Each year Apple puts together a Replay playlist (Similar to Spotify’s Year in Review) that lists your most listened to songs. This year I figured I’d ask ChatGPT to analyze my musical tastes based off of it. And ya know what, it’s pretty accurate:
Analyzing the musical tastes of a person based on a list of songs can be subjective, as individual preferences vary. However, we can identify some patterns and genres that seem to be present in the provided song list.
Diversity in Genres: The list includes a wide variety of genres such as pop, country, rock, folk, Disney, and more. This suggests that the person enjoys exploring different musical styles.
Nostalgia and Classic Hits: There’s a presence of classic hits like ‘Eye of the Tiger’ by Survivor, ‘Escape (The Pina Colada Song)’ by Rupert Holmes, and ‘Jump (For My Love)’ by The Pointer Sisters, indicating a fondness for nostalgic and timeless tunes.
Country Music: Songs by artists like Kenny Chesney, Luke Bryan, Miranda Lambert, and others indicate an affinity for country music, especially with tracks like ‘Beer in Mexico,’ ‘What Makes You Country,’ and ‘White Liar.’
Disney and Nostalgic Theme Park Music: The inclusion of Disney songs (‘Circle of Life,’ ‘The Aristocats,’ ‘Colors of the Wind’) and theme park music (‘Fantasmic Theme,’ ‘EPCOT Medley’) suggests a liking for whimsical and nostalgic tunes.
Pop and Contemporary Hits: Recent pop hits like ‘Blinding Lights’ by The Weeknd, ‘Dance Monkey’ by Tones And I, and ‘bad idea right?’ by Olivia Rodrigo indicate an appreciation for contemporary and popular music.
Jimmy Buffett Influence: Multiple songs by Jimmy Buffett, such as ‘Margaritaville,’ ‘Bubbles Up,’ and ‘Summerzcool,’ suggest a liking for beachy, tropical, and laid-back vibes.
Musical Theater Influence: Inclusion of songs from musicals like ‘9 to 5 the Musical’ and ‘Frozen’ suggests an interest in musical theater.
Eclectic Mix: The list features lesser-known artists and songs alongside mainstream hits, showing an openness to discovering music from various sources.
In summary, the person who regularly listens to these songs has an eclectic taste, enjoys a mix of classic and contemporary hits, appreciates country and tropical vibes, has a fondness for Disney music and theme park nostalgia, and may have an interest in musical theater.
(The previous paragraph, slightly modified, created the image for this article, in NightCafe Creator)
Our learning management system asks us to write an “About your Instructor” page for our students. Here’s Fall 2023’s – I think I’ve reached peak “This is who I am”…
I was born last century, the only offspring of artists who both never had the opportunity to complete a college degree. From an early age I knew I wanted to be a psychologist, but still to this day do not know what made me decide on this path. Perhaps it was Bob Newhart’s portrayal of a forever frustrated psychotherapist in The Bob Newhart Show, or maybe it was the fact that a large number of Michael Crichton’s novels portray a positive behavioral scientist. Regardless, from day one of college, I was a psychology major.
And yet I was also a complete computer geek as a teenager – teaching myself to program, administer, and network computers as soon as I could get my hands on them. My background in information technology is outlined on my blog’s About Me page but I’ll save you the time – suffice it to say, I know a lot about (and have written a lot about) technology. Which brings me to my hobbies – writing, creating, crafting, and spending time with family and a small circle of friends. Mid-career, I am your typical eccentric professor. Ask me questions, and you’ll get surprising answers. Engage with me, and I will try, in some small way, to improve your life through knowledge.
If you’re one of my new or returning students this fall, welcome to class. And if you’re just passing through, welcome to my corner of the internet.
I teach a variety of courses where I give comments to students that I sometimes like to re-use or modify for the next semester (Typically combining with a tool like TextExpander). Recently I created a course with about 25 different assignments, and I wanted to be able to download all of the submission comments. But given 25 assignments and 36 students (e.g., 900 comments), I didn’t want to do this manually!
Thankfully a great solution exists. Bsiever over on the Canvas Community forums provides a link to a python script that will do the heavy lifting for you. Here’s all I had to do this morning:
Use Homebrew on my Mac to install Python (I hadn’t needed it on this machine yet)
Modify the script to add my API URL, Key, and the Course ID (I got the course ID by looking at the web URL / address at the top of my browser when going to my Canvas course)
Run the script, dumping it to a text file (I named the script “canvassubmissions.py”, so I ran “python3 canvassubmissions.py > comments.txt” in my terminal window.
I then used Excel’s “Get Data” power query tool (first button on the Data tab) to load the text file. It figured out columns and in a few seconds, I had this:
Now I have an easy searchable archive of my comments! And it saved myself or a graduate assistant probably around 30 hours of having to open each assignment and copy and paste!
A colleague and I are creating a Discord server to discuss psychology and all things related (Technology, community, academia, culture, etc…) We’re hoping to use it with our students, and our colleagues and friends.
If you’d like to join in, head over to https://go.jonwestfall.com/psychout and jump in. Right now just a few channels in there for general talk, posting news that you’d like to discuss, and just some fun. So stop by, post some stuff, and enjoy.
Each semester I teach General Psychology, I do an activity where I ask a series of True/False questions to determine if my students believe some of the biggest “myths” of the field. Recently I asked our excellent Graduate Assistant to pull the previous semesters (5 in total) and report the percentage of people who got each question right. I then averaged them and sorted by mostlikely to be wrong to least.
Here are the “Biggest Myths” in psychology, with the percentage of students who got the question right:
We learn more effectively when taught via our preferred “Learning Style” (False)
8%
Blind people possess greater acuity in the sense channels of hearing and touch (False)
17%
When you burn your hand, neural information travels to your brain at nearly the speed of light (False)
19%
If you want someone to continue doing sometihng, you should reward them on a consistent basis (False)
35%
Most people would administer a near-fatal electrical shock if an experimenter told them to. (True)
41%
Violent offenders usually have a diagnosis of mental illness (False)
46%
Human memory is like a recording of what happened (False)
47%
A psychologist can determine a person’s hidden problems by analyzing his or her dreams (False)
51%
It is an optical illusion when the moon appears larger on the horizon than it does overhead (True)
54%
We use about 10% of our brain (False)
54%
Hypnosis can help people accurately recall a crime scene (False)
59%
People are either Right Brained (Creative) or Left Brained (logical) (False)
63%
Playing classical music for a young infant will result in an increase in his or her IQ (False)
66%
People with one eye can still see in three dimensions (True)
67%
US Law Requires Television and Film to portray mental disorders accurately (False)
68%
Ivan Pavlov, who documented classical conditioning, was not a psychologist! (True)
70%
Quizzes in magazines like Cosmopolitan or on websites like Buzzfeed are surprisingly accurate. (False)
76%
We experience stress when good as well as bad things happen to us. (True)
79%
Simple wording changes can alter a person’s decision (eg, “75% will live” vs “25% will die”) (True)
Welcome student (or wanderer on the Internet), I’m glad you found this post. I try to make one of these every so often, in case students Google me or just wander over to my website. I probably talked a little bit about myself on the first day of class, but in case you need a refresher on the important points:
I’m a psychology professor who also has a long background in Information Technology, has written several books, enjoys creative writing, knitting, crocheting, biking, walking, and a ton of other random things.
I used to weigh 200 pounds more – if you’re curious about that, check out my Formerly Fat! page.
I am a pretty accessible person – you can Schedule an Appointment with me anytime by using the link to the right. You can also contact me in a variety of ways.
That’s about it! Happy to have you here and in class!
A small update in my Weight Loss Journey, Formerly Fat.
I’m a sucker for a good deal, so when I looked at our Faculty/Staff Meal plan at Delta State and did the math, I realized I could solve a few problems with one solution. The first was figuring out what to eat for lunch most days, which I figured was a decision fatigue situation I could avoid just like Jobs, Branson, & Zuck do with clothes. The second was it would get me out of my office for a short walk most days, and the third was that the price was actually cheaper (if you used all the meals) than packing my lunch would likely be. The only problem might have been that our cafeteria is All You Care To Eat.
On Friday, August 13, 2021, I weighed 196.4 pounds when I woke up. As you’ll probably recall from my posts thus far, this was approximately 218 pounds lighter than I was for most of my adult life. However as I settled into my “school year” existence, I wondered how I would handle the challenges of normal eating. Over the past year I’ve talked about my questions regarding “How do I Stop” losing weight, and “How do I determine if I’m hungry?”. In the former post, I talk about “The New Life Changes (e.g., Maintenance)” which I’ll update you all on later in this post.
But returning to the question at hand: Is it a good idea for a formerly fat person to willingly go to a place with limitless tasty food 100 days over the course of 9 months? My conclusion… probably not. Would I do it again… probably. Confused, well here’s my observations:
I have a long history of enjoying AYCE wing nights, never ending pasta bowls, shrimp fests, and anything else that provided limitless food – even chips at a Mexican restaurant. I think my record on wings was around 40 in my prime. After each one of those experiences, I felt anywhere from “normal” to “horrible”. Never felt great.
But I kept going because when you weigh 415 pounds, you worry a lot about being full. As I mentioned, it took about 50-75 minutes for my brain to register I was full, so most of the time after a normal sized meal, my brain would start freaking out that I was still hungry. Buffets solved that problem because my brain was really sure it was full after I ate that 40th chicken wing.
I also like a lot of different kinds of foods, so a buffet restaurant allowed me to pick up a little bit of everything. And if you were to look at my plates at those places, you’d see that while I had favorites, I was more likely to grab 1-2 pieces of everything versus 50 pieces of one thing.
My hope was that by forcing myself to eat 100 times at the same place, I would alleviate the FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) anxiety I might have over the third bullet point. If I wanted to try something, but was full today, I could try it tomorrow (or next week, or whenever it rotated back around). This largely was successful.
As you can see from the graph above, my average weight did tick up slightly over the school year… by 2 pounds or so. This is probably not too surprising, as I’m more active in the summer. Oh, and let’s not forget those wonderful pitfalls of holiday eating and overeating when you’re cooped up indoors. According to one study by Cornell, the average American gains 1.3 pounds over the holidays and it takes 5 months to work it back off (Although Brian Wansink was a co-author on this one, so take it with a grain of salt). So did I gain weight in a meaningful way after 100 days of all-you-can-eat lunch? No, but it is easy to think of all the times I could have just “not cared” my way into careless eating. I did feel like I had to maintain a certain level of vigilance which could be mildly distracting.
Turning away from the discussion of buffets, I wanted to update everyone not only on my weight but also “The New Life Changes” that I discussed in January. Here’s where I am with them:
Stop tracking everything I eat: I stopped tracking on Easter Sunday, after gradually becoming less and less diligent about it. In 4 days I’ll celebrate 4 years using MyFitnessPal daily (actually about 11 years since I first downloaded it), and my plan is to uninstall it. It was an essential element but not something I want to keep doing my entire life. I can always add it back in if I ever need to.
Continue to use some tracking devices: Still using my Oura ring and Apple Watch. Also still using the Bello app, but that’s mostly habit – I don’t think it gives me any meaningful information (and it can vary wildly day to day depending on if I place it exactly right on my stomach). Haven’t used the Apollo band in months. If I were starting out today, I would probably have just bought the Oura & Apple Watch, and not bothered with Bello or Apollo. Lumen was very useful to me before it died.
Log my weight daily: Still working on logging just once a day. My eventual goal would be weekly. I’m a data nerd, so It is tempting to see fluctuations during the day, but not the most mentally healthy. I don’t think I’m quite addicted though, since I don’t experience any anxiety when I can’t weigh myself when traveling (Although I am always curious about the result when I get home).
Keep an active voice in my head while eating: Yes, 100% this is true. And 90% of the time it’s helping me make good choices. Sometimes it justifies bad eating, sometimes it’s too puritanical, but most of the time it’s just right. It’s what has helped me not feel the need to log everything.
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff: I don’t worry about a starburst or a fun sized candy bar. I only eat 1, and it does help tide me over until the next meal. Maybe that’s what they’re for?!?
Walking and Exercising Daily: Still mostly doing this. I skip maybe one day a month, but most days I’m out for a walk, a bike ride, or both!
So, here I sit with my weight in the 193 – 198 range that I was still in during the previous 9 months, and hopefully I’ve now set a new “set point” (for those that ascribe to that theory). Hopefully if you’re struggling with weight loss seeing my journey is helping you see that there are good days and bad days (see graph above, especially during the cold weather months), that you can still enjoy holidays, all you can eat buffets, and little treats, and that it is possible to keep the weight off (at least I have thus far!). Be well, reach out for support as you need it, and enjoy life.
A small update in my Weight Loss Journey, Formerly Fat.
A little over a year ago, Karey discovered these Kind Energy Peanut Butter Bars, which she got in a sample pack. We liked them, so we ordered a pack of 12 from Amazon. Amazon, being Amazon, sent us 72 instead of 12. And we’re still eating them down (We have about 5 left, and you’d be surprised but they’re still pretty tasty past their “Best Buy” date). Anyway, I just ate one. Because I think I’m hungry. By the time I finish with this post, I will hopefully know if I was or not.
Am I Hungry?
If you’re asking yourself “How do you not know if you’re hungry?”, then you probably have a normally functioning metabolism and body. Turns out a lot of people don’t know their own hunger cues anymore, according to this article from MSU Extension, which actually lists your hunger cues:
“Empty stomach
Stomach growling
Headache
Light-headed feeling
Grumpiness
Lack of energy
Shakiness/weakness”
The article then goes on to talk about how lots of things can cause you to be disconnected from your true hunger cues – and it’s not just that “people eat when they’re bored” – they bring up good points about how stress can cause you to alter your food schedule, and so can being busy. It is true – some people do get so distracted with work that they forget to eat. We tend to applaud those folks as workaholics and we degrade the “boredom eaters” as having no self control when both of them have exactly the same problem: They don’t know when when they’re hungry! Interesting how society praises one of them and not the other, right?
Anyway, for a long time when I was really fat, my eating schedule was hardly what others expected. As I’ve noted in the past, people have a misconception that fat people eat all the freaking time, but many do not. I was fat because when I did eat, I was capable of eating a tremendous amount of food. We’re talking entire entrée, appetizer, and dessert at a chain restaurant. My favorite times of year were Olive Garden’s Never Ending Pasta Bowl and Red Lobster’s Shrimp Fest because I could sample all of the varieties of pasta and/or shrimp. I had the capacity.
And when you have the capacity, you also don’t care about regular food schedules. For most of my life, I didn’t eat breakfast regularly. I’d skip it – I wasn’t really hungry when I woke up. In fact, if it were up to me, I probably would have eaten at exactly 2 times during the day: 10-11 AM and 4-6 PM. Snacking was pretty rare for me, maybe 2-3 times per month I’d grab something between meals. Of course since my capacity was large, I could easily put away 3,500 calories or so as a snack. I was fat not because I ate all the time, it was because when I ate… I really ate.
Go Big or Go Home, Right?
Back to the present day, my habits have changed slightly. I still don’t get hungry when I first wake up – it takes about an hour before I want to eat. This works well since my morning routine typically has me exercising at the start, doing some reading, and then eating later on. I eat lunch and dinner, but generally less food at each than when I was heavy. I more or less have 2 “schedules” of food – weekdays (7:30 AM, 11:30 AM, 5:30 PM), and Weekends (9-10 AM, 3-4 PM, and a late supper). My highest calorie meals tend to be my mid-day meals, although that can be swapped with my third meal. Snacks do happen, typically on weekends (since I go to bed later – I don’t tend to eat 2-3 hours before bed). My body is pretty well trained to expect food at these times. I also don’t deny myself little treats between meals if the opportunity presents itself (e.g., cake at a mid-afternoon celebration, donuts in the break room at 10 AM), especially since I went on maintenance mode.
So… how do I know I’m hungry? Good question – I eat regularly enough that it’s pretty rare that I’m absolutely famished by the time a meal rolls around. But I do notice a few things. And they aren’t any of the list I quoted above.
Stomach growling? My stomach makes all kinds of weird noises here and there, usually after I finish eating or am digesting. What’s a growl without a lion or tiger anyway?
Headache? I get 1-2 headaches per year. I’m very fortunate in that regard.
Light-headed feeling? I have some signs of Athletic Heart Syndrome thanks for my daily cardio, so the only time I get light headed is when I stand up suddenly after resting.
Grumpiness is one I can’t really judge (although I probably do display it) – after all, no one thinks they’re grumpy most of the time they are.
Lack of Energy? I’m not on the verge of starvation here.
And finally, Shakiness/Weakness? Nope.
Stomach Growling? Maybe you have a lion in there. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
But, undoubtedly, I do have signs of hunger that I’m starting to notice. Remember how I mentioned I just ate one of those Kind bars earlier? That was around 45 minutes ago. And I feel quite different now than I did an hour ago. Here are my signs of hunger as I’ve noted them:
Inability to think about anything other than food. For example, yesterday I didn’t eat until 10:15 after waking at 6:30… and I couldn’t stop thinking about the food I was going to eat for a solid hour beforehand.
Feeling of uneasiness / blah feeling. Yesterday I felt really “off” until I ate in the morning.
Heightened sensitivity to everything (which does make me grumpy – the room is too cold, the people are too loud, the lights are too dim). Yesterday, at one point, I wrote in my daily log “I am so cold and hungry”. Thankfully I ate 20 minutes later!
When I get one or more of those, and it’s been 2-4 hours since I last ate, I have started to put 2 and 2 together. And I eat something. And I feel better. Physically. Psychologically I’m still working through some stuff related to food that complicates matters. Allow me to explain (you’ve made it this far, you’re allowing me a lot already). Here are a few facts:
When I was fat, I prided myself on not snacking. After all, the stereotype of the fat snacker was something I was actively trying to avoid feeding into.
When I was fat, my body didn’t signal to me that I was full until 50-75 minutes after I finished eating. This is much longer than you normally see in weight loss advice columns (e.g., “If you want to lose weight, wait 10 minutes after you eat and see if you’re still hungry” – yeah… I always was). This led to me associating large portions with satiety. Why eat something as small as one energy bar? Even now I have to actively tell myself that I will be full when I finish the portion I’ve taken. And very rarely am I wrong (If I am, I take a little more).
When I was fat, and still today, I associate food with celebration and enjoyment. This is pretty common – think about all of the celebratory events in your life – food is always present. So the idea of having a small snack alone in my office instead of going out with friends, or seeing my wife at home, or socializing in some way around food seemed like a waste. After all, if I was going to eat, I was going to enjoy it, right?
Today I’m hyper sensitive to calorie counts and macros given my last 2 years. This is great if you want a walking dictionary of food facts and I’m around, but not so great when dialog goes through my head.
Let me explain this to you in terms of the dialog that entered my brain right before I ate that Kind bar that got me thinking about this blog post. In fact, it’s probably why this blog post exists.
11:25 AM: “Hmm… what should I do for lunch? I planned X… but do I want Y? Z? What are my friends doing?” 11:30 AM: “Lunch is going to be so good… normally if I eat alone I’m eating right now… but I still haven’t decided on what to do. I brought some lunch I could eat alone. Or I could go home and eat leftovers. I’ll wait to see what others are doing!” 11:32 AM: “Why isn’t anyone texting me back. I’m kinda feeling off. Maybe I should just eat by myself? Or those leftovers at home – half a meal from the Mexican place last night – that would be a good amount of food. But then I’d need to eat fewer calories at dinner, and I’d wanted to have a higher calorie dinner tonight… and if I eat a snack now…. that’s 250 calories that I can’t have at dinner or lunch! Why is food so hard?!?” 11:34 AM: “I’ll distract myself. I just got an email from King Arthur. Maybe I should buy some baking mixes online…. but those prices are too high….but the food is good… wait a minute, why am I thinking about food again?!?” 11:35 AM: “I’m an idiot – I should just eat one of those Kind bars in my bag”
See what happened there? Lots of debate that ultimately led me eating the kind bar. And ya know what happened in the last hour since then?
I felt better within 10 minutes.
I ended up working on a few projects when I didn’t hear back from anyone.
I wrote this blog post, and drank some Coke Zero.
At 12:35 PM all I’ve eaten was that one Kind bar. I’ll probably have some more lunch after I finish this post.
Feeling Better After Eating… Who Would Have Thought?
So in sum, over the last year, my struggle hasn’t been so much avoiding large meals (e.g., “retro-eating”), it’s been:
figuring out when to eat between meals or when to start a meal earlier than my “usual” times.
not feeling guilty over a snack when I’m obviously telling myself I need one.
getting comfortable with being a “grazer” on some days.
getting used to the idea that I should always have some healthy snacks in my backpack in case I need them.
These are all big changes to me, and probably everyday life to the rest of you. But in the event you’re reading this and going “So when I feel blah and everything bugs me, I might just be hungry?!?”, I hope this helps you. And if you’ve been thin your entire life and wondered how those around you who were heavy thought, maybe this helped you too. Be well and stay warm,
Jon (Today’s Weight: 195.2 lb, 220 lb lower than where I started!)
It’s been awhile since I’ve talked productivity on this blog, but recently I’ve had a number of people point out to me that I’m extremely busy. If you don’t know, I have a few different roles professionally and personally – if you’re really curious, here’s the list as of today. But without boring you, know that I have multiple job titles and roles. I’m at the point this fall that I’m openly telling people that if they hear a story of me throwing someone out a window, it’s because that person told me “I’m too busy”, because I don’t know of anyone else on my campus that has as many irons in the fire, as it were, as myself. They probably exist, but haven’t revealed their true amount of overloadedness to me.
Anyway, this post isn’t about how busy I am – it’s about how I maintain a high level of productivity while being so busy. I figure every so often it’s a great idea to point out what I’m doing that makes me productive, so that I can share it with others. Also helps me highlight some of my older content that you may have missed. So here’s what I do:
Everything is on every device or accessible from every device. I wander around with my iPad Pro, which can connect to my MacBook from anywhere, meaning that when I’m out at a meeting across campus and I have a few moments to take care of some work, I can do it remotely.
I also dispatch and answer emails and texts as quickly as possible, so that they don’t bunch up. There is an added psychological benefit both to myself and for myself in this as well. I honestly believe I’m seen as much more competent than I might be just because I get back to people quickly. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not ill-equipped for my job, I just don’t think I’m as great at it as others tell me I am!
I use a calendar booking service (YouCanBookMe) and I send automated reminders to people that we’re scheduled to meet. Prior to this I’d say I probably spent at least 10-15 minutes per day answering emails that purely were about scheduling time to meet. YouCanBookMe, and to a lesser extent, sites like Doodle.com and SignupGenius.com are essential scheduling tools.
In the classroom, I take advantage of technology to facilitate my teaching – through entry/exit tickets and tracking participation in Microsoft Excel. Both save time when entering information into my Gradebook.
While I have 2 offices on campus, I also try to be as productive out of the office as possible. This post, written prior to the pandemic, highlights 5 tips I gave then that helped me weather the “work from home” storm much easier in 2020 than I might have otherwise done.
Sometimes when I get tired of having to type the same things out over and over again, I write them down so I can direct people to them. This might seem a bit callous or flippant, but it’s the honest truth:
Students having issues with registering? See my DSU Probs posts.
Want to know all my best R tips? Read this book (I put 10 years of tips in this)
Want to run a server like I do? Read this book (I put 20 years of tips in this).
And, ya know, posts like the one you’re reading right now!
So there you have it – in very basic terms how I stay productive. What I perhaps didn’t put here is that one also must balance things out within oneself to be productive – if you haven’t thought about it, I suggest two small additions to your life:
Routine / Ritual: Whether it’s a morning ritual to get pepped up, an evening ritual to wind down, or a lunchtime moment of enjoyment, find something that you can structure around and try to hold is sacred. This trains your brain to understand that even when life is absolutely crazy, there are almost always constants. This is also a great way to add new habits to your life that you want to take pride in.
Balance work and life as best as possible. I do this in a few little ways:
Saving work – If something isn’t time sensitive, I have no problem putting it down to do later in the week. It’s a common misconception that you should keep working until your to-do list is empty. The honest truth is that your to-do list should never be empty, but your time sensitive tasks for today should be. Think about it this way: If you have something due in a week, and you know you have a light day later this week, what is better – assign that task to the light day, or do it today and miss out on a) dinner with your spouse, b) a conversation with co-workers, c) a TV show you enjoy relaxing to? A-C are much better options than being bored at 10 AM on Thursday because you did the work Tuesday night.
Don’t be afraid of embracing unmotivated boredom time at work. I have, on several occasions, freaked out co-workers by dropping by their offices and saying “I’m bored, what are you up to?”. They usually tell me “Don’t say you’re bored – it looks bad!” – but the honest truth is, sometimes we aren’t motivated. Sometimes we are bored. And those are times when a little human interaction can be really beneficial. Not only does it give you something to do that many people find rewarding (e.g., talking to people they like, assuming you like your co-workers), it also creates relationships that are reciprocal in nature. No one wants to be that co-worker that only talks to you if they need something.
While I personally plan on saying “No” a bit more this fall (given my work level), I generally give the advice to not be afraid of saying “Yes”. Be an “experience junkie” – take on new challenges and find enjoyment in them. Just don’t overload yourself.
So there you have it, my tips and tricks, Fall 2021 edition. Stay safe, stay sane, and stay busy!
Yesterday at our first in person orientation since 2019, I reminded a group of students that they paid tuition money to us to buy access to professors. Basically, come talk to us, listen to what we are telling you, because you’re paying for it. This means that what I know, as an experimental psychologist / tech geek / author is worth something monetarily. After all, that’s why I get paid.
Me, walking to work on Monday, June 7, 2021. Weight: 207.4
And yet, the information I have that people want to know the most is summed up by a colleague this morning who stopped me and said “Dr. Westfall, you lost a lot of weight, how did you do it?”. After telling him what I’d done (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 coming soon…), I reflected on the fact that the most valuable piece of information I apparently have – way more valuable than how to clicker train your cat – is how to lose half your body weight in 3 years. Maybe I should write my own diet / exercise / be less fat book 🤔
