Week Eight: Breaking a Social Norm

Today, I set out on the daunting task of breaking a social norm... Being not quite as courageous as some of my peers who did things like stealing food of the plate of a stranger, I decided to give out awkwardly long hugs.

Basically, whenever I ran into a friend today, I gave them an overly-extended hug. At first, they thought it was pretty funny, but when I refused to let go, they got a little antsy - which is to be expected, I guess. Neither my friends nor I were particularly offended because, I mean, we're friends; the people most weirded out would definitely the people watching the interaction. I got lots of stares in ABP or out on the plaza when I gave my aggressively long hugs.

In our society (I guess depending on where you hail from), hugs are pretty normal, but usually last about 2-4 seconds long. In other countries, it's the norm to exchange kisses on the cheek of others as a greeting. In others, not even eye contact is appropriate. Social norms are so very unique, and with that, I leave you with my favorite awkward hug that definitely broke some Death Eater social norms.

Week Seven: Hormones

This is a pretty easy topic to talk about it - it's so prevalent in everybody's life! I mean two things that immediately come to mind are: PMS and studying for exams.

PMS mood effects are, I think, caused by a imbalance between estrogen and progesterone, and this disruption causes mood swings and food cravings etc. I, for one, know for sure that I get cranky and hungry (for chocolate especially).

Second situation, is when we study for tests (this week of midterms has been hellacious). I can feel the stress hormone, cortisol, rushing through me during my long sessions at Perkins... I suddenly feel extremely hungry for those delicious cookies downstairs, I'm snappy if someone disturbs me, and I definitely feel like I might have gotten sick this week (perhaps due to a weakened immune system this week?).

Both of these examples are pretty negative, but I know they're really important! For example, the steroid, testosterone, can help some of my favorite basketball players (like Kevin Durant or Andre Dawkins) get more aggressive and play better!

Week Six: Emotions

Hmm, I've never been asked to define something like "emotions." I mean, we obviously all know what they are; we all feel them (hopefully). But to concretely define them is something much more difficult. I guess I'd say emotions are mindstates that one is in, in response to their environment/some stimulus (interactions with others, events happening in their environment, mood).

Like Ekman said, there are five basic emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, and fear/surprise. but there are so many varying levels of each of the basic emotions. Take happiness for example - I'd categorize things ranging from pride to feeling in love to avenged to that general contentment after having a great meal to the umbrella emotion, happiness, but they each are there own separate entity. And that's why it's hard to standardize emotions - each is personal and unique.

P.S. Emoting in text is very difficult (especially when sarcasm is involved), so I suggest everyone use emojii (see above picture). It's got a huge selection of emoticons that mean the same thing to everyone! It's pretty cool how something that is really just a variation of yellow circle denotes a certain emotion, and can completely change the tone of someone's text.

"You're so cool " vs. "You're so cool "