2012: A Big Year Of Change

Wow! 2012 is a big year for me and my little family. It started off with finding out I was pregnant just before going to the Emergency Room where the surgeon ended up coming in to tell me I was not going home, I was getting my gallbladder removed. Surgery and pregnancy, that's a lot in one year to begin with! We felt we were suppose to move to Utah, and looked into buying a house in the Ogden area. My first impression was, "Wait until January." Glad I did because I ended up having surgery. Finding out I was pregnant changed our minds, we needed insurance, so we were staying. Then I felt like we needed to wait until April to make a decision. More on that later.

Dave has been applying for Pharmacy school the past 3 years. After 2 years of applying, interviewing, getting on the waitlist, and nothing, he was done. In order to re-apply a 3rd time, he would have to retake the PCAT. He didn't want to do it. In August, I felt a strong prompting that he should re-take it. Didn't know why, and he was studying for the GRE, so he was not too enthused, but he did it anyway. We had to pay an additional fee for late registration, and it was a week after he took the GRE, so he didn't have a whole lot of time to study. He pretty much went in and took it, not really caring. We got the results, and they were not as good as the first time he took it.

Dave went ahead and re-applied for the same Pharmacy school he'd been waitlisted the prior 2 times. He used the same essay responses, but got the application in earlier. Then we waited and heard nothing. A week or two after my surgery in January, he got an email inviting him to interview. It was just like the prior 2 years, he was getting one of the last of the interview slots, after they have already been accepting students. Dave didn't want to bother with the interview. I convinced him to just do it anyways. So he went, not caring, and interviewed. He felt the interview went well, better then before, and chalked it up to being more relaxed because he was not caring about it. He didn't hear back within a couple weeks, so we knew he was either going to be waitlisted yet again, or declined.

We didn't really care, we figured he probably wouldn't be accepted. The whole process was more for closure, a final nail in the coffin, then moving on to something else. So we had not been talking to very many people about everything because we figured it didn't matter. Didn't want to get anyone's hopes up, especially our own. Didn't get Dave's FAFSA filled out, why bother. Dave was telling people that even if he got accepted, he might decline.

Then mid April we get the waitlist email. Dave was ranked in the 11-25th position for the Utah campus. We looked at each other and said, "Oh crap! This could actually happen!" I quickly filled out the FAFSA, late now, just in case. Dave started feeling different about declining if he was accepted. We still didn't talk to people about the news we got, still not wanting to get our hopes up in case it didn't happen. It did come out in some conversations here and there as I was asking questions about things we would need to know if we needed to move. Sorry family, we were not telling you. Nope, no one in either family knew what was going on. They didn't find out about the interview until I showed up in Sacramento to drop Dave off at the airport. Yeah, we're horrible, we know.

So several weeks went by, had not heard anything. We talked about deferring for a year if Dave were accepted since I'm pregnant and due the 2nd or 3rd week of class. We didn't hear much about the waitlist moving, knew that if we didn't know before the beginning of July, we would not get financial aid for the first year. Nail biting, praying for answers just in case we had decisions to make, trying to figure things out. I was telling Heavenly Father we needed to know by the beginning of June at the latest so we would have time to prepare to move, etc. Those weeks seemed to go on forever.

Sunday, we're getting ready to leave for church and the cell phone rings. Dave looks at the number, doesn't recognize it and thought about ignoring it, but I told him to answer it. It was the head of admissions. He had come into the office that morning for something, saw a position had opened, Dave was next on the list and thought Dave would like the call then, rather than later. Dave had been accepted to the Utah campus! I cried. Remember, I am pregnant :)

We knew then that Dave should accept and not defer. So now it's a whirl wind for us. We need to get out to Utah, but not sure when, find a place, get Jaron enrolled in Kindergarten, find a new OB, pack, clean. It's going to be crazy, but we know we're doing the right thing and Heavenly Father will help us through it. I can't believe this is really happening!

Geek Personality Spectrum: Introversion

So, I was noticing that neither Corrina nor I have posted anything here in a while so I thought I'd through up a post I wrote recently. I regularly read a blog targeted at geeky parents raising geeky kids. Recently, they created an interactive community where members can write their own blog posts and publish them to the community. So I decided why not cross post my latest blog post from that community over to this blog. So, here it is:

I earned my degree in Psychology. I love the brain and everything about it. My Biological Psychology professor really drove home the fact that everything with regards to the brain, behavior, personality, etc. is on a spectrum. There are no black and whites. 

My first post on this forum tangentially touched on one spectrum I'll call the Geek Knowledge Spectrum: breadth vs. depth of knowledge. This time I want to talk a little about what I'll call, for simplicity sake, the Geek Personality Spectrum. Trust me, I am very well aware that personality is far more complex than the simple measure of introversion/extroversion; however, this metric can be very instrumental in understanding one another.

One of the experiments we performed in my bio. psych. course, mentioned above, was to attempt to replicate an experiment to test a famous introversion hypothesis by Hans Eysenk. His hypothesis said that introverts are introverted because they have more baseline brain activity, as measured by EEG which means they need less external stimulation, in fact, they become over-stimulated quickly because of the higher baseline, that's why they prefer more quiet, solitary activities as opposed to loud, crowded parties, etc. for entertainment. Conversely, extroverts have lower baseline brain activity, so therefore need more external stimulation. Eysenk's results supported his hypothesis, and it is fun to think that he's right because it "makes sense", however, many others have attempted to replicate his study with mixed results; some supporting his hypothesis and some refuting it.

I am most clearly an introvert; most of the time a prefer quietly reading a book as opposed to hanging out at loud parties. I also have a small number of close friends, instead of many friends/groupies/entourage/what-have-you. Looking at "geeky" activities, I would hypothesize that self-described geeks would fall closer to the introverted end of the spectrum. That's not to say ALL geeks are introverts, and especially not that all introverts are geeks. But I would be interested to see where a large sample of self-described geeks (i.e. this community) feel they fall on the spectrum and if they think there is my validity to my hypothesis.

As an aside, a while back I found this blog post and thought it was a really good resource for everybody to understand introverts better. If you are one, read it to understand yourself. If you're an extrovert, read it to understand us. The post also explains Eysenk's hypothesis better than I did and points out that only about 25% of the total population are introverts, so I think it would be interesting if Geekdom had a higher proportion.

"Judge Not, And Ye Shall Not Be Judged" - Luke 6:37

My Stake Relief Society Presidency had someone from LDS Social Services do a workshop type thing for us last week. It was nice. The sister talked about depression, anxiety and other things. One of the things she discussed was changing our thought process from being negative to being more positive. She related a story from when she was at BYU and her Sacrament meeting was held in the Orem Institute game room. The story was told to her from a friend, whose Sacrament meeting was held in the same place.

The way the room was set up, everyone was faced towards the front where a couple vending machines were to the right. During one Sacrament meeting, a young man walked into the room, up to the front, got something out of the vending machine, and left. 

How would you have reacted if this happened during your Sacrament meeting? My immediate reaction while she was telling the story was, "What on earth was he thinking!?!" 

The friend was thinking along the same lines I was, and just so happened to be sitting next to the wife of one of the members of the Bishopric. The wife leaned over and whispered to the friend, "Oh, he must be diabetic."

If you had seen the young man in the hall later, how would you have acted? If you thought the way I did, you may have looked away from him or had a scowl on your face, or something else that was probably negative. If you had been the wife of the Bishopric, you may have gone up to him and asked if he was ok and seen how he was feeling. How do you think he felt knowing he had to interrupt a Sacrament meeting because he had to have something to eat? That was probably a hard decision for him to make. 

Her point of the story was that we don't know what has happened in someone's life. We should not be quick to think negatively about the situation we see. We need to watch our thoughts and work on changing them from being negative to being positive. Even when we are cut off by someone when we are driving (another example she used). When we think negatively, we are judging them. 

I thought that was something to share. I know I'm not perfect and need to work on my thoughts. I know of others who judge me and my family and how much it hurts us. Please be more understanding of others. You really don't know everything about them.

Note: I'm in no way singling anyone out or have anyone specific in my mind while writing this post. If you find you are questioning yourself, then maybe you have something to work on, just like me :)