Day 61: More Washington DC!

What went well? 

1. Got a lovely dose of nature and flowers this morning at the United States Botanic Garden. It was musically themed!

























2. Visited the Franciscan Monastery. Highly, highly recommended. I'm not religious but was very impressed by the church and found the tour interesting. The interior was magnificent and gave me shivers. It's definitely worth a visit.







  

3. Visited Georgetown Uni (very briefly). It's tiny, but cute!

What did I learn? 

• Georgetown University has a dedicated meditation room/building on campus!

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• Georgetown Cupcakes is a seriously thriving business. This is how long the line was (and generally is) - about a 15 minute wait:



People wait this long just to get cupcakes?!

• Also had a very bizarre encounter in the line. This random woman behind us from Dallas started talking to us about how excited she was about the cupcakes (because I was expressing my excitement about how they actually had vegan cupcakes too - prematurely, since they'd run out, sadface), and went off on a rant about fatasses in the US and how she didn't want to pay for them...republican?? Also very, very loud and expressive. I was wondering if that was (stereo)"typical" of someone from that area, but my friends later were saying that they thought she was probably drunk because there was just no social filter whatsoever. Plus, just as we finally got to the counter, she disappeared, even though she'd been so looking forward to getting a cupcake! So. Bizarre.

Day 60: Washington, DC!

What went well? 

1. Spent the afternoon exploring the Capitol and National Mall in DC, and basically saw all the major monuments:



Metro station. Everything already looks "DC", as soon as you step outside!






Capitol building






Supreme Court






Inside the Library of Congress






Library of Congress









Capitol Building














Lincoln Memorial






White House



2. Am feeling grateful to my friend's friend's aunt, who is generously letting us stay at their place!
3. It was so warm today!! We sat in the sun for awhile in the afternoon, and it was just so lovely to soak up the rays and doze off a bit in the warmth. Ahhhhhh...... #savouring

What did I learn? 

• National Mall is HUGE. We walked all the way from the metro station to the end of National Mall, which was about 4.5kms, plus we took detours, then walked another 3 or so kms to where my friend's friend was parked...
• Most of the museums and monuments are part of National Mall. You could spend days exploring just this area.
• Apparently the Library of Congress is the largest library in the world! It also houses Thomas Jefferson's personal library.

Day 59: Starstruck

What went well? 

1. Got a pleasant surprise in my email inbox. Last week, after Adam Grant's guest lecture, I gave him a gratitude card because I genuinely wanted to appreciate him for his work with Give and Take, the most influential and inspirational book I read last year. I didn't leave my email address because I wanted it to be a genuine act of giving with no expectations of a reply, so I was very surprised when I got an email reply from him today, thanking me for the card! I was impressed that he must have actually looked me up on the Penn database to find my email address. Definitely a giver. It made my day.
2. My friend's friend is in DC next week and offered us a place to stay on Tuesday night at her aunt's! Super generous.
3. Wrote over 2300 words for my sociology of education mid-term.
4. Packed my stuff for my spring break trip, and I'm happy to say that I can fit everything for a whole week (Monday - Saturday) into a normal-sized backpack!! Travelling light just makes travelling so much better.

What did I learn? 

• I'm weird. Haha. I saw a squirrel run by and I was like, "awww..." (because they're still cute!) and someone walking by looked at me very bemusedly. It was a funny expression.
• There's a certain point with writing where you just hit the wall. I literally only started writing at about 12.15pm and by about 3.30pm I'd produced 90% of the words I was going to write for the rest of the day. I spent the rest of the day doing mindless work for my research paper (collecting data points, quotes with the word "mindfulness" on Google Books), singing practice, and managed to spend another 15 minutes writing another 300 or so words. The thing is, writing is really fast and you can produce a lot of words in a short amount of time (I write in 25-minute pomodoro blocks) when you have all the notes in front of you - it's just about summarising, interpreting, and synthesising - but the prerequisites are motivation and some quality of mental capacity available at that stage (not even just energy or concentration) that had been exhausted. 2300 words is still pretty good though!

Day 58: Mid-term time

What went well? 

1. Worked on my sociology of education mid-term (50%) all day (this is my #focus weekend since I'm away Monday-Saturday next week doing fun stuff), but had company while doing it with a friend who was doing research/programming at the Positive Psychology Center. It was definitely nice to at last get out of the dorm and have someone to have lunch with and watch random videos during breaks.
2. At the same time, I had a very productive day and got all the notes ready to write up tomorrow.



I still think RescueTime is pretty neat.

3. But also managed to get down to Charlie's Jeans in Old City and buy a new pair of jeans because both my current pairs have holes :( This was a very efficient trip though - I was in and out within 10 minutes because the sales assistant knew what she was doing and I am trying to be more of a satisficer (good enough!) than a maximiser (looking for the best! decision fatigue!) when it comes to things that don't really matter.
4. Found out what I'll be singing for Opera Scenes - a duet from Monteverdi's Poppea: Pur ti miro. It's simple, but I think it's still really beautiful and we can do a lot with it, especially with infusing it with rapture and tenderness.

What did I learn? 

• My friend at the PPC shared an app they're still testing at the moment with me, which is a natural language analysis thing where you enter at least 500 words of text you've written, and it predicts your age, gender, and personality! I decided to enter all 63 entires of my blog (including the pre-departure posts) into the box...and well, the tool was pretty far off for all of these variables, but here it is:

• So apparently, I'm nearly 29 years old, slightly more male than female, and pretty much an introvert. Haha. I'd say I'm also a little higher in conscientiousness and (I'd like to think, anyway!) agreeableness. It's a fun idea though, that we could actually predict these things based on the language someone uses.

A word cloud of exchange so far...

Also, since I'd copied all that text from my blog, I thought I may as well word cloud it:

Day 57: Positive interventions that people actually want to do

What went well? 

1. Met the newest person to join our research team. She seems really lovely, genuine, and with unique skills to contribute, and I'm really looking forward to working with her!
2. After our usual lab meeting, there was another informal lab meeting at the Positive Psychology Center on positive interventions, which we were invited to join, so I did. It was really insightful, and just so good to be in the loop on what top researchers in this field are currently thinking about their field.
3. Had a long Skype session with mum.
4. Was late picking up my laundry, but it was still in the dryer (vs. being thrown onto a dirty bench/washing machine). Hey, it's the little things in life!

What did I learn? 

• In the positive interventions lab meeting, one of the themes that came up was the idea of interventions that people will actually want to do and would actually do in real life. Psychology has the tendency to work in a top-down fashion, so we have theory and research about the foundations of wellbeing, then we want to devise interventions based on these theories, and impose them on people. And sometimes, they do work! e.g. the Three Good Things/What Went Well exercise, and using strengths. But they might not necessarily be "natural" activities that people would necessarily feel motivated to do. So, we were talking about the need to do more research on things people already do to increase their wellbeing, to build interventions from the ground-up, rather than assuming that we, as "the researchers", know better! That's why the intervention we'll be launching in a few weeks (after IRB approval etc.) will be relatively open-ended, but we're hoping to learn lots about the things people choose to do and how often, to gain some insight into feasibility and real-world practicalities. And we also need to learn more about what drives people, what motivates them, so that they will actually feel motivated to improve their wellbeing (assuming that people want to be happy and well). This is particularly important with all the work that's being done with schools right now (which is something I'm passionate bout), where the kids are essentially a captive audience - you have to make it resonate with them somehow.
• Caffeine may be a little bit alienating. I had coffee today (as well as my regular green tea in the morning) and I was super-focused in the afternoon, but at the same time, didn't feel particularly present/"grounded". Also, I noticed that I was more "edgy" and impatient, perhaps due to the extra stimulation/energy. It's very interesting to notice how much one cup of coffee can affect me physiologically.

Day 56: Guest speakers are great

What went well? 

1. Had a guest speaker in for Contemplative Sciences today, Dr Trish Broderick who designed the Learning to Breathe mindfulness curriculum for adolescents. Her insights into both the theory and the practicalities of implementing it were so valuable. It was the best class we've had so far for the course. I also got her to sign my book (manual) :P. Needless to say, I'm a fan of her work and look forward to seeing more research come out on this (there are a few published and a lot of ongoing research projects). This reminded me of something else Professor Duckworth mentioned yesterday in the guest lecture in positive psychology. One thing about being at Penn is that you get to hear from the experts themselves, rather than just a third-person summary of someone else's research. It's far more enlightening and nuanced this way.
2. Got a message from a friend wishing me a lovely spring break. I really appreciated it :)
3. I feel like I'm learning lots from research assisting. I've just started sorting through and organising a whole bunch of correspondence, noting details, questions, follow-up etc. relating to a measure of well-being that the post-doc I'm assisting has developed. It sounds mundane at a surface level, but the correspondence is actually really insightful. It reveals a lot about people's thought processes, what real-life research looks like, conflicts and good practices in research, what kind of information you should provide to people, and future directions.

What did I learn? 

• Research in schools is MESSY. Trish Broderick was telling us about the difficulties of 1. getting into schools and 2. getting the data in a non-messed-up way. Really useful to know because I really do want to research SEL programs in schools, so it's good to have a realistic perspective of what to expect.
• When getting school buy-in, it's really helpful to have something solid you can show them, like a physical curriculum/manual. Also, a lot of it is about understanding the school's culture and needs, and cultivating relationships to facilitate this.

Miscellaneous thoughts 

This is kinda from yesterday's Fellow's night, but also in general. Something that I've noticed is that professors, when asked how they ended up doing what they're doing now (at least 3-4 of them, anyway), seem to not really have a coherent "story" for how they got here. As in, they didn't seem to plan on it, it just kinda happened as a result of a series of events. This seems to be very different from the seemingly highly strategic approach that aspiring academics now take. Or maybe we're just kidding ourselves and the strategising and planning probably won't get us to where we think we'll be? Should millenials just drop the planning and go with the flow? It seems unlikely that that's a great idea that would actually work now, at least for academia.

Some thoughts on singing. I think it really teaches you a lot of things that are applicable to life in general.

For example, today I practiced after not practicing for two days, and eeeek it was not pretty or fun for the first 50 minutes, because the voice just needs a lot more encouragement after it's been asleep for even a couple of days. Despite having practiced every day last week. Anyway, I thought this was a nice illustration of the concept of karma. Karma isn't some mysterious spiritual force; it's just a natural law that certain actions will produce certain results. So, let's use singing as a simplistic example: lack of practice → sound like crap. However, this isn't a permanent state of affairs - it starts sounding less crap as soon as you start working at it again. So singing is an empowering practice in a sense, because you know that just as lack of practice → sound crap/not fun, practicing → sound good/singing is fun! 

Singing also illustrates impermanence, as well as the need to push through slumps and persevere. Some days (<5%) you're in really good voice, other times it's just good, average or even not that great. So singing is a lot about pushing through and learning how to sing through the average and below-average days, figuring out what you can do with the circumstances. It's not always fun! #grit

Thirdly, singing can help you get used to the feeling of pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. That's something I'm trying to work on in singing and in life. But specifically, in singing, I'm exploring the full potential of my voice, as well as trying to add some stylistic features like operatic portamentos that feel a little weird/unnatural at the moment, like, "I'm not sure if I'm doing this right!" But hey, it's all about trying it out and giving it a go!

Finally, you can use your strengths to scaffold your progress in singing, as in life. For example, it's good practice to start with a "voice-setting song", a song that when you sing, just places your voice in the right position because it fits your voice so well and you've sung it with good technique so many times. This can help with subsequent songs. Can you think of an example of how you could use a pre-existing strength to help you meet another challenge/develop another quality?

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