Classes, Nutrition and MORE!

07Jan10

I had my first day of classes yesterday, which involved the obligatory “Here’s the syllabus” speech from all four of my professors. This semester is unlike any one I’ve had before, where all of my work revolved around studying for exams and taking them. I had hardly any papers to write — I always felt so lucky. Well, my hell semester has come. I have at least six group projects and ten additional papers to write, not to mention all the required assignments for my Business Writing class, which will probably add another ten or so papers. The good news is, all of the classes are things that directly relate to my future. I’m pretty excited about everything I’m going to learn. Hopefully it will help me get through this semester!

Tomorrow is the first meeting of my new research team. If any of you remember me mentioning it, I used to be part of a research team within the psychology department here that looked at the effects of sleep deprivation on performance. I joined the team because there were no other groups directly related to my field of interest (I/O Psychology), but this new group just popped up last semester, so I decided to drop the sleep research and join this team instead. Here’s part of the email the advisor sent me that explains what the program is about:

The research program will initially center around the role of advice in decision making. This kind of research has implications for a wide variety of fields. Companies pay consultants large sums of money for advice (without much data showing that this advice helps the company), investors pay for ‘expert’ stock tips, etc.

Decision makers often seek advice from others before deciding on a particular course of action, but rarely use this advice optimally. In particular, people are more willing to use advice from an ‘expert,’ and are far more likely to use advice if they had to pay for it- and the more they paid for the advice, the more they seem to value it.

My first research project tackles a couple of competing explanations for this ‘paid advice effect,’ as well as a couple of other advice hypotheses. The field is fairly new, which I find tremendously exciting! It means that there are a lot of (relatively) easy questions left to answer, and we may be able to make one or more important discoveries.

This has tons of implications for the future! I think it could be really influential in future business practices if we find any ground-breaking results.

In other news, I’ve been doing my leg stretches and eating healthy as per my resolutions for 2010. I’ve been keeping track of what I eat through an app on my iPhone called SparkPeople, which is an organization that isn’t solely based on losing weight. That’s really nice, because a lot of places that do food tracking tend to focus on weight loss, which isn’t what I’m interested in. SparkPeople is focused on just being healthy and, if it’s what you need to do, losing weight. I made some really delicious squash soup last night, and I’ve been eating it every night for dinner. I figure the leftovers will hold me over until next week.

Tonight I went to the gym with my friend for the first time in a LONG time, and it was nice to be back on the elliptical trainer. I felt like a chump only going 3.5 mph when everyone else was going like 5 mph, but I can’t go that fast anymore because of my knee injury. But, I think the exercise will allow me to get to that point soon.

Even though I’ve only been doing this healthy thing for a week, I’m starting to feel good already. It’s amazing what treating your body right can do for you physically AND mentally!

(In other news, props to Barack Obama for taking responsibility for the failed terrorist attack, rather than blaming the previous administration.)

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