Procrastination

I hate procrastination, but I am an expert at it. Procrastination has been ingrained in my life for as long as I can remember and college life just intensified that lifestyle to the point where I adopted as my second major. But I see that that is not only limited to my case. The moment I say “I just procrastinated until the last minute,” there are several compassionate nodding heads from my dear colleagues. So, why do we procrastinate? I mean we all know that it is bad and we all know we will be ripping our hair out when the deadline approaches. However, for some reason, we never seem to learn from the debacle created by procrastination. I read an interesting article about procrastination from USC’s campus news paper, Daily Trojan, about college student’s beloved topic—procrastination. This article offers seven ingenious categorization of procrastination that many can fervidly related to: mañana (I’ll do it tomorrow if…), grasshopperism (“I need to have fun beforehand”), escapism (“I need to get out of here and clear my head”), impulsiveness (“I need to change my major/ my university”), music and reading (“I’ll relax and then I’ll do it”) and cavalry to the rescue (“to morrow will be a snow day and class will be cancelled”). After going through this category, I realized that I have mastered all these stages some point in my life. Indeed, procrastination is not the best habit to get used to, but it is not such a sinful habit that needs to be (and probably will be whether you want it or not) punished. Another interesting handout about procrastination states that perfectionism and procrastination go hand in hand. Also, sometimes procrastination simply works. The rush of adrenaline, the slightly healthy level of stress induces you to perform and sometimes perform better than your normal set range. And guess what? Sometimes it does speed things up for you. I must say we need to find the fine balance between good amount of procrastination and punctuality. Also, if you have taken time to really relax your mind or preoccupy yourself with other recreation before doing the needed work, can you really call that a wasted time or rather “procrastinated time”? You might as well call that the preparation period before your superpower engine starts couple of hours before the deadline.

Scent

I once heard that the best memory system running in human body is the olfactory system. To some extent, this idea may be true because whenever I read a novel, a description of a good-looking and charming protagonist usually contains something about his or her scent. For example, let’s look into the characters of Stephanie Meyer’s best-selling novel, the Twilight series. Edward Cullen, the impeccable, beautiful, breathtaking and humane (for he is a vegetarian vampire which means that he does not drink human blood) vampire attracted the heroine, Isabella Swan, not only with his surreal beauty, but also with his cool, attractive breath. On the other hand, Bella Swan drives this beautiful vampire to delirium with her luscious, mouthwatering lilac scent of her blood. Well, this applies to normal, human girls and boys as well. Of course women will be attracted to men who smell good rather than some men who smell like a mass of decomposing molds. As for girls, I think girls are usually successful in attracting the guys smell-wise—better hygiene, more grooming time, better pheromones, whatever.

Considering these powerful effect of our olfactory memory and impressions, I thought it deserves some attention for this post. A study done by Linda Buck, an associate professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, says that sensors cells in nose do not last a lifetime, but are regenerated every 30-60 days in humans. The new nerve cells reach out to find their way back to the same spots in the olfactory bulb to which their precursors were connected. Thus, the pathway of odor map are constantly renewed, but the memory itself remains relatively unchanged. So, if smell can create such powerful memory upon people, a bit of fragrant aroma every morning right before work or school can do the trick for the day.

Positive Psychology = Happiness?

I’m a type of person who would like to have a positive psychology and I try really hard to look at a situation in a positive way. However, there comes a time when it becomes strikingly hard to look at my own not-so-good situation believing that there will be a silver lining beyond my murky clouds. Is positive psychology something that we can all learn and apply to our lives? Or rather, will positive thinking bring more happiness in our lives? I mean, some people are genetically gifted to overlook the negative sides and exponentially multiply the good sides to their situation. On the other hand, some other people are naturally bound to sink themselves into pessimism and tumble in their own Heathcliff-ego. I guess my question is, how happy can we get?
I once took a course about happiness and came to know a book called Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman. In this book, Dr. Seligman set up an interesting formula about happiness, which is H= S+C+V. In translation, happiness equals the sum of an individual’s set range (S), circumstances of one’s life (C) and factors under one’s voluntary control (V). The set range claims that there is a set range of positive or negative emotion one can feel depending on their genetic makeup. Boom! Well, one of my assumptions is correct according to Dr. Seligman. Next, Dr. Seligman proposes that circumstances are something that is expensive and rather impossible to change and I do agree with that note as well. You can hate your job thoroughly, but sometimes you just have to stick to it. The most important part of this formula is V, voluntary control. Dr. Seligman strongly suggests working with V which is about all you can do to personally increase your happiness level. How to increase your V level? Forget the past, focus on the future, forgive and be thankful! Easy said then done. I have been thinking about this formula for quite a while. But, honestly, would this formula really come into our minds when we are in the deepest pit of sadness or floating in the height of euphoria? I feel like this formula itself limits my optimism. I want to believe that I can be as happy as I want and even aggrandize my happiness despite whatever genetic makeup that I have. Perhaps what everyone wants to believe is the formula, happiness=me. We all want to believe that we can create our own happiness in our lives and that it will come to us very soon. And if positive thinking really increases our levels of happiness, I have to say I am going to follow my own formula despite how insensible it may sound scientifically because that is my way of positive thinking.

Lap Top Germs

Okay, let’s admit it. We all have an experience of dabbing our computer keyboards and mice with red or yellow seasoning powders of our all-time-favorite chip, Cheetos, or with saliva-laden fingertips. Laptops have become essential part in every moment of people’s lives as they are the means of communication, education, entertainment, shopping and accessing personal haven. It is only natural to have one’s laptop running while eating and it is thus also natural to color the keyboards and mice with whatever remnant of your fingertips. But guess what? It is not only the food remnants or fingerprints that linger in your keyboard. Bacteria on our skins also jump off from our dancing fingertips and settle in their new habitat—keyboards and mice. I have always been curious about the sanitation of keyboards and I read an interesting blog post by Ed Yong. What is more interesting is that the community of bacteria and microscopic cohabitors on our skin can identify us to a certain degree. On average, we only share 13% of the bacteria on each other’s hands. Even identical twins develop different population of bacteria on their skin. Noah Fierer from University of Colorado has proposed that these dislodged microbes could help identify criminals in investigation. However, David Foran from Michigan State University’s Forensic Biology Laboratory dissents this view for he claims that although bacteria match can narrow the investigation, it cannot pinpoint the person in question. Plus, if there are multiple users for a computer, it will be difficult to identify who the person in question is. But whatever the case, I think it is pretty gross that we all have bacteria that resembles our DNA leaving traces of us after we touch something. Thank goodness we got Purell these days.

Addiction

We all have some form of addiction in our lives both big and small. One of the recent addictions that started to ring the alarm in the 20th and 21st century is game addiction. As technology advanced, video and computer games became more realistic, more complex and more addictive. I have heard tragic game addiction stories in news before, but one news that I have heard recently in South Korean news broadcast and blogosphere made me realize the seriousness of game addiction once again. On March 4th, a married couple in Su-Won, a city in Gyeonggi Province, was arrested for starving their three-month-old daughter to death. This couple was addicted to an on-line game called Prius On-line which is a role-playing game where the players get to raise an on-line character. The couple met each other through on-line chatting and got married. They spent 12 hours at a PC room per day, leaving their baby daughter alone in their home without anyone to take care of her or to feed her. They returned home one day after playing long hours of on-line game to find their daughter dead. An autopsy at National Institute of Scientific Investigation confirmed that the girl died of starvation. They couple had been on the run for five months until they got arrested. What really shocked me was that this couple was raising a girl character on-line while their real daughter was alone in their house starving. Police has reported that this couple’s on-line game addiction was most likely due to their unstable financial status and stress from childcare. Internet game has become a powerful and popular way of avoiding reality for many people. Although I am not a big fan of games, or rather I must say that I am a terrible game player, I can see why computer games provide a little haven for people under a lot of stress. It creates a new and controllable reality—a reality where one does not have to take responsibilities. A fake name of your choice, a fake identity of your choice and a fake reality where you can do whatever you want is set before your eyes. I understand that we all need a break from reality every once in a while. However, it is important to remember that the reality that we are bound to and the reality that we must always return is the one where we have to take responsibilities. This reality may not be fun and this reality may be stressful enough to drive you nuts. But, this reality is what is real and what makes you real.

Give Me Back My Nap Time

When is your “down” time? What I mean is when is the time of the day when you simply feel so tired and zoned out? For me, I tend to feel sleepy around two to four o’clock in the afternoon when I just finished lunch. During this time, no caffeine will wake me up and no music can boost my energy back to my normal range. All I can manage to do is attempt to pretend taking notes while resting my drooping head on my carefully positioned palms (although I usually fail by clashing straight onto the desk). I asked my friends and I figured out many people have different times of the day when they feel so tired. Then, I would ask myself, why can’t we have nap times like in kindergarten years? Should taking naps throughout the day be considered as lazy or feeble? Well, rest assured. According to this study done in UC Berkeley, an hour nap can boost your energy and brain power! Perfect scientific excuse and justification to taking naps daily! Hooray!

Animal Testing

I have not given much thought to animal research or animal experimentation before. However, my simplest and perhaps ignorant opinion about the righteousness of animal research was that as long as it can benefit large number of human beings, it should be worth it to perform such experimentation. Few days ago, this perhaps time-worn debate about animal research was forming a heated discussion in the science blogosphere. I happened to read couple of them and came to realize that there are several dimensions to this issue. But even after reading those debates, my opinion is that animal experimentation should not be perished just because it is considered to be unethical and brutal. There is a law that prohibits such unnecessary abuse in animal experimentation. And I don’t believe that virtual testing is going to be as convincing as a controlled experiments done on living organism before it actually gets applied for human being’s medical care. There was an argument about the value of life between an ape caged for research experiments versus a criminal receiving a rather humane treatment in prison cell. Although I must agree with the author’s point of view about the unfairness of such innocent animal receiving a heart-breaking treatment compared to a treatment an egregious criminal receives in a cell, I don’t think the comparison serves the purpose of the argument correctly. Strictly speaking, the animal may receive some extent of physical and mental pain, but they serve a greater cause should the experiment be regulated to avoid the most intense pain. Moreover, I don’t think a human life should be compared to that of an animal. I do believe animal experiments should be done under regulation so as to avoid giving the animal unnecessary pain and stress. However, I have to agree that animal experimentation should continue if it serves the purpose of experiment correctly. The experiment should have a valid reason for testing the animals such as testing a drug before applying to human beings. To argue that virtual simulation can substitute all the experiment is rather rash. Even with animal testing, we still cannot be sure that the drug or the surgical procedure is safe enough for human beings. The complex system of living organism is something that scientist must continuously study. And should it ask for the help of animals, we will have to include them as part of the experimentation with respect for they are also “living” lives.