Thinking about thinking 3 of 3

There is a movie about wanting to forget things called, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." It is a tragic movie about ruined relationships and people who want to forget the happiest times of their lives because they had been taken away from them and now made them sad to remember.

We are all shaped by our experiences (good, bad or otherwise) and if we were just able to forget of have memories erased, we would all lose the valuable lessons we spent that time learning. There is always something that you take away from a situation no matter how terrible or hopeless the situation looks.
There is one instance that pops into my mind when I think of things that I wish hadn't happened. A bunch of friends and I were in France and we were in this artist's village. We had just gotten lunch and then suddenly, we were surrounded by a bunch of guys. They said they wanted to make us wish bracelets, and that they were free, so we all said yes, they were free right…

Wrong! When they were done making the bracelets, they said now they would like a small donation. I would have been willing to give them a euro or two because the bracelet was interesting, but they kept pushing. Saying stuff like "that's all…" and there were tons of them, and I think between all of us, they got like fifty dollars because we wanted them to leave us alone.

It was a horribly frightening experience that I would love to forget, but you know what it did for me, I am really good at getting rid of telemarketers and walking right past people handing out fliers on the street and politely but firmly refusing the little piece of paper that I'm just going to throw out anyway.

So, as unpleasant as some experiences may seem at the time, you will realize that it is all for the best when you think about what you learned and not what you lost.

Thinking about thinking 2 of 3

A recent article, "Scientists find way to erase select memories in mice" from CBC News, stated that scientists had "elicited memory loss by manipulating the activity of a protein called alpha-CaM kinase II,” but the way they tested this seemed really fishy to me. They tested the mice for memory loss by classically condidtioning them to anticipate/ fear an electrical shock after hearing a certain noise. Once they were conditioned to fear the noise, they were treated with the brain protein, and were left alone for one month. After the month was up, they were put in a different cage than they were originally conditioned to fear the noise in and they did not act scared when they heard the noise, but when they were put in the original cage, they showed a fear response to the noise.

These findings cannot necessarily be interpreted to mean that the mice had forgotten their fear of the noise. The more likley explanation is that classical conditioning is not generalizable. If the conditions change (eg. A different cage or a slightly different noise) the mice would not show the fear response.

Scientists should not be wasting their time on this kind of thing, in my humble opinion, they should be finding the cure for cancer, or developing some kind of miracle corn that will end world hunger.

Thinking about thinking part 1 of 3

There are many things in life that people want to forget, terrible breakups, failed dreams, the list goes on and on. Sadly, this is not how life works. As my sister pointed out to me in an email the other day,

"when you want to forget something you can't because the act of wanting to forget it just makes you think about it even more, ergo making you even more unhappy, and stressing over a problem that isn't even worth your time."

She's absolutely right, trying to forget is one of the sure fire ways to remember something. In an article I read for my psych class recently, there was an interesting research study done. It stated that if a person is given a list of words to memorize and then told to forget a few of the words, they are more likely to remember the words they were told to forget because they were thinking about trying to forget about them.

Brain Tangents

Everyone's brain wanders around from time to time. When brains go off on these tangents, it can be hard to get them back on track. Unlike when classes purposefully try to get professors off on tangents to avoid boring lectures and in an attempt to learn something truly interesting, brain tangents can be rather annoying because just like the professors, you eventually have to get back to where you were. It's easy for a professor, they just look down at their lecture notes, but when your brain wanders, stuff doesn't get done because it gets forgotten about.

In the shower is just about the best and worst place to think about those big ideas. It is the best place because no one talks to you. You are completely and totally alone with your thoughts for ten to twenty minutes and some pretty serious thinking can happen with that kind of quality time. Sadly, there is no place to write any of it down, so even if you come up with the cure for cancer in the shower chances you are not going to remember it when you get out. It's sort of like a dream in that sense because since it is only you thinking in the shower, you don't have to explain your thoughts to anyone or organize them in any way by writing them down, so they rarely make sense when you are done washing your hair none the less when you try to tell someone else about them.

On perception and spiraling out of control.

A lot of weight rests on a person's perception of themselves. If a person believes they are unattractive, they will believe that others see them as unattractive no matter how untrue this belief is. In their most extreme forms, these self beliefs lead to things like eating disorders, in which people try to 'fix' their imaginary body flaws. But in every day life, our perceptions just effect how we deal with situations.

Perceptions have a great deal to do with a person's past. A person who believes they are unattractive generally got that belief from somewhere. Maybe they got it in the first grade when the person they thought was cute said "eew you're gross," and this particular person took it to heart, or maybe it was a more recent and real situation like being dumped by a boyfriend for being a little overweight. In either case, this person's perception of themselves will effect how they del with relationships in the future.

Perceptions can also be temporary. Every interaction we have presents the opportunity for people to give us a perception of ourselves. I for example have a belief that all computers hate me, and so I only like them as long as they are working properly. Thus, the other day after a long hard day (which presented a temporary perception of hopelessness), when I was faced with a computer malfunction, I basically wanted to throw my computer out of the fourth floor window. I cried and screamed and it was generally not pretty. Who knows if on a day that had been better, I may have reacted completely differently to my stupid computer, but as it was, I was pissed and my day affected my reaction.

Selective Memory

Why do I always get excited about going home? I always have a terrible time when I'm there because I end up fighting with someone (someone of course meaning my mom). This time it was a fight about how I don’t value her time because I didn’t give her enough warning that she didn’t need to take me and my boyfriend home because his parents were going to drive us. Personally, I thought she would be thrilled.

Somehow, I always manage to forget about the negatives though. I always remember how much I love seeing my little brother and sister. And how good the apples right off the tree and raspberries straight off the plant taste. Honestly, raspberries lose flavor the longer they are off the stalk. Personally I think they are ruined the second they touch a container and that they should go directly from the branch to your mouth, but that’s another story.

Selective memory as it is formally known is a defense mechanism. If I remembered every little bad thing that had ever happened to me at home or at school, I would probably never go back. I mean the big bad things are bad enough (like when no one in grade school talked to me for like a month because I reminded a teacher about a homework assignment, which apparently no one else had done), but they are somehow overshadowed by big and little good things (like the laugh I had with a friend from gradeschool when she asked me, “do you remember when we didn’t talk to somebody for like a month because of this homework assignment we all forgot about and she did? Who was that anyway?”). Somehow the good times make the bad times all better.

STOP TALKING AT ME!

Last year, my roommate and I didn’t talk to each other very much. It was not like we didn’t like each other, it’s just neither of us were talkers. I liked the set up. It was kind of like not having a roommate.

This year, I am rooming with one of my best friends, and I knew she was a chatterbox when I agreed to room with her, but what I did not realize that her talking would be an issue. She talks constantly. Usually it is gossip about friends from last year, or whatever boy she’s mooning over at the time. All in all, useless stuff that clutters up my brain and makes me forget things.

I was trying to pack to go home for October break, and I had a whole list of things that I needed to bring home. She was talking so much I forgot to look at my list and I forgot my… well basically everything on the list.

The worst is when she starts singing. Which is basically whenever she runs out of gossip, or whenever a song pops into her head, but she only ever knows like one line of the song, and she sings it over and over again until it gets so stuck in my head that I can’t read for class (not that textbook reading is easy even when it’s silent.) I end up doing a lot of homework down in the lobby of my dorm or in my boyfriend’s room because it’s so much easier to think when there isn’t someone filling your brain with nonsense constantly.