• People with more right brain activation (those feeling, creative types) are more vulnerable to negative emotion, and those with more left brain activation are more prone to positive emotions (or possibly just a lack of the negative, hmm?)

  • The entire idea of proprioception (that my body is me, myself, and I am aware of it in space, etc) is just an illusion, because with correctly correlated visual and physical stimulus the brain can be convinced that almost any object is an extension of the body (and I won’t even get into phantom limbs!)

  • There seem to be many body types for males, females, (and the link with personality is questionable beyond developing behaviors based on how you can use and what you think about your body”) but I can’t seem to find the “boobless-wonder” type”

  • The ascending reticular activating system (ARAS) is sort of a biological explanation for introversion and extroversion. The goal for everyone is to seek a pleasant baseline. Introverts have a higher level of activity, you might even call the system overactive, so you might say there is a party going on in the ARAS, so they don’t seek out stimulation. Extroverts have crickets chirping up there, so they seek out stimulation to meet the baseline level.

This might be why introverts are comfortable and can even fall asleep in absence of sensory stimulation, and extroverts go insane. This is also why, when asked to choose an optimal level of noise for working, introverts’ average choice (55 db) is lower than extraverts (72 db), and introvert performance decreases when you raise that value.

  • Sitar Sunday is a glorious celebration of different colors of delicious slop that might be confused with Indian food.

  • A lot of college, mostly the academic part, isn’t that important, but sometimes it’s hard to remember that amongst the predominantly Type A personalities around here. Ten years from now, all of that stuff won’t matter. College is about learning about yourself, learning how to learn, and graduating only proves to future employers and everyone else that yes, you do have the skills and intellect necessary to get through it all, congrats, here’s a cookie! :)

  • In other notes, a good friend of mine pointed out that you have to have a certain level of sophistication and rugged beauty to pull off the short hair look. I don’t claim to pull it off, but damn it feels good to have my curls back, and not look like the rest of the world that has straight hair.

  • Wilson Phillips, ahh !

  • In the past I was inclined to like things that I excelled at, but I’ve realized that fulfillment can’t come from getting patted on the head for something that doesn’t really excite you that much. I’m learning to take chances on things that I find exciting, even when I suck at them, and “failing” at something you suck at somehow seems more right than excelling at something that was there all along.

  • “and on that note, it’s time to return to memorizing material for regurgitation on Wednesday’s exam, as opposed to actually thinking about the more interesting points. It’s funny how that works, or maybe doesn’t.



Suggested Citation:
Sochat, Vanessa. "Interesting Ideas from today's studying." @vsoch (blog), 03 Mar 2008, https://vsoch.github.io/2008/interesting-ideas-from-todays-studying/ (accessed 16 Apr 24).