrying a huge stack of books. Usually you have to swipe your PennCard and enter your pin number to get through the barrier, so that was really nice of her.

What did I learn? 

• Hip-hop is actually a really effective and powerful way of communicating ideas, especially to a young audience.
• I get way too enthusiastic/ambitious about research.
• The photocopier can be really annoying when trying to photocopy big books, and tell you that it can't detect the right size. To avoid this, a more effective way is to centre the book in the middle, rather than in the corner.
• The photocopier is still annoying regardless, because if you're inactive for even 5 seconds it makes you reswipe your PennCard.