Museums, Cookies, Online Dating and Illness

First of all, apologies for if this blog lacks detail as I feel pretty bad right now. I'm only blogging because I had an eventful day. A day full of fun and illness combined, but eventful nevertheless.

This morning I had set my alarm for 6am but some how managed to finally wake up at about 8:50am. It's really unlike me to over sleep on a university day. I didn't really want to get out of bed as I was still tired and felt slightly ill. I finally got out of bed at 9am and spent a bit of time online before I headed out to meet my friend Rhys in town before my afternoon lecture. Rhys arrived in town at about ten past eleven and we walked around for a bit, with pretty much nothing to do as our local town isn't all that exciting. Whilst we were walking around it started to rain and we started to get bored. There was a whole hour left until I had to get the bus to university. I had the quick brainwave of going to the museum for an hour.

The museum mainly consists of fossils as it's in a town that is famous for fossils as it has a nature reserve where fossils have been found. There are also dinosaur exhibits, Angelo-Saxon exhibits, local photography and a few other things. It's not the best museum ever, but it was interesting enough to keep us occupied for an hour. During this time I gave Rhys the cookie that I baked for him and he really enjoyed it =]. When we were in the museum I started to feel even more ill that I had done when I woke up, but I assumed it was because of the cold and rain and it was something that would just pass. Just before 1pm I got the bus to university. I ate my sandwiches on the bus with the hope of feeling a bit better but sadly I still felt as bad once I'd ate them.

When I got into university I saw my friend Linda and decided to join her whilst she was eating her lunch as we still had 30 minutes before our lecture. at about 1:45pm we headed towards the lecture room where I started the computer up for Dr F before he arrived (as I usually do). Soon after Linda and I arrived, Vanessa arrived and we spend a few minutes chatting before two girls who we don't really know arrived. The the wonderful Dr F arrived, but seemed a bit ill unfortunately. Today's lecture consisted of watching a hour long documentary about social networking in general, it was part of the BBC's Digital Revolution series. I found it quite interesting as it mentioned the notion of internet addiction, Susan Greenfield appeared in it, as did Stephen Fry and Joy Division were used as background music. Good times indeed. The second half of the lecture was an actual lecture about romantic relationships online. We had some good class discussions (even though only 5 students turned up to todays session). At 4pm the session ended and I spent a bit of time going over our group presentation ideas with Linda. The I headed for the bus. I got off the bus a stop earlier than usual to pay my nan a visit and to collect my hat that I left there on Saturday. When I got home I realised how ill I actually feel and just felt like collapsing, but instead of being dramatic, I've just got into bed with my laptop. I'll see how I go but if I don't feel much better tomorrow I won't be going to my tutorial.

I Baked Some Cookies

Hello all =] I baked my first ever batch of cookies today (as a practice for the next psychology bake sale and for a bit of fun also). I'm not going to go into much detail in this blog entry as the recipe is already uploaded online, so really it would be a waste of my time. However, I do have pictures of my cookies before and after they were decorated, so I'll share them with you =].

I used the recipe here (from UKTV Food) however I added water to the dough to make it more cookie-cutter friendly. Also it's worth me noting that because I added water the cooking time was significantly longer. I'm not entirely sure how long it took to bake the cookies, so if you decide to follow my adapted version of the recipe, just keep checking to see if they are done.

Here of some pictures of the cookies before they were decorated:

Biscuit People

Hearts

"Original" Cookies

The Whole Batch

Here of some pictures of the cookies after they were decorated:

A Mixture of "Original" Cookies and Biscuit Men (that were too small to decorate)

A Mixture of Hearts and Biscuit Men

The Whole Batch (Decorated)

Sad Little Face

My Personalised Cookie

Personalised Cookie for Mom

Personalised Cookie for My Friend Rhys (Who Loves Death Note)

Shopping, Shopping, Shopping

Hello fellow bloggers, I hope you're all feeling well. It seems that I haven't updated for a day or two. I've been busy, but mostly shopping.

Yesterday I had a day out with my mom at the local shopping centre. We had lunch at the Asda café, jacket potato with cheese, lemon meringue pie and latté. The pudding was the best part of it. Whilst I was out I finally bought a cooler for my laptop, so my laptop will no longer overheat and switch itself off (in theory). I also bought some cosmetics and ingredients to bake cookies (managed to get hold of some gingerbread people cookie cutters). I also bought a purple sock hat the I didn't intend on buying but it was a bargain at £2.

Today i've been into town with my nan for a couple of hours. We had an early lunch at the café. I bought a few more items, mosty baking accessories and some gorgeous stationary. I also bought a cupcake that i'm going to go and eat now.

The Past Few Days ....

I'm aware that over the past few days I haven't really blogged properly. Just lately I feel tired and possibly stressed, all I really want to do is sleep, but of course I have stuff to do for university. I often sacrifice sleep to do university work, hence I feel very tired now. But the good news is that I had a good long sleep last night and have woke up feeling refreshed, I'm in a very good mood.

Yesterday afternoon was fun and I did kind of promise that I would blog about it, so I'll take time to explain now. I've mentioned being involved in a production in a few of my blog entries but haven't actually mentioned what it's all about. The whole story goes to about a month back. I was bored and using Facebook when a friend posted a status update about needing people to play small roles in a piece of drama for her dissertation. As I felt like doing something different I inquired about the roles that were available and asked what the dissertation was about. My friend replied explaining that it was a piece of drama to raise awareness about domestic abuse and people were required to play the small parts of the victims friends. I agreed to audition for the role, even though I'd never done any acting before. I attended the audition and had to act out the small part I was playing there and then, my friend and the guy she was working with on the production liked my acting and gave me the role and sent me away with a copy of the script. On Friday I attended a meeting and was told that I'd be filming this week. As I didn't have many lines to remember and was required to act natural in my performance it didn't take much practice. 

Yesterday morning I woke up feeling a bit nervous and thought that I wouldn't pull the role off quite as well as previously anticipated. I spent half an hour practicing my lines before I got ready to leave the house. At 12:30 I headed out to get the bus as I had to meet my friends in the train station at 2pm and I didn't really want to be late. I arrived in town at about 1:40pm and walked to the train station. Once my friends arrived we headed to the student halls, where the production was going to be filmed (as the drama was set in a student's bedroom). As the bedroom belonged to Ollie (the guy who was working with my friend on the project) and the bedroom was supposed to be the bedroom of the main character, who was female, the room had to be decorated with girly things that were mostly pink. The camera was set up in front of a chair to make it look like it was a webcam as the performance was in the form of a video blog. In the scene I played a part in, the main character was recording a video blog about what was going on in her life and mentioned how her boyfriend was supportive (when in fact he was just possessive and creepy), she also mentioned she was going out with friends for the night. My character then knocked the bedroom door (which was actually a wardrobe door that was opened), then I walked onto the set, where I sat next to the main character, she introduced me to her blog viewers, I made a claim that I was amazing and then asked her if she'd seen her boyfriend lately. She explained to me how caring he was even though he was grumpy at times. Our characters then left the set to get drunk before going out. We had a few practice takes as I'd never worked on the set before and then we took a perfect take, another take with background music and a take without background music as a backup. We also did a take where it came to the part where I had to say hello to the blog viewers and I just burst out into laughter and had the giggles for about 10 minutes after. I felt like such a fool but it was funny. If I get the outtake send to me I'll let you see it some way or another. 

Now to talk about my own dissertation. If you know me, or anything about psychology you'll know that my dissertation is in the form of a research report, that has to be around 10,000 words long. In the summer I designed a piece of research about message-based digital deception and moral justification and my research ideas actually took off when I proposed it as my final year dissertation. Before Christmas I designed the materials and carried out the research after the project had been submitted to and approved by the ethics board. I then started to analyse my data. I have recently started doing the write-up of my research and still have to analyse my qualitative focus group discussions. So far it's all going well. I'll keep you updated on how I'm getting along.

It also seems that I'm taking a part in my best friend James' dissertation. My friend James studies computer science and for his dissertation he has designed a database for a company. My job is to evaluate the database for him by completing a series of tasks and giving feedback via a questionnaire. I received the database and questionnaire by email yesterday, but was too tired to complete the tasks, so that's on my list of things to do today.

Today I was woken up at about 8:30am by my nine month old puppy, Charlie. I looked at my clock and was kind of relieved that I'd stayed in a bed a bit longer than usual. I still felt tired and my legs still ached so I decided to stay in bed for a bit longer, but couldn't get back to sleep. As usual I started messing around with my phone looking for applications that could be fun or at least useful. I noticed that I hadn't reinstalled that Amazon Kindle application, so I searched for it and reinstalled. When I searched for Kindle I found an application that had free ebooks on it and claimed to be the "Youtube of Ebooks". As the application was free I saw no harm in downloading it, if it didn't work, it didn't work. It turned out that the application was more like a network that allowed writers to upload their short stories for others to read. I did a few searches and came across a short story called "You've Been Tagged". 

The blurb for "You've Been Tagged" looked interesting as it said that the story started when the main character got tagged in a post on Facebook by someone called Anonymous saying he had 24 hours to live. I sat up in bed for a few hours reading the story and found it interesting. Anonymous tagged the guy in the post and then claimed that he was going to kill the main character in the next 24 hours, Anonymous then broke the guys bedroom window by firing a bullet at it and also smashed the guys laptop. After this Anonymous stayed in touch via mobile phone using an unrecognised number. The police couldn't do anything as there was a lack of evidence and things began to get scary. In the evening the guy went to bed early and Anonymous kidnapped him (after poisoning him with a granola bar) and placed him on a park bench in a town several miles away. When the guy woke up he was lost but had been given a new mobile phone. He managed to get in contact with the police and was collected from the town by an unknown police officer, as the main police officer on the case had been killed by Anonymous. Whilst the story was interesting, I don't think it was structured that well and a lot of important detail was missed out. Also the ending left too many questions unanswered such as was the guy safe after being picked up? was the policeman really a policeman? How did Anonymous get onto the guy's friends list in the first place? Who was Anonymous? It's fair enough to leave cliff hangers at the end of a story as it leaves the reader thinking and gives opportunity to write a follow up story, but if this is the full story I'm a little bit disappointed. I'm going to see if there is a second part to the story later on, I'm hoping there is.

Today I've just decided that I'm going with the flow even though I have a lot to do. This afternoon I am going to the hairdressers with my mom and then I will return to my room to get some work done, answer James' questionnaire and look more into the short story I read earlier on.

Catch you later,

Jodie

It's Been Over 24 Hours Since I Last Blogged ......

So I thought I'd drop a few lines to let you know that I'm still alive as documenting what I do on a day-to-day basis seems to be an obsession of mine recently. I had an afternoon on-set filming for a production for my friend's project today, it was actually fun and went very well. Unfortunately I feel ill and tired this evening, therefore I don't feel up to posting a lengthy blog. I'll make up for this tomorrow =]

Good Moods and Black-Hole Phenomena

Hello there. I'm proud to say that I'm in a much better mood today. I suppose I wasn't in a bad mood yesterday, I was just tired after my day at university. I see the philosophical stuff I posted last night didn't get much attention, I didn't expect it would. I was just amazed that I wrote such nerdy stuff on Facebook and thought I'd share it with you all.

So, this morning my mom woke me up before she left for work. The only reason she woke me up was to tell me to give my brother a message if I see him or hear from him ! My mom left for work at 7am, so I rolled over and stayed in bed for a bit longer. I was still tired from yesterday and my bed felt so comfortable. Whilst I was still in bed I text two of my friends (I seem to favour texting at the moment). I eventually got out of bed at about 8am and got a drink and some breakfast. I then listened to The Editors in order to wake myself up and sent an email to the admissions office at the university where I (should) be studying my Masters degree next year. 

At 9am I started work on my online therapy task for cyberpsychology. I picked up where I left off last night, which was sorting my rather unorganised notes into some type of order / essay plan. I then sat and typed the essay, which amounted to around 750 words (it was only supposed to be 500 words long, but as it's not going to be graded and I was very concise in summarising research, I can't see this being a problem). After uploading my essay to the discussion board I received four emails to three different accounts telling me that there was a new post on the discussion board - my post - fail lol. Since I finished my essay, I haven't done that much, I suppose I'm on my lunch break now. I might take the afternoon off from studying and work on my dissertation this evening. No doubt I'll post a blog soon.

Just a quick note about "black-hole phenomena" as I forgot to mention it lol. It's just that I wrote a sentence earlier that sounds rather dramatic out of context: "The time delay in messages alters the nature of the traditional counselling process (Rochlen et al, 2004) which could increase anxiety leading to “black hole phenomena” (Suler, 2002a)". To me black hole phenomena sounds like the end of the world =].

Jodie

"Creative Science" ... Some Cr*p I Wrote Ages Ago

I've just been looking through my Facebook notes and found something that I wrote ages ago. It's rather philosophical but I could possibly challenge it myself now (if I didn't feel so tired) :

Part one:

I’m not uncultured if you know what that means, my inspiration comes from science, in fact everything we do is related to science, therefore everyone’s inspiration is science making it a default behaviour globally, certainly that makes me uncultured, searching for meanings not knowing what to believe. Sometimes I sit and look at the stars wondering what happened to the past, you know the good old days where everyone I want in my life were in my life, but then I suddenly remember that particles never die, memories don’t die until our brain cells die, but these particles never die, therefore memories never die. ‘Souls’ are the good things that people do that are remembered by others who pass on the memories, people made up of particles have memories the memories are passed onto other living particles, particles never die, memories never die, so I guess it’s true what religious people say “the soul never dies”. People inspired by science carry the ‘soul’ around from day to day, passing through scientific interventions and practice. Everything you can name has scientific underpinnings, you can’t escape the phenomena of science, even if you try .....

Part two:

But what inspired science, if everything is inspired by science? Surely science can't inspire science. Everything that has ever been created can be science: the creation of laws involves observing what is seen as morally acceptable, which in a sense is observing the behaviour of individuals and society which has scientific routes. The products we buy have been designed for the ideal consumer and advertisements have been created to engage the human brain and make us want to buy products. Obvious examples are medicines and therapies. The examples go on and on ... I suppose you could say that things have changed a lot over time, but this is because of scientific inspiration and evolution, the passing on of genes that are fit for survival, but we have instinct that tells us what genes are fit for survival, the instinct requires knowledge of our surroundings and what is going on in this day and age, which is actually all inspired by science. So, what inspired science?

NB: These are just opinions that were wrote down in a creative sense, but feel free to discuss

This Entry Has No Imaginative Title

So, I'm writing a blog entry when I should actually be working on a task for university, then again I've worked hard today already, everyone deserves a break right?. I've spent a number of hours at university today and did a range of things, so I'm as happy as can be at the moment, despite feeling quite tired.

I woke up just after half past seven this morning and was instantly in a bad mood because I'd planned on waking up at 5am to do a few things before I headed out to university at half past nine. I not had just under two hours to shower, wash my hair, get dressed and have something to eat, it seemed like mission impossible. However, I woke up pretty quickly and managed to be ready to leave the house by 9:28 ... result. I was in even more luck when the direct bus from my bus stop to university arrived about five minutes after I got to the bus stop. 

I arrived outside the room that my tutorial was help in about ten minutes before it was due to start. My friend Sandeep was already there waiting, it was to see her and have a ten minute catch up before our tutor arrived. I hadn't seen her for a few weeks, so there was a lot of gossip to share. A grand total of 4 students turned up to the tutorial, but to be frank that seems about average, we just tend to get different people turning up in different weeks and there are never more than five students present. Today's tutorial was about a task we were supposed to have done in preparation for the tutorial. However, I hadn't done much reading but still managed to contribute to the session quite a bit. I started my usual rant about The Daily Mail, that seems to come into every tutorial we have. I know people will always remember me for my Daily Mail rants and something else that I don't wish to disclose online. The actual topic for the tutorial was "Power and Knowledge" and it was pretty interesting. We addressed the questions "what is knowledge" and "does having knowledge mean you have power" from a scientific / philosophical stand point, I was surprised how much I knew about the topic despite not doing much reading around, I think I've just picked aspects of it up from things that I've read throughout my degree. During the tutorial I was informed that my essay grade had been uploaded to the university system, so I logged into the computer to check my grade. I got another A =] I'm so proud of myself (yet again).

After tutorial, Sandeep and I headed towards the library as we both had the objective to get some dissertation work done. I managed to type up the method section of my dissertation and then did some reading for the cyberpsychology online task that I mentioned a few days ago. I left university at about 3:05pm feeling happy with what I'd achieved but also feeling somewhat tired. My bus arrived at about half past three and took around an hour to arrive at my bus stop. When I got home I ate some food and had a drink and now I'm considering having a nap before I start working again. I'll probably post another blog later on to make up for the lack of detail in this entry, I feel I have much more to say =D

Jodie 

Androids and What I Want From Life

It seems you can blog on the move, what you eat, your current state of mind and what's going on where you are. The reality is that mobile blotting has been available for a number of years, I used to sit outside lecture theatre updating and reading blogs in my first year of university. That was two years ago. The difference now is that mobile software developers have created shiny new applications for all kinds of purposes. I am an owner of the official Blogger application, this is why I can sit up in bed writing to you now without having to log on to my laptop.

Yesterday I spent a considerable amount of time updating the software on my phone. For your information, my phone is a Sony Ericsson Xperia 10 that operates on Android. I didn't expect the update my phone so much, after the update my phone seemed pretty much like a new phone. The operating system had been updated and now I was able to download applications that were not compatible with my phone before. The official Blogger application being one of them.

Another application that I downloaded immediately was Androidify. Over the past few weeks a few of my friends have been using Androidify and I was kind of saddened that it wouldn't work on my phone before the update. In a nut shell Androidify allows you to create characters based on the android that's famously used as the Android logo. This allows you to create people that you know and save them as contact pictures or even share them on the web. I got pretty carried away with androidifying my friends and myself last night and shared some of them on Facebook.

Now I've finished talking about my new technology (that I could probably live without) I am going to touch upon a topic that I find important ... my future. I'm taking inspiration from a blog that my friend posted earier but discussing why psychology and what the future holds rather than fashion design.

First off, why psychology? I can honestly say that making career choices hasn't been an easy journey for me. I left school with the impression that I was going to go into the computer industry and started my journey by studying a double A level in ICT. Looking back now, it's not surprising that this didn't work out for me, I ended my first year with poor grades and a needed change of focus. I had took an As level class in psychology that academic year too. I found the subject interesting but didn't get good grades as I felt depressed at the time. This is when I decided that a career in psychology was the right choice to make.

The following academic year I turned over a new leaf and restarted my A levels. This time I studied three A levels: psychology, sociology and communication studies. During this time I developed a passion for the study of communication from both a psychological and sociological stand point. I studied a module about technology and communication that was more so from a sociological perspective and enjoyed it a lot. As I couldn't find a real world application for technology and human communication at the time, I applied to do a psychology degree with visions of becoming a therapist.

A few months into my degree my focus changed as I developed a strong interest in quantitative research methods and want to persue a career in research. Furthermore, I studied a module in the psychology of communication which encorporated the use of technology. I decided that I wanted to develop a career in researching communication and technology and throughout the rest of my degree this developed into a strong interest in cyberpsychology. Which had an influence when designing my final year dissertation which is about deceptive communication and morality in cyberspace.

I suppose all of that doesn't directly answer the question, why psychology? But it does explain how I ended up doing what I am doing now. If you want a simple answer, I study psychology because I love people and have a passion for scientific research.

Now to answer, what does the future hold for me? It's safe to say that in September I will be studying a year long Masters degree in psychological research methods. I already have plans for my dissertation research and want to continue researching the topic as a phd thesis and as a career. My topic of interest is problematic internet use, particulary it's relationship with studying behaviours in university students. My huge aim is to design an intervention to prevent and help students overcome problematic internet use.

Although my career path seems well planned and adventurous at the same time it's worth discussing what else I want from life too. I want to spend some of my time going on cultural trips. I'm interested in visiting Japan, Tibet and also Australia. I also want to settle down with a nice like-minded man and see what the future holds from there.

Well I hope that this blog has taught you all something about me. By writing this entry I have certainly learnt a bit about myself.

Bye now,
Jodie

Laziness, Mint-Chocolate Cake and Hair Cuts Needed ....

Hello everyone. I thought I'd drop a few lines (or paragraphs, or hundred words) to get you up to date with what's going on in my (not so) interesting life. So, today is Saturday and I've pretty much had a day in. I woke up at about 7:30am, which is early for a Saturday but I always seem to wake up at pretty much the same time no matter what day it is. 

This morning I spent a few hours chatting to my friend Rhys on MSN before I showered and actually dressed nice despite the fact that I knew I would be staying in the house pretty much all day. When I was ready I decided to attempt making a video-blog but wasn't so keen on the idea when I realised that I actually need a haircut. My fringe is so long now and I have to keep parting it so that I can see and to avoid looking like an emo from 2005. So, expect a video-blog once I've had my hair cut. As far as I know, my mom is going to kindly trim my fringe later on and I'll be like "ahhhh I can see again" haha.

After the unsuccessful video-blog attempt, I decided that I was going to bake a cake, knowing that I didn't have many ingredients but there was flour and eggs in the kitchen. I quickly surveyed the kitchen cupboards to find some ingredients for the cake. I suddenly had the brain-wave that mint flavoured hot chocolate powder could be added to the cake mixture to make it taste good, so I settled for making a mint-chocolate cake. I used the recipe that I usually use for baking cakes but changed it slightly, in the sense that I melted the butter in the saucepan before adding it to the mixing bowl and I added (powdered) milk to the eggs along with the water, which I then added to my mixture of flour, butter and chocolate powder. I then put the cake in the oven hoping that it would come out of the oven at least ok. I kept checking on the cake whilst it was cooking because I'm never quite sure how long it takes for a cake to cook. I must say that my cake was a success even though it was on the thin side, next time I'll make two cakes and a filling to put between them. Today I was informed that we're having another psychology society bake sale at the end of March, so I need to get my practice in before then, I already have ideas of what I want to bake. 

When the cake was all done and dusted, I decided to pay my nan a visit to let her try some of my wonderful cake, and I haven't long got home. I've put some pictures of my cake below, just because I'm proud of it (you probably think it looks pathetic lol).

Grumpiness, Dissertations, Pizza and Tower Stack High Score

Hello everyone =) first of all I'd like to take to thank people for actually ready my blog, I really appreciate it, even if you never comment. Having views on my blog has actually made me want to carry on blogging in the hope that more people will read them. I find that blogging helps me to clear my mind too and therefore makes me a much happier person.

So today I woke up about 8am and didn't feel too good!! yes I woke up in a rather bad mood and just felt like talking to my friends about things. One thing that was annoying me this morning was liars, there's nothing worse than people who tell plain and obvious lies. I'm aware that everyone lies, an average of one or two times a day, but large scale lies just don't impress me, if anything lies that just aren't plausible are comical but annoy me at the same time. Obviously I'm not going to go into too much detail here, but a few people have told me big lies lately and I'm just fed up, BE HONEST or at least plausible. 

I text a few of my friends telling them that I felt down in the dumps and three out of four of them actually got back to me within good time. Talking to my friends made me feel so much better, I'm just disappointed that my best friend James couldn't meet me for lunch, but then again he did plan to spend the day working on his dissertation, I admire his dedication to his studies. At about 11am I decided to actually start working on my dissertation too. Before today I had masses of notes just everywhere rather than a structured dissertation. I sat at my desk for half an hour or so planning out a very detailed structure of what I want to be in my dissertation. I then gave myself a set of sensible deadlines to meet in order to finish my dissertation successfully and on time. The first deadline I have set myself is for Monday, by Monday I must have completed the methods section of my dissertation. I've already started writing this up, but it kind of comes in two parts: the quantitative approach that I used and the qualitative approach that I used. 

I then decided to have an early lunch after messing around on MSN and Facebook for about half an hour. I originally planned to have a sandwich but then realised we didn't have much bread left, so settled for pizza instead. After lunch I procrastinated a little bit more before tidying my bedroom. Whilst tidying my bedroom I listened to some eighties music to put myself into a good mood. Once my bedroom was all nice and clean I sorted through notebooks and folders to find any notes that I have made about my dissertation project, which was surprisingly a hell of a lot more than I remembered. Looking back at the notes made me realise how much work I've actually done already and kind of made me smile. 

After my cleaning and sorting was all finished I spent a bit more time online and decided to have a few games of Tower Stack. For some reason this week my scores have been awful, perhaps I'm loosing my concentration quite a bit. I'm still yet to beat my current high score which is something like 170,000 points, the score that comes after mine on my "friends" high scores is around 36,000 so it's evident that I'm actually good at playing Tower Stack. The day someone beats me I'll give them £5. I really don't know why I'm so obsessed with the game .... probably because it's one of the only games that I'm good at haha =/.

It really looks like I have a lot to work on over the weekend, so it looks like a weekend of study for me sadly. I have to write the methods section for my dissertation (which shouldn't take that long) write 500 words for the online discussion for Cyberpsychology and do a task for ethical and professional issues in psychology, I'm not sure what the task is, I'm hoping it won't take too long though.

See you all soon,

Jodie

Rufus Hound look-alike, Acting, Thematic Analysis and Chips in The Bus Station (amongst other things)

I've just got home from my afternoon at university, despite my hour and half (compared to the usual hour) long journey home I'm in a pretty good mood. As usual I took my time getting ready for university, so I didn't set out early as I originally intended. I got into university at about 2:25pm, just in time to meet my friends. As I was approaching university I saw the Rufus Hound look-alike that I occasionally see. I think he has something to do with the university, but I'm really unsure. Like an idiot I smiled at him as in to say "hello", he smiled back but then I felt like a complete idiot. I'm just glad that nobody who I knew was around at the time.

When I arrived in the university library Ollie was already there with a copy of the full script in his hands. We talked to each other for about five minutes before the others arrived. When the others arrived, we found a group study room on the second floor of the library and sat down to discuss filming the production. I met two other ladies who have roles in the production for the first time today and they're really friendly people. One of them studies drama and has the main role and the other studies media and communication studies (like my two friends) and plays the part of a buddy who supports the main character. For your information, I play the role of the main character's best friend, but I only appear in one of the scenes. Anyway, over running my tale, we've decided that we're actually going to film next week and my day for filming is on Wednesday. I have to go dressed as though I'm going out for the night as the scene I'm in is set just before the main character and her best friend go out drinking. Filming the production should be exciting because it's something different for me.

After the thirty minute discussion about the production, I decided to go to the first floor of the library and make some notes on how to conduct thematic analysis, something I've been meaning to do for a few weeks now, but kept putting off because qualitative analysis doesn't really excite me. Whilst reading and taking notes the method of analysis became a lot more clear and I actually started to enjoy the idea of doing some thematic analysis. I've found out that there are two types of thematic analysis, one type that is bottom-up and the other is theory-driven. To be honest I'm unsure which form of the analysis I will end up using because my focus-group discussion topics are somewhat theory-based but under-explored at the same time. I suppose this will become clear as I get to grips with the theory more, so I'll save you from my wondering mind for now. Either way the method of analysis involves writing on index cards, which is always fun (unless you're using them for revision of course .... in my opinion revision is NEVER fun). 

When I had finished my notes, I looked at the clock on my phone and it was around twenty past four, so I returned my book and started walking to the bus stand, knowing that I had just missed the direct bus to my house and therefore would have to catch two buses home. I got to the bus stand just as the bus into my town had pulled up. I got onto the bus but it was a good seven minutes before the bus left. I arrived in town at about 5:15pm and decided to get chips before I headed towards the bus station. I ate my chips in the bus station and waited about half an hour for the next bus, which made me a bit angry as the bus is supposed to arrive every ten minutes. I finally got home at about 6:20pm and checked my email straight away, as I didn't check it mid-afternoon like I usually do. I had received a number of emails: one from a friend who told me that my old email address is sending out emails with strange-looking web links in them, she was warning me that it was a virus and to contact the Hotmail team (I shall look into this tomorrow) and three emails regarding cyberpsychology. One stated that the lecturer that we were supposed to have for the next four weeks won't be able to take us for our next three (weekly) lectures due to unforseen circumstances, so there has been a slight change to the module structure. Instead of having a lecture on Monday we are required to contribute to an online discussion about efficacy of online therapy, I'm rather looking forward to taking part in this task. For the other two session that she is unable to teach us, the module leader is taking the lectures but presenting them on slightly different topics. The other two emails regarding cyberpsychology were two notifications, one making me aware that a new discussion topic had been posted and one notifying me that my lecturer had wrote an entry on the new topic. At about 6:30pm I started writing this blog, and as you can see, now I've finished haha. 

Quick Update Before University

I've decided that I'm really committed to blogging now, contributing to this blog in particular. So I thought I'd post a quick update before I get ready to go to university. By quick update, I probably mean I'll sit here for half an hour writing a load of nonsense, but I do tend to just go with the flow of things.

Yesterday was a funny day, as you know I hadn't slept the night before but I couldn't sleep yesterday either. I attempted to take a nap several times but kept waking up feeling fidgety and looking at my phone. In the end, I spent the day in bed but awake. The best thing about yesterday was downloading a game on my phone called "Abduction", basically to begin with you're a cow, your friends have been abducted by aliens and you have to jump on platforms of ground to reach the spaceship and rescue your friends. The levels get harder and as you progress you unlock other characters, currently I've unlocked a sheep and a kangaroo. I went to bed before 8pm last night and actually slept well.

This morning I woke up at about 8:30 meaning that I'd had more than 12 hours sleep, which is a good thing in this case, usually I moan if I sleep for more than nine hours. So far today I haven't done that much. I kept my 9 month old puppy (Charlie) company for a bit and then had scrambled egg on toast for my breakfast. So pretty much an average morning in all honesty. However a few thoughts came to mind this morning. When I got up my mom was watching this station on TV that basically just shows adverts of JML-type products, the station tends to advertise one product over and over again for about an hour. After watching the same advert about 5 times in a row my opinion changed on the product and I actually felt like purchasing the product, even though it wasn't something that I would want to use a lot (it was a steam powered mop). This experience left me wondering whether showing the same advert over and over again for a long time would actually influence someone to buy something that they didn't really want or need to begin with. Surely there are psychology papers about this topic. I shall look it up at some point in the next few days and add my findings to this blog. So if you're actually interested, watch this space.

Another thought comes from a friend's facebook status update earlier. My friend highlighted that (at the age of 21) she had suddenly realised that the music she listened to in college was actually quite bad and she was glad that she has grew out of it. I can honestly second my friend's thoughts here. Back in the days of college I used to listen to the likes of Hawthorne Heights and My Chemical Romance, as did my friend. It's left me wondering whether the particular genre of music (emo?) is something that you actually grow out of as you mature or if times have just moved on. My views lean towards actually growing out of listening to the type of music because it's strongly associated with a teen-subculture that people grow out of by their early twenties. I told you that this blog entry would be about nonsense didn't I? I also said that I would spend about thirty minutes blogging and I'm almost done this also, I'm kind of predictable in this sense. 

I have clear goals to meet today as I want to get on track with my university work and stuff. I feel a late start to the day would do me best as I seem to work better after I've been out somewhere. My plans for today are as follows: If I get into university for about 1:30pm (or earlier) I plan to make some notes on how to carry out Thematic Analysis and return my textbook to the library before I get into the routine of keep renewing the book because I can't be bothered to read it and make notes. At 2:30pm I have a meeting about the drama project that I'm currently involved in, I suppose it's a rehearsal, but I have a very small part, so it's easy in terms of remembering my lines. When I arrive home I plan on doing some dissertation work, my gut feeling is that I won't do any Thematic Analysis today, but I'm going to write the introduction to the project, at the moment I have notes for the introduction that are just everywhere, so they need sorting out!!!!.

Have a nice day

Jodie x

Songs That Define Me

I've decided to take the time to post a blog about a few songs that I consider to be my songs, basically songs that mean a lot to me. This idea was inspired by a friend who also keeps a blog, but instead of writing a list of about 50 songs that I like, I'm going to share YouTube videos of the greats =] (in no particular order by the way):

Johnny Cash - Folsom Prison Blues

The Smiths - There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

The Cure - Just Like Heaven 

The Beatles - Eight Days A Week

Tears for Fears - Head Over Heels

Joy Division - She Lost Control

New Order - 1963

Fleet Foxes -Your  Protector

Editors - Bricks and Mortar 

Metric - Monster Hospital

Notes - Control

The Monkees - (Theme From) The Monkees

Kate Rusby - My Young Man

I'm sure there are more songs than this, but this will do for now =]

Pulling All-Nighters Actually Does Me Good

So, after writing my last blog entry I continued working on my PhD proposal but found a free copy of the Online Cognition Scale and how to score it and decided to sit down and fill that in instead. Obviously I'm not going to disclose my results in this blog, but I did learn quite a bit about my own internet behaviours. It was certainly a useful exercise as I now know how the scale works too, so I can use it with ease in my (proposed) research.

After filling in the scale and scoring it I then began to procrastinate for a number of hours by chatting to friends online and then at 10pm I watched Eastenders followed by Coming of Age. After watching Coming of Age I took a nap that lasted for around 90 minutes and woke up at half past midnight. At 1am I helped myself to chocolate sugar puffs and coffee and chatted to a friend on MSN for a while. At 2:30am I began working again, feeling very alert and I finished my work just now.

For some reason I can think more clearly in the early hours of the morning, this is when I feel full of wisdom and intellect. Pleasant thoughts pour from my mind and my writing flows smoothly. I genuinely miss the days when I used to pull all-nighters a lot more often than I do now. I suppose that one explanation could be that in the early hours of the morning very few people are online and if they are they are busy, tired or drunk, so more often than not, not available to chat for long periods. Having nobody to 'socialise' with puts me in the mood to work and then the train of thought stays with me.

I think I've earned a duvet day today =) so I'll probably blog about nonsense later on.
Bye now

Cleansing My Mind

So here I am blogging when I should be continuing to work on a PhD proposal that I have to email to my lecturers by tomorrow lunch time without fail. This isn't necessarily a bad thing because I know what I want to write and it's over half done already. It just seems that I need to clear my head a bit before I start working, I guessed that writing a blog would be a good way to do this.

Today hasn't been the best of days at all. I planned to be in university by about 9am to get some work done in the library before going to a meeting at 2pm about a production I'm in as a favour for some Media and Communication Studies students that I know. However I woke up at about 8:30 feeling drastically under the weather. I decided to reschedule the day, I told my friends that I couldn't make the meeting and spent a few hours relaxing around the house. I then spent the afternoon trying to fix some issues that have been going on at university recently, which delayed me having a shower and working on the proposal.

I now plan to work on the proposal for as long as it takes to actually finish. If I finish the proposal by about half past ten I'll be watching the brand new episode of "Coming of Age". To be honest I can't see me finishing in time, so it's more likely that I'll be having a few hours in front of the TV tomorrow (I have to catch up on Eastenders too).

Sleepless

At this moment in time I feel tired and have a lack of energy, however I am very sleepless. Laying here just thinking about several things that seem to be bothering me at the moment. Maybe I shouldn't let my mind wonder too much.

I realise that this is a bit of a crap entry as i'm writing it as a result of getting a new blogging application on my phone. One feature that the app does have is the ability to add pictures to blogs, so i'll add a picture just to amuse you.

The most appropriate picture i could find in my photos was a heart for valentines day. Happy valentines day everyone.

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Bake Sales, Blogs and Gorilla Suits

Despite having a headache and feeling weak, I've had the most amazing day that I've had at uni for a long time today. Mondays are always my longest days at university and more often than not they seem to drag and I get pretty tired in the process, but today was different. Sadly I didn't have any valentines cards but who needs them when you're surrounded by some of the best people that you've ever met?

This morning I woke up at about 7am and it just felt like an average day despite knowing that I had to do a hour or two of note-taking before I left the house. After a drink (minus breakfast) I sat at my desk to make notes in preparation for a group meeting that was scheduled to start at 11am. Surprisingly I was ready to leave the house at the time I intended to leave the house, this makes a change from messing around getting ready and then running late. Perhaps setting myself tasks to do before I leave the house will motivate me to actually be ready on time.

The bus ride to university was nothing special today, usually I notice look-a-likes or spot someone who is reading the Daily Mail and feel the urge to "stalk" the headlines as they turn the pages of the awful newspaper. I peacefully listened to 1980s New Wave music as I traveled, numerous hits by Duran Duran, Tears for Fears, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Smiths and so on. 

As I walked into university my friend Sammy approached me with a gorilla ... well someone in a gorilla suit. At first I was scared and a bit puzzled as I was tired but then I suddenly remembered the Psychology Society (which I'm actually involved with) were holding a Valentines bake sale in the Students Union, don't ask, I can't fathom out the purpose of the gorilla suit, I think it was to pitch sales of cakes. Sammy and Donna (the friend in the Gorilla suit) gave me a free mini-cake as a sample and a jelly heart. Time was knocking on, so I told them that I would head towards the Students Union once I had finished what I had to do this morning. I then headed to the library to renew one of my books and return another one and after that I collected the key to the room that I had booked and headed towards the room to set up for the group meeting.

The meeting didn't run quite as smoothly as planned as majority of the group turned up much later than expected, so a lot of the time was wasted on sitting around not doing much, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but the meeting could have been much more productive. However, we had some nice conversations including one about the consequences of Richard Daft and Professor David Nutt wrote publications together, how awesome would a report by Daft & Nutt actually be haha (because of their names not their specialisms). My friend Bryn suggested that "Daft & Nutt" sounds like some sort of comedy film and then we went off on one saying that it could be a comedy about two psychologists who practice therapy. We seriously do chat a bit of crap sometimes but it stops life from being dull. The whole conversation sparked from a conversation about where psychologists get such strange last names from, I proposed that if I became a psychologist who published research (like I intend to) I'll change my last name to something like Zoom just so people would remember reading my work. 

After the meeting I decided to go and help the girls out with the bake sale, before my workshop started at 2pm. By the time I got there, Donna had decided to take the gorilla suit off as it was too hot and sweaty. The cakes and cookies looked very beautiful (I wish I had a picture to show you, I might be able to steal one from one of my friends though). I bought two cakes to begin with and tried them there and then. Just before I left to go to lecture I bought 2 cakes and 2 cookies to take home, to share with my mom and my brother. There were so many types of cakes (all made by my wonderful friends I must add) but I only tried: Sally's gluten free cupcakes, ginger cake and cookies and Sammy's Valentines day cupcakes and cookies. I must say that they were all delicious, well done girls. I've recently been informed that we raised over £80 for the Psychology Society's funds, so that's a tremendous double bonus and the bake sale was officially a success. 

I spent the afternoon in the psychology basement in a CyberPsychology workshop with the wonderful Dr. Chris Fullwood and the rest of the group of course. The workshop was about the psychology of blogging. The first half of the session consisted of a lecture about what type of people and why people blog. Surprisingly I was the only person in the room (minus Dr F) who had ever kept a blog, but this possibly made the session more interesting for me than it was for the others. In the second half of the session we had to browse blogs on www.blog.com, play with demographics in the search feature and read users profiles and blog entries and answer some questions based on the theories we had discussed in the lecture part of the session. Some of the blogs that we came across were rather strange. My friend Kevin came across a blog about narrow boating and the best places to travel in narrow boats. I found a blog by a 21 year old female who constantly talked about what clothes she had recently bought, a blog by a 72 year old woman who liked to blog about places she had been and include pictures of nice buildings, which I found kind of cute, a blog by an 88 year old guy who just ranted on about the Guardian, which was pretty amusing and a more serious blog by a guy who was suffering with HIV and wanted to seek online support and share his experiences. But the most awesome blog we found between us was a blog by a cat called Figgity, well we assume that it's the cat's owner that keeps the blog but it's from the cat's point of view, it's pretty awesome stuff. 

Since I got home I haven't really done that much, to be honest I feel rather tired now. I might just grab a coffee and settle down for the night.

Bungalows, Cyberpsychology, Books, TV and Pubs

It seems that I haven't posted a blog for a week now, and to be frank that last blog I posted wasn't very interesting or reflective of my life. This past week has been busy and dull at the same time, but I thought I'd share my experiences with you.

So, in the last blog post I mentioned that I was helping my Nan to get ready to move into her new bungalow. I can gladly say that she moved into the bungalow yesterday. There's finally a sense of completion with all of this helping that I've been doing for the past two weeks. Just out of interest, my Nan has moved in a bungalow very near the X-Factor contestant Wagner, however I'm still yet to see him walking around.

At the moment university life is good, I'm actually enjoying all of the work that I'm doing as majority of it is cyberpsychology related. It's that time of the year where I have to do group-work again, I can honestly say that I like all of the members of my group and everyone seems to be pulling their weight at the moment, so all is good. This week I also got one of my assignment grades back, I got an A15 (for those of you who don't know, A16 is the highest grade that you can get), I seriously didn't expect this grade as the assignment was in the form of a reflective account, previously I thought I was poor at writing reflective accounts, but obviously I under-estimated my ability. At the moment I am waiting for my grade and feedback for a reflective essay that I handed in about 4 weeks ago, I'm hoping that all goes well. Someone said to me the other day that we only have two months left at university and it's a rather sad thought. I've made so many friends at university and enjoyed my time there so much, I'll certainly miss everyone but try to stay in touch with as many people as I can. I suppose it all came into realization when I realized that I'm actually working on a PhD proposal, to be honest I never thought I'd get to this point, whoever told me that time at university flies by quickly was certainly right.

I like to mention what I'm reading in my general blog posts, at the moment I am reading two books, one fiction and one non-fiction. As you probably know if you've read my other blog posts I'm reading "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency", although it's an interesting story I find that I keep losing track with it and my attention span is short when I read it, this is possibly because I'm reading it on Kindle for Android, i.e. I'm reading it on my phone. This actually relates to the other book that I'm reading: "The Shallows" by Nicholas Carr. I'm about half the way through the book at the moment and I find it rather interesting although not quite scientific enough for me, but I do believe it gets slightly more scientific as the book goes on. For those of you who have never heard of the book, it's about how the internet is effecting the way that we think, read and remember. The first half of the book is about the history of mediums used to transmit information to the public and how they effected peoples brains and the second half of the book (which I've just started reading) is specifically about the internet and how it is possibly effecting our brains. It's definitely worth the read if you're interested in that type of stuff.

Overall this week has been a bit of a mixed bag, I've helped my family out, did some university work and also been out socializing, which to be honest is a rarity for me just lately. On Wednesday I went to the pub for a few hours with a few friends, a few people that I talk to online but had never met face-to-face and a few people who I had never met before. Going out for a few hours did me a lot of good, I even made new friends, who I admittedly added to Facebook after the night out. I'm considering going out more often!!!!

Before I go, just a quick note about what I've been watching on TV (why not? I've wrote about almost everything else in this post). Lately I haven't had too much time for TV and to be honest I've lost interest in Eastenders, it's becoming rather far fetched. However, I've been watch series three of BBC's "Coming of Age". You might consider this as nerd talk about television and therefore a bit strange, but I do love the characters group dynamic and see every character as being fundamental to the group, basically if one character was missing the group dynamics wouldn't be the same, but the can be said for every group of people in every TV show I suppose. On a less nerdy note, I really enjoyed the most recent story line, especially the how it ended with DK's story having a serious plot. The last episode of the story line that has just finished was very funny and very sad at the same time, very well written indeed. I'm looking forward to the next story line and future series of the show, I want to see more discussions between Ollie and Matt they seriously make me giggle. "Coming of Age" is similar to "The Vicar of Dibley" in the sense that everyone in the group have different characteristics yet the group fits together nicely and more subjectively I like both shows and find it hard to pick a favourite character from both.

I've just realised that the Google Chrome spell checker feature is set to American spellings for some reason, so I'm sorry if I've used a few American spellings in this blog post.

See you all soon,
Jodie

Lazy people buy microwaveable omlettes

Good morning everyone :-) what are you all up to today?

I've been up for hours already despite having stomach pains. Today was the big shop at asda and the start of a busy day. This afternoon I am helping out with decorating at my nan's new bungalow, wish me luck, i'm not the most practical person.

Started reading Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency last night by the way. Good read so far :-).

Anyway, I best be off now
Bye now

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Love is only a feeling ... drifting away

Who remembers the song by The Darkness? I certainly do, it takes me back to when I was at secondary school and having crushes seemed like great fun. I remember having feelings for the same guy for a number of years and it was all kind of cute. But of course I've grew up now and have been through the mill quite a bit regarding my feelings.

I mean, what is love? philosophically you'll never know if you're in love or not. You can think you're in love with someone but them you move on, meet someone new and you realize that what you once thought was love really wasn't, when does all of this thinking you're in love stop? For that matter does true love really exist? I don't even know why I'm going on about all of this stuff, I suppose I just want to clear my head. 

Another thing to ponder over is whether your head and your heart can ever be at equilibrium. I mean, I've spent most of my life following my heart rather than my head, which has resulted in me making some pretty odd decisions along the way, but I lead a pretty happy life now. However, when forced to make decisions with my head, I find my that my heart disagrees majority of the time. The day my heart and my head agree with each other completely will be the day that everything seems 'perfect'.

After the detour to satisfy my brain (and share my thoughts with you) I now want to say that I believe that love is only a feeling (not necessarily drifting away). Feelings are something that you don't really have to justify, they are just there, coming from your heart. One piece of advice that I would offer to anyone is to accept your feelings whether others see them as a bad thing or not (including those who you have feelings for), never try to suppress your feelings and don't attempt to stop having feelings, I suppose feelings will drift away when you're good and ready to move on.  

After all, love is what makes the world go round. Being loved and loving others is happiness.

Turning over a new leaf

Whilst this is my first blog entry for this blog, I have kept blogs before (admittedly not kept them well, but kept them never the less) and the intended audience for my blog are people who already know me, by all means if you don't know me and enjoy reading my blog, drop me a few comments or follow me on Twitter. It's always nice to know that people appreciate what I'm doing. But my point is, that I'm not going to bother writing a blog entry to introduce myself, I've done this many times in the past and then felt like I'm writing to an audience who expect something special from me. The aim of this blog is to document lived experience, and other random crap that comes to mind.

This morning I woke up at around 6:30am but just didn't want to get out of bed, so in the end I started playing around with my phone whilst still half asleep. My phone is a smartphone that operates on Android by the way, so there's always plenty to do on it, not like the old days of Nokia 3310's when it was quite entertaining to play Snake. I was messing around in the app store and decided to download the free Amazon Kindle app, within no time I was looking at the free books, I even read a sample of two chapters from "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency", I'm considering buying the full version of the book, I watched the one-off drama of it on BBC 4 just before Christmas and really enjoyed it. Dirk Gently is amazing in the sense that he has wacky methods for the detective work that he does, whilst I have no actual interest of wanting to be a detective myself I've always wanted to be like a fictitious detective, you know the type who have a logical explanation as to who done the crime instantly after being introduced to the case, pretty much like Sherlock Holmes or L from Death Note. Over running the tale, I think I should buy the book.

I was supposed to go into university today for a meeting for group work, for a module in cyberpsychology that I'm currently studying. Sadly one of my friends fell ill and had to stay in hospital over night, and I felt a bit under the weather myself, so I cancelled the meeting and scheduled it for Tuesday afternoon, meaning that I got the day off uni. I procrastinated for a few hours and then decided it was time to do some work. I decided it was a good time to start writing transcripts for the three 10-minute focus group discussion that I've carried out for my research project. I didn't realize that making transcripts was as time consuming and as physically painful as it ended up being. I do remember a lecturer telling me that transcription takes ten times longer than the actual audio recording itself, but for some reason I forgot and it came as a shock when it took me two hours to transcribe a ten minute discussion. I found documenting phrases like "ummm" and "like" quite strange as I'm not used to writing such utterances down, you don't really realize how different people talk to written English language until you transcribe a conversation. As you can see, I haven't done all that much today. Lets call this a sleepy-day.