America's Hiking Boot

Though the five weeks of vacation have left me no excuse, a certain reticence bound me until I could find something to post that I felt compelled to put my stamp on. In this case, I am moved by the force of an increasingly re-occuring, unpleasant feeling: my American guilt

The Americanization of Mental Illness

New York Times, January 8

"It means that a mental illness is an illness of the mind and cannot be understood without understanding the ideas, habits and predispositions — the idiosyncratic cultural trappings — of the mind that is its host."

I strongly encourage you to take ten minutes out of your day to read this article, for I know I will not do it justice. No matter if you find mental illness a topic worthy of those ten minutes, you will find that its theme captures the essence of America's footprint on the rest of the world.

Here are three truths I held prior to reading this article; following the colon are quotes from the article challenging those truths. I urge you to do the same.

• An almost incontrovertible trust in Science:

"Mental-health professionals in the West... create official categories of mental diseases and promote them in a diagnostic manual that has become the worldwide standard. Western drug companies dole out large sums for research and spend billions marketing medications for mental illnesses. The assumption is that these remarkable scientific advances have allowed modern-day practitioners to avoid the blind spots and cultural biases of their predecessors."

• Mental Illness is a disease like any other and the adoption of this perspective alleviates stigma:

"Once people believed that the onset of mental illnesses did not spring from supernatural forces, character flaws, semen loss or some other prescientific notion, the sufferer would be protected from blame and stigma... [However,] in numerous studies around the world, those who adopted biomedical/genetic beliefs about mental disorders were the same people who wanted less contact with the mentally ill and thought of them as more dangerous and unpredictable. [Cross-cultural studies on schizophrenia revealed that] besides keeping the sick individual in the social group, the religious beliefs in Zanzibar also allowed for a type of calmness and acquiescence in the face of the illness rarely witnessed in the West."

• Constant reflection and rumination of ourselves and life's events give us meaning:

"Westerners share evolving beliefs about what type of life event is likely to make one psychologically traumatized, and we agree that venting emotions by talking is more healthy than stoic silence. We’ve come to agree that the human mind is rather fragile and that it is best to consider many emotional experiences and mental states as illnesses that require professional intervention. The ideas we export often have at their heart a particularly American brand of hyperintrospection — a penchant for “psychologizing” daily existence...deeply influenced by the Cartesian split between the mind and the body"

I am well aware of the repercussions Western colonization and globalization. I worry and fret over my guilt by association. But perhaps due to my curious attraction to mental health, this particular footprint is like a hiking boot. Even though it is worn with good intentions, it is wide and strong, leaving deep marks in the mud and easily trampling on the beautiful flora.

Morning

Yesterday morning, I got up early to go on a long run. At 6am I jumped out of bed, ate a full breakfast, drove to the Presidio, and was at the trail by 715am. Oliver joined me for the last half of the run, and afterward, we grabbed an early lunch at Nick's Crispy Tacos. The run, the sights, the conversation, the outdoors, and the food were so rewarding!

I was back home by 11:30am with a full day ahead me, and the experience was better than any indulgent, post-alarm sleep I have ever had. Here's to the morning! Below is a picture of the city I took right before starting.

I love HER music!

Sometime ago, I was prompted to make a list of my top 20 favorite music artists. As most of you could probably guess, Pearl Jam was atop the list, and Death Cab, u2, Neil Young, and Drive-By Truckers rounded off the top five. Without going through whole list, I did find one unexpected finding: my list was lacking female artists! With the exception of Regina Spektor, my list was woman-less.

Don't get me wrong-- I love artists like The Pretenders, 10,000 Maniacs, and Tracy Chapman, but none of them could break into my top 20. As a result (be it guilt or whatever), I have decided to blog about some recently discovered bands with front[wo]men. Enjoy!

Yeah Yeah Yeahs: They are enjoying big-name success these days, but I have only found them in the last few months. Karen O heads the band as vocalist and pianist. She can rock. Check out the songs "Gold Lion", "Cheated Hearts", and "Heads Will Roll."

Florence + the Machine: I found her on Pandora, and the vocals in this band are epic. They also have a harp. My favorite songs include "Cosmic Love", "You've Got the Love", and "My Boy Builds Coffins."

Lisa Hannigan: You have probably heard her singing on a Damien Rice album (e.g., "9 Crimes"), but she is solo now. I had a chance to see her open for David Gray, and I was impressed! Her latest album, Sea Sew, is excellent top to bottom.

Crooked Still: Labeled as neo-bluegrass, this band reminds me a lot of Nickel Creek (who also has a prominent female). I also found this band on Pandora. My favorite song is "Did you sleep well?"

So, there you go. In an attempt to rectify my male-bias in music, I hope I have shared with you your next favorite band. If you've recently fallen for a great musician, regardless of gender, shoot me a note. I'm always looking, and my top 20 is never solidified!

Time flies... How the Brain Measures Time.

Where Did the Time Go? Do Not Ask the Brain.

Above is a link to a fascinating article in the New York Times about how our brains work to track the passage of time. It amazes me how my recent holiday break flashed by, but waiting on my bags at the airport seemed to take forever.

The article provides some insight to why our mind is so poor at gauging time. In one interesting example, the article stated, "In another series of experiments published in Psychological Science, psychologists found that when people were tricked into believing that more time had passed than was really the case, they assumed they must have been having more fun. The perception heightened their enjoyment of music and eased their annoyance at doing menial tasks." That is, if something occupied us for more time than we expected, then we must have been engaged, and so it was fun. Our minds are so wired to make meaning of external stimuli that we often change our perception to make sense of the world!

The article addresses more than this single phenomenon and raises some unanswered questions to how our mind works to monitor time. It's worth checking out.

Connecting a Degree to a Job

Kate Zernike recently wrote an article in the New York Times that addresses the relevance of a college degree in the work force. The article can be found below:

Making College Relevant

I found the article to be both pertinent and accurate. In order to promote student occupational success and to provide society with competent contributors, post-secondary institutions will always need to evolve with the greater industrial and socio-political climates. As a result, universities must adapt.

This is especially true today. As fast as technology is evolving, it is difficult to foresee what jobs will require. This sentiment is echoed in much of the curricula research; there is a call for a stronger emphasis on soft skills development rather than hard skill development. That is, instead of teaching undergrads specific knowledge, universities should equip students to thinking critically, write clearly, organize and present coherently, and think flexibly. When soliciting the opinions of today's employers, Zernike reports similar findings.

So, what should an undergraduate degree look like? How specified should it be? What majors will be extinct and what courses will be added? In my opinion, it seems all students could benefit from a technology, a finance, a critical thinking, and a writing/speaking curriculum. I hope and anticipate that my children's undergradaute education will be much different than my own.

Droiding

Recently, Tracy and I entered the realm of the Motorola Droid. Newt, my step dad, also received a Droid, which was the highlight of my Christmas morning. I thought I'd blog about a few of our favorite features of the Droid.

The Droid allows you to set up your desktop in any way. For example, on my desktop, I have an icon for Tracy, a weather widget that alerts me for severe weather, and a task manager to help prolong the battery.

Tracy has an application (DROID MUNI) that alerts her about the next arrival for any Muni bus in the city.

"I lost my Droid!" Ever lost your phone but couldn't find it, because the phone was set to silent? This application allows you to text your Droid from another phone. The text message sets the Droid to loud and begins to ring. Genius!

Other ingenious apps include Shop Savvy, Ring Droid, Visual Voicemail, and Mobile Banking.

So, despite being labeled as "always plugged in," I am loving the Droid. My Amish sister should join the club.

What do teachers need?

As each of us pursue an occupation, a hobby, or our civic duty, how much of our capabilities do we owe to our education? Answering this question underscores the importance education and the transmitters of education.

Given the need for efficacious transmitters of education, how we do we create them? Obviously, I'm speaking about teaching. The skill sets that teachers need to motivate, structure, teach, mentor, and scaffold are myriad. I have multiple colleagues, friends, and family who have taught and found themselves needing more. In my own experience in academia, I come across information about human development and behavior, and I think to myself, "Wait, I'm just learning this... Do teachers not know this?" The voids in teacher prep programs seem to be coming into relief as I learn more. Yet it seems that more programs (e.g., Teach for America, Career Changers) are moving towards crash courses for teacher certification. I am confused and concerned. I wish I knew more.

For another perspective, I am including a recent story from NPR.
NPR Story: What should go into a teaching degree?
Because we all educate and have been educated, it seems that teacher preparedness is something we are all stakeholders in.

I do not have the answers, but I certainly think the professionalization of the task of teaching should be considered.