I’m Excited… I Swear!

/Personal

I teach psychology for a living, and each and every time I talk about the Big 5 personality traits, I reflect a bit on my own mental makeup. If you’re curious, it looks something like this


What stands out?

Aside from the fact that I don’t tend to favor the middle in any factor, the one there that might seem amazing is Emotional Stability – the 99th percentile. What is Emotional Stability you ask? Well, it’s the opposite end of the the spectrum commonly known as Neuroticism. You can also think of it as Emotional Reactivity. And as you can see from the above… I basically don’t react.

Now not reacting has benefits. I rarely feel depressed or anxious (by rarely, I mean perhaps 2-3 times per year for a period of about 1-2 hours), I don’t “freak out” over many things, and I tend not to panic. In fact, I am the epitome of the phrase If you see me running, try to keep up. 

However when you have a very neutral to positive mood the majority of the time, it also means you don’t react to positive events the same way as most people. Tons of good things have happened to me in my life – far too many to name. And for the most emotionally charged, good or bad, I always feel that I don’t emote enough compared to most. And while it’s somewhat normal for some to be stoic at funerals (as opposed to throwing oneself on the coffin), I’ve had a few instances on the opposite end of the spectrum where I clearly did not communicate to others the level of positivity that I felt. Here’s an example: October 16 this year.

What was on my desk on October 16 this year.

Bosses Day

At work I have the privilege of leading a small team of dedicated professionals, and this year on the somewhat-dubious holiday of Bosses Day, they showered me with gifts. Playful certificates, donuts, a gift certificate, and a personalized mug that read “World’s Best Boss” on one side, and something fairly transgressive (a.k.a. profane) on the side that faces me if I were to drink from it. 

Now when I saw this on my desk, my mood elevated quite a bit. The day wasn’t bad by any stretch, but after seeing their hard work, my little grinch-y heart grew three sizes, to steal a seasonal phrase. And while internally my mind kept thinking “That’s so nice of them, I’m touched they thought of me, that they came up with original ideas, and that they understood exactly what I would love to have the most on Bosses’ day”, the best I could do was go out to them and thank them repeatedly. 

Later, I heard through the grapevine, that my reaction, the reaction of someone with an emotional stability of the 99th percentile, was a bit confusing. With some wondering if I truly liked the presents or if I was just being nice. This is one of the most misunderstood thing about us emotional stable types – our emotions don’t get “big” enough by most standards. 

Over the next year, I’m looking forward to a ton of events that are going to be positively charged – vacations with friends and family, a family wedding, and more. However at each one, I’ll likely feel just a little bit of self-consciousness about my reaction. So if you see me (or other non-neurotics), and we say we’re happy, please just believe us. And if you’re one of those people who is on the other end of the spectrum, who wrestle with anxiety, mood swings, and more, it might be some solace to realize that you also have the ability to experience more passionate and “loud” emotions. 

Oh, and before I finish this “mind rant” of sorts, I should probably point out that I wouldn’t change my personality – I’m quite happy with who I am, while also maintaining a growth mindset. So perhaps this year I’ll invest some time in learning to act excited. If that sounds crazy, it’s actually a method of therapy for those on the Autism spectrum. While I don’t have a problem recognizing a suitable reaction, I do have a bit of work to do to regularly produce it!

Be well,
Jon.

Open In Case of Friday Emergency

/Personal
It hangs on my office wall… looking ominous

Students and Staff alike often wonder…

… What is in this mysterious manila envelope taped to my office wall. Well, here’s the story. Friday, September 2, 2016 was the last day of a crazy week. My first year as FYS Coordinator, I had a ton of things going on at the beginning of that school year. And this was about 2 weeks in, when I sat at a point of utter exhaustion. After speaking about this exhaustion for quite a few days in advance, I walked into my office to the following scene.

So now you know… inside that envelope is the contents to remedy another Friday emergency!

DSU Probs: I Need My Schedule But Forgot My PIN!

/DSUProbs

DSU Probs is my series of informative blog posts for Delta State Students. Other schools may use similar systems, but your mileage may vary.

Need to find your current schedule but you don’t have your PIN? It’s easy – just log into DSU Online Services (By going to http://www.deltastate.edu/mydsu) and click on “View Registration Information”. Here’s what the button looks like:

Help… After 14 Years, I Still Haven’t Figured Out How To Blog Regularly

/Personal

They say that you never stop learning, and I hope that’s true because there is still so much for me to learn. Like how to remember to update my blog regularly. About 3 months ago I started trying to make at least one entry in my Day One journal per day, just to have something to look back on. Perhaps this school year I’ll try to extend this mindset to my blog. Averaging a new post every 4 months… I don’t think I can get any worse!

DSU Probs: I have an Override but Banner Self-Service Still Says My Class Is Full!

/DSUProbs

DSU Probs is my series of informative blog posts for Delta State Students. Other schools may use similar systems, but your mileage may vary.

Did you get an override but DSU Online still says your class is full? This is because the system doesn’t check to see if you have that override until you try to register. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Log into DSU Online and get to the “Register for Classes” screen.

2. On that screen, click the “Enter CRNs” option at the top

3. Type the CRN number for the course into the CRN box, and hit “Add to Summary”

4. Click the Submit button at the lower right to attempt registration. It should now allow you in, even though the class is full. If not, contact your advisor with the full error message you receive, so that the issue can be corrected.

Monday Haiku Revisited

/Personal

An artist named Mike Meulstree took my Monday Haiku from a few months ago and made a very nice piece of art! Hope the struggle isn’t too real for my readers and friends today!

Load Data From Your R Script Directly, No Files Needed

/Technology

Ran across this nice little trick a few months back. One of the things I miss about SAS was the ability to copy/paste data directly into a SAS script. While it’s nice to load from an external file, for small datasets it can be more useful to have everything in just one file. This is especially useful with students who have trouble understanding the concept of a working directory or file paths in a smartphone app dominated world.

Here’s what I found months ago (I believe on Stack Overflow):

Input = ("Student Pretest Posttest
A 25 27
B 23 23
C 21 22
D 23 29
E 23 24
F 21 19
"); 
Data = read.table(textConnection(Input),header=TRUE)
t.test(Data$Pretest,Data$Posttest,paired=T)

There are no line numbers on that snippet – you’ve simply got 5 variables with 5 lines of data. The data is then read through a textConnection function into a data table. You can now work with it as you would any other data set.