Grad School Is Taking Over My Life! (And I’m Not Even Accepted Yet)

In fact, I’m not even done the applications!  In truth, grad school has been taking over my life since I started studying for the GRE General test back in September.  I’ve been trying to take it all as seriously as possible, so I put in a lot of study hours for the GRE and then for the GRE Psychology subject test last week.  Hopefully it pays off.  I know I studied more than some of the people who took the GRE Psych test with me last weekend; they were bragging about how they didn’t study at all!  I don’t know about you, but when I have to pay 130 dollars to take a test, I’m gonna study like mad for it.  But it’s very nice to have those tests behind me now.

Also taking up my spare time has been the process of narrowing down schools to apply to, which is fun, but very time consuming.  My criteria for picking a grad school initially left a lot of options open to me.  I started off eliminating schools that were in geographically less appealing places like Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska and Arizona.  There were enough schools that satisfied my needs that I could afford to be a little bit picky about where I get to live while attending school.

The central states just don’t seem that exciting to me.  I’ve driven through them.  Boring.  Maybe I’m not giving them a fair chance, but I have the luxury of not having to worry about it.  Arizona, New Mexico and Western Texas are just way too hot for a warm-blooded Canadian boy and there’s no ocean nearby to offer a reprieve.

So that left basically the west coast, the east coast and the gulf coast, all of which I would be quite alright with.  I’ve lived on the west coast and the gulf coast so I know I like it, and the east coast seems pretty cool from what I hear and Maren and I could use an adventure.

After I had the locations sorted out I looked at more important stuff like the kind of financial aid I could receive from each school, competitiveness of each school, faculty whose research interests matched my own.  I made sure I wasn’t excluding any really good schools because of an unfortunate location and I came up with a list of ten schools.  It turned out to be exactly the kind of list that your academic advisors tell you to make.  I had three ambitious schools, UCLA, Yale and Penn State, each ranked in the top ten clinical psych programs by US News.  I had three safety schools, U of Maine, U of Houston, and Rutger’s University.  And four moderately competitive schools, U of Virginia, USC, U of Oregon and SDSU/UCSD, ranked in the top 20 and top 30.  I’m not bragging when I mention Yale and UCLA, I’m just reaching for the stars, so to speak.  Honestly, I might have a stroke if any of those top ten schools contact me for an interview.

Finalizing a list of schools to apply to was a relief, but the real work is still ahead of me.  Applying to one grad school is a lot of work, let alone ten of them.  What am I doing to myself?!  Oh well, it’ll be worth it.  By the end of December, I’ll be done with applications for a while and I won’t have to start stressing again until it’s interview time!  (Keep your fingers crossed for me that I’ll actually get an interview or two).

I’m interested to know what you (all three of you) think.  Which school do you think would be the coolest for me to attend?  And give reasons.  And which school do you think I’ll actually end up going to?  Remember, they’re UCLA, Yale, Penn State, U of Virginia, USC, SDSU/UCSD, U of Oregon, U of Maine, Rutgers University, U of Houston.  What do you think?

So far blogging has been a welcome distraction on days when I’m spending hours making sure I haven’t forgotten some crucial part of an application.  So, hopefully I can keep up with the regular blog posts in the near future.

The “MySpace Self Portrait”

I don’t know how many of you have been following my blog long enough to remember a couple of posts I made about some of the weird things that I see the kids that I work with do.  One of the posts was about them putting elastic bands around the cuffs of their pants to keep them bunched up around the ankles.  I still don’t understand that.  And then I wrote about how a lot of the kids use the word “sock” when they mean “punch.”  Seemed kind of old fashioned to me.

So this is another installment of that kind of weird teenage behavior.  This time it’s about a phenomenon that is very common and has been around for a while but still strikes me as ridiculous every time I see it.  I have chosen to call it the “MySpace Self Portrait.”  This is when the subject takes a birds-eye-view photo of themselves while they’re striking some seductive pose.  It is primarily a female portrait and it is often coupled with a low cut top to make the photographer’s cleavage visible.

Like I said before, this is a pretty common phenomenon among young people on the internet these days.  What got me thinking about it was the class elections at the school I work at.  Several students were running for student office and they each made their own campaign posters.  Mostly they were what you would expect from a bunch of teenagers.  But one candidate in particular exceeded my not-so-high expectations by choosing as her campaign photo nothing less than a bonafide “MySpace Self Portrait.”  I had a good laugh at that.  By the way, she didn’t win the election.  So all you future political hopefuls out there can cross that photo op off the list.

I’ve included my own version of the MySpace Self Portrait for your enjoyment.  You will immediately notice the seductive pose – lips pursed, coyly embracing the camera with my eyes, making sure my head isn’t blocking the view of my cleavage (which is something less than buxom, so I had to help it a little with my other hand).  Pretty enticing, right?  Also crucial to the MySpace Self Portrait is the lack of concern for the background of the photo.  You not only get to see my handsome face, you also get to see evidence of how disorganized my life is (I’m not really disorganized, Maren and I keep a very tidy house).  What this photo says about me is that I’m sexy, I’m confident and I don’t mind being objectified.  What’s not to like about this kind of portraiture?

When Today’s Music Becomes “Classical”

With the recent release of things like The Beatles Rockband and Michael Jackson’s film “This Is It” I found myself pondering the future state of what we consider to be the most influential music of the last century.  Music has evolved and proliferated so much in the last century that it is hard to predict what the future of music might hold.  And it is hard to know how today’s popular and influential music will be perceived by music historians a century or more from now.

I wonder if Beethoven and Mozart could have ever imagined the kind of music that we listen to today.  And I wonder if, one day, future generations will think of 20th and 21st century music in the same way that we currently think about music from centuries past.  So called classical music is comprised of a variety of styles and subgenres that were probably starkly obvious to musicians of the “classical” age but which, for us, have been melded into one giant genre.  Will our Beatles and Britneys and Metallicas be lumped together as a genre of 20th century popular music by amateur music historians of the future?  I think there’s a good chance that something like that will happen.  Especially if music making continues to become so ubiquitous.  With more and more people making music, music archives will be so jam packed that everyone but the hardcore purists will want to lump things together for simplicity’s sake.

Another thing to consider is the enormous effect technology has had on the evolution of music.  The electric guitar and the drum kit, which now make up the most basic instrumentation of the majority of today’s popular music did not exist until the early 20th century.  I wonder what Mozart would have done with an electric guitar or a synthesizer in his hands?  The device AutoTune is an example of some technology that is currently revolutionizing (for better or worse) the music industry.  Where does music technology go from here?

Will there continue to be social outcries over new kinds of music as they emerge?  I recently watched the film Amadeus in which (if I remember correctly) young Mozart raises some eyebrows by writing a French ballet for the German king (yikes!).  This week the movie Pirate Radio opens, depicting a time in the 60s when England banned rock and roll music.  And who can’t remember a time in the 90s when Eminem or some other rapper was making the news for making controversial music?  Where does music go from here?  What other toes can modern musicians step on?

Needless to say, I have a lot of questions about the future of music.  And few answers.  But isn’t it fascinating to think about?  Just take a look at where we’ve come from and all the marvelous music the ages have created!  Just thinking about it makes me excited to see what music is like when I’m an old man.  Even though I’ll probably hate popular music when I’m old and wish that kids could appreciate “real” music like Our Lady Peace and U2.  I probably won’t live long enough to see my favorite bands enter “classical” status, though.

While I’m excited to see what the future holds, there’s one thing I hope for from future music historians – that they are able to distinguish between musicians like the Beatles and Britney Spears.  I imagine somebody a couple of centuries from now browsing through a catalog of popular music from the 20th century and perceiving that two artists such as the Beatles and Spears are relatively equal in terms of hit songs and media coverage (or something to that effect; I don’t know the exact statistics; and for the record, my personal opinion is that Britney Spears is a speck of dust compared to the Beatles).  To me, it seems a sin to conflate two so obviously different musicians.  But chances are, people a century from now aren’t going to see the difference so clearly.

Those are some of my thoughts.  Let me know what you think about the future of music.  Bonus points if you can name all the musicians in the photos.

Don’t Forget Remembrance Day

Since I’ve been living in the US, Remembrance Day sort of sneaks up on me because I don’t see poppy donation boxes everywhere.  But I still remember.  I’m so glad I was taught to observe this day since I was a child.  It is so important not to forget those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the pursuit of peace.  It doesn’t matter what your opinions of war are; being willing to give your life for your country is one of the highest forms of patriotism and those people around the world who fight for the right reasons deserve our respect.

This blog post is my little way of saying, “I remember” and I hope that we are all remembering and showing our gratitude today.  Something interesting you may want to check out is the Books of Remembrance.  These books contain the names of Canadians who have died serving their country since WWI.  There are seven Books of Remembrance kept in the Memorial Chamber of the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill.  There is one for WWI, WWII, the Korean War, the South African War/Nile Expedition, one for Newfoundlanders who died in war before they joined the union (because Newfoundland didn’t become part of Canada until 1949), one for the Merchant Navy and one for those who have died in any other conflict since 1947.

This is a page from the WWI book of remembrance.  There is an Arthur Leavitt (of unknown to relation to me) listed as one of those who died.

Check out the Veteran’s affairs website for more information about these books.

Rumor Has It

I’m sure I’m not the only one who gets emails of questionable content and authenticity.  Every day at least one phishing scam makes it past my junk mail filters, not to mention the plethora of emails with questionable attachments from senders I don’t know.  And then there’s the forwarded emails from people I do know, mostly benign, cheery things, but now and then with some unabashedly inflammatory content.

Now, I don’t want to open up the wrong can of worms here.  I’m not writing this entry because of one particular instance or one particular person.  And I don’t mean to complain about my friends and family sharing things with me about which they feel passionately.  On the contrary, power to you for doing so!  Instead, what I want to address is the fact that a goodly proportion of media circulating through our inboxes is of questionable authenticity, if not an outright fabrication.

By this point I hope it’s becoming obvious that when I speak of fabricated, inflammatory emails I’m referring mainly to the hateful, politically motivated messages that have been circulating through inboxes pretty much since email came into existence.  I urge everyone within the reach of this blog to think critically about the material you choose to pass on to those you care about.  I know you’ve already thought about it enough to care that those close to you know about it.  The only other thing you need to do is make sure that what you pass on is true!

To this end, I will now redirect you to the popular rumor verification website Snopes.com.  The rumors they deal with range from the trivial to the very important.  You can learn about today’s popular urban legends or rumors about Coca-Cola or you can discover for certain that the Sony-Ericsson giveaway in your inbox really is too good to be true.  Take a look at Snopes’s Top 25 Urban Legends at the moment.  There’s some fun stuff to look at and some useful items about virus-containg emails, but I think it’s most important function by far is that it can shed some light on many of the unkind political rumors that do nothing but sow disunity among the American people and the people of the world.

For example, today I received an email from a family friend that was sent with genuine concern.  The email contained pictures of angry Muslim protestors in London carrying some very threatening signs.  The text of the email explained that these pictures were not shown in the US because they’re afraid to offend people.  The email used these images to justify war against the muslim world.  Simple enough, right?  Please follow this link to the Snopes treatment of that email.

The real story, according to Snopes, is that the protestors in the email were reacting to the insulting political cartoons published in a Dutch newspaper in 2006.  They had a right to be upset but went overboard in their protest.  Their threatening behavior was condemned (and rightly so) by English authorities and by most other Western Muslims.  Nor do I condone the actions of these protestors.  But the email I received today is designed to create anger towards a group of people without attempting to make any distinction between them and the larger group of people they claim to represent and without attempting to explain what got them so angry in the first place.  It is immature and irresponsible.

Whatever you say, whatever you share with your loved ones, do it with courage, do it with good intention, knowing that you have the right to feel passionately about things in the world and that you have the right to speak freely as your conscience dictates.  Nevertheless, the onus remains on you to ensure that you’re disseminating truth.  Make the extra effort to learn if something is true or not before you spread it around.  The truth can often do plenty of damage on its own, but it’s redeeming quality is that it is the truth.  There is no need to add to the damage with lies.  Whatever case you happen to be making, if the truth is insufficient to get your point across, perhaps it is time to reconsider your position.

Sand Painting – Kseniya Simonova

Every week in Time magazine they include a little piece near the end where they get some celebrity’s list of things they’re in to right now.  This last week it was Sir Ian McKellen and the first item on his list was sand painting and he mentions Simonova’s name.  Until that moment I had no idea what sand painting was.  Maybe you’ve heard of it already.  Apparently, this kind of sand painting is when sand is spread on an opaque surface that is lit from underneath and the artist creates images in the sand with her fingertips.  Well, I had to satiate my curiosity and I instantly went to YouTube to see for myself.

Kseniya Simonova was 2009’s Ukraine’s Got Talent winner.  It only took one video to make me an instant fan.  I have embedded the video that I first saw.  Apparently, it depicts life during the Great Patriotic War of the USSR against the Third Reich during World War II.  I think there was a lot of cultural significance that was lost on me in the depiction, but I was incredibly moved nonetheless.  It had the audience of Ukraine’s Got Talent in tears.  I highly recommend this.  Beautiful.

I also discovered that this kind of sand painting has been around for years and Simonova is certainly not the first to turn heads with this medium.  Another artist whose work appears on YouTube is Ferenc Cako.  Check it out.

Review of Where The Wild Things Are

I blogged a little while back about how much I was looking forward to this movie.  Well, I finally saw it and was very pleased with it.  I think that the film version of Where The Wild Things Are is the best possible movie that could have been created from the book.  That being said, you have to remember that the book had only 48 pages and somewhere around 330 words.  A feature-length film adaptation is bound to have an effect on the essence of a book that takes less than 5 minutes to read.

The thing about such a short book is that it leaves a lot of room for each individual to imagine and elaborate on the story.  The film is Spike Jonze’s imagination and elaboration of the book and, as such, it will not match up with everyone else’s imaginations.

As it turns out, my siblings, with whom I shared the experience of reading the book as a child, were hoping for a much happier product than Jonze provided.  I agree that it wasn’t an overly happy film and it focused a lot on negative emotions.  But I think that is part of what made the movie so impressive to me.  It shined a light on what I see as the simple and limited worldview of a child – not every child, but many children – of a striving for pleasure and avoidance of punishment.  Max’s interactions with each character in his imaginary world symbolized his interactions with himself or someone else in the real world.  It was not always a pleasant result for the viewer, but for me it was often poignant and meaningful.  And for me that’s where the power of the film was.

Another important result I perceived of the room for elaboration within the book is that I enjoyed the book, the movie and the trailer for the movie more or less equally.  Each was different in important ways and provided different, yet similar, ways of understanding the story.  The book is endearing in its simplicity and nostalgic of childhood, the film is symbolic and meaningful, and the trailer provides an image of a real world in which Max and the monsters exist without interpreting the story for me, all while The Arcade Fire’s song, “Wake Up” inspires me and enlivens my imagination.

Ultimately, I don’t blame anyone who read the book as a child for disliking the movie.  It should be unsurprising that not everyone would envision the story of Where of the Wild Things Are in the same way as Spike Jonze.  But as I said, I think it was the best kind of movie that could have been made from the book while still being, unavoidably, different from the book.

My New Obsession

Some of you might know this about me: I love trivia and I love memorizing things.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Ken Jennings, but I certainly enjoy the feeling of just knowing things.  When I was about eleven years old and had dreams of becoming a world famous chemist I came across the periodic table of the elements in my parents set of encyclopedia that I just happened to be browsing through and I thought to myself, “How great would it be if I could memorize all these elements?”  So by age twelve I could name all the elements by symbol.  And speaking of trivia, the only magazine that I’ve ever read every article, cover to cover, is Mental Floss, a magazine of pure trivia.  It’s such a fascinating publication.  I would recommend it to everyone.

Now that you know this about me, I’m ready for you to know what I’m obsessed with these days: Sporcle.com.  I think I might have mentioned it briefly earlier in my blog.  But if you haven’t heard of this website please go ahead and check it out.  It’s a website full of little quizzes.  Everything from naming all the presidents of the US to naming VH1’s top 100 songs of the 90s.  Even if you’re not a trivia buff and even if you don’t fancy yourself very good at remembering things it’s a great pastime and a great way to hone your geography or history skills and so much more.  Maren and I will often do quizzes together.  We compete on some and cooperate on others.  Since I’ve started my Sporcle habit I can now name all the US states and their capitals, I can name all the countries of the world (with a blank map in front of me) and all the flags of Europe.

So go check it out.  In addition to the ones I’ve already linked to above here are some quizzes that you might enjoy:

Car Logos. 90s Video Games. Guess The Language.   The “A” Game. Time’s Top 100 Novels.

My Honeymoon

This post is also long overdue, but couldn’t be done until I had written something about my wedding day.  I’ll keep it fairly simple, though.

The night of the wedding we spent at a friend’s vacation property in Coronado.  Very nice place and location.  The next day we left for Las Vegas, where we would spend the next 5 days.

The rundown of our week in Vegas is this:

We stayed at a Marriott Resort about 15 minutes away from the Strip.  We slept in a lot and hung out at the pool a lot.  It was pretty hot while we were there.  In the evenings we would go to the strip and explore the hotels and different attractions.  It was my first time being to Vegas so I thought it was pretty cool.

After "O" in the gift shop.

We saw the Bellagio fountain show about 10 times, we watched the Treasure Island show (which sucked), we explored the Wynn (the highest rated hotel in Vegas), we went up the Stratosphere and I rode the rides (it was pretty sweet!), Maren wasn’t really into the rides.

My favorite attraction that we saw was the Cirque du Soleil’s show “O”.  I’ve wanted to see Cirque du Soleil since I was a kid.  It didn’t disappoint.  I loved it.  We also saw Penn & Teller, which was pretty funny.

We ate a lot.  We found some trashy buffets, we found a brazilean bbq place, we found a Cafe Rio (Maren’s favorite) and lots of other food.  It was great!

Then it was time to go.  On our way of Vegas we found an outlet mall to do some shopping at and then we said goodbye to Nevada and hello to our new married life together.  It’s been a month and a half and we’re still going strong!  Woohoo!

My Big Day

This post is long overdue.  Even when I’m posting regularly to my blog I tend to forget to post things about major life events.  To be fair, this isn’t as much a “follow-along-with-my-life” kind of blog as it is a “Peter’s random thoughts” blog.  But as I was saying, I said I would post about my engagement but never really did.  And now it’s been a month since my wedding and I’m finally getting my act together and telling you all about it.  Better late than never, right?

I’ll start at the week before the wedding.  Anyone who’s planned a wedding can probably empathize when I say that things got a little hectic the week before the wedding.  A week before the wedding the first out-of-towners showed up – Randal and Theresa Miller!  I hadn’t seen them in a while so I wanted to hang out with them as much as possible, which, of course, made the wedding preparations slightly more hectic because I had to schedule them around hang out time.  I should add that Maren was very supportive of my desire to hang out with my far-from-home Canadian friends while they were in town.

Speaking of how supportive Maren was, she was an angel through all of the preparations.  Not to mention her siblings (thanks, guys!).  I tried to make myself useful when it came to wedding prep, but more often than not Maren had taken care of things or was taking care of things.  I feel like I put in a fair effort, but the credit definitely goes to Maren and her siblings.

The Monday before the wedding Maren and I had planned to go take some pictures at the temple in our wedding getup in order to save time and stress on the wedding weekend.  Since we had our reception before the ceremony, this meant that the day of the ceremony would actually be the third time I saw Maren in her wedding dress (good thing I’m not superstitious!).

Moving on.  While Randal and Theresa were in town, my good friend Dan came down from Orange County to hang as well.  Thursday and Friday was when everyone else started arriving from out of town: My mom and sisters, my Aunt Mary, Makea Lowry, Andrew and Paige Irwin, Scott Leishman and others.  I have to say that having my family and some of my best friends in town for my wedding was one of the best presents I could have hoped for.  For most of them it was a significant financial sacrifice to make the trip from Canada or elsewhere and I’m so glad they came!

The other details of the week before the wedding escape me now, but it was a busy week.

Friday was the day of the reception and the day before the wedding ceremony.  What a day!  Again I don’t remember a lot of the details of the day.  I do know that I was lucky enough to get to chill with Makea for a good part of the day before the reception.  And then it was time for the reception!

It was so much fun!  We had a live oldies band playing swing music while the guests arrived and the receiving line was going on.  I had a bag of cream puffs with me in the receiving line to tide me over until I got to eat something real.  So many people came!  Mostly people that Maren knew.  Everyone said how beautiful Maren looked (cause she really did look amazing!) and a couple of people told me that I looked good, too.  We had to cut the receiving line short to get on with the program.

There was a special musical number and dance by Maren’s siblings, there were toasts by the moms, and I gave a pretty excellent toast to my bride.  Then we cut the cake and started the dance.  Lots of people danced, which made it so much more fun.  At one point during the dance, in honor of the day when we “fell for each other” (a halloween dance), I donned my halloween rockstar costume and made an appearance on the dance floor.  People laughed.  It was fun.

Since we weren’t married yet, we were in no hurry to get anywhere after the reception.  We stayed till the very end, after which Maren stayed with her Mom and siblings, while I went back to the Bird’s house (where I was staying at the time) with all my groomspeople.  We stayed up late hot tubbing and talking.  It was great.

And then it was the big day!  I was so excited.  I was gonna get married!  I was gonna look great, Maren was gonna look great, we were going to the temple, I was stoked!  Without getting into detail I just want to say how special it was to get married in the temple.  It’s such a special place and it made the whole experience that much better for me.  I was bursting with happiness the whole time.  Lots of smiling going on, for sure.

After the ceremony there were a few more pictures to be taken and then we went off to the luncheon part of the day.  We held a ring ceremony for my family who wasn’t able to attend the temple ceremony.  I thought it was very nice.  And lunch was very nice, too.  Ruth was giving everyone massages.  I got a lot of positive feedback from my friends about that.

Then the luncheon was over and Maren and I had nothing else to do but get changed and start the honeymoon!  Stay tuned…