Category Archives: Student Posts

First Impression Post; Motivation

--Original published at olivyahvanek

I think that eating healthy can go to an extreme and in this case, I believe that it has gone too far. I think that eating healthy is a good thing and it really does help people lose weight and feel better about themselves, but when it gets to the point of basically being malnourished, I think it has reached a maximum.

I think that when people are so addicted to eating healthy that it makes them feel as though they can barely eat anything, then this has come too far because they are not getting the proper nutrition that they need to make the most of themselves.

Eating healthy can be a very easy way to make a person feel better about themselves and easily lose weight, but when it comes to the point of them actually being unhealthy and unable to have enough energy, then it has gone too far and it needs to stop because, in the long run, it can hurt their body detrimentally.

Orthorexia nervosa is a very unhealthy eating disorder that is tricking people into thinking that it is making them healthier, when in all reality it is hurting their bodies majorly because they are not getting the proper nutrition that they need to give their bodies enough energy to live a normal life. I think that there are proper ways to be a healthier person and to feel better about themselves, but I do not think that being obsessed with eating healthy is one of those things that will make a person feel better physically and also feel better about themselves.

When Eating Healthy Becomes a Threat to Your Own Health

--Original published at Sherika's Psych Blog

Recently there’s been a proposed guideline for orthorexia nervosa, a condition proposed by many including eating disorder professionals to describe those that have an unhealthy fixation on healthy eating and exercising to the point that it becomes an obsession. Though some argue that with the proposed criteria it blurs the line between extreme examples and mindsets of healthy eating versus mental disorders.

The proposed criteria for orthorexia nervosa are proposed in two different sets of criteria. The first set of criteria is defined as an obsessive focus on healthy eating, that’s defined by dietary theory or set of beliefs. It’s categorized by exaggerated emotional distress in relationship to food choices that are perceived as unhealthy and may include weight loss that is subordinated to the idea of healthy eating. There may be the elimination of an entire food group as well as the introduction of severe cleanses or partial fasts.

The second criteria is compulsive behaviors and mental preoccupation that becomes clinically impairing due to malnutrition, severe weight loss, or other medical complications due to restricted diets. Distress due to social, academic, or work related functions becoming secondary to beliefs or behaviors concerning diets. Positive body image and mental health becomes dependent with healthy eating habits. There are a multitude of other traits that are also defined as being symptoms of orthorexia nervosa. However are these sets of criteria a healthy way to divide what seems to be a burgeoning disorder and healthy eating? Or does the governing body that decide these matters not have a true understanding about the complex health conscious ideals that are taking over the newer generations and instead misdiagnosing something that truly isn’t a problem?

I think that with growing complexities around eating healthy, including trends or fads like cleansers and “detox teas” that are meant to “rid the body of toxins and promote healthy living” that there’s a healthy dose of reality and studies that point to these extreme ideals as being truly unhealthy. As the second criteria mentioned above points out, there’s a unhealthy focus on health and dieting, something that is similar to the criteria for other eating disorders. But not only does this criteria negatively impact ones personal life, but their social and work life as well. I think that while there could be some argument that this is a slippery slope to use to diagnose orthorexia nervosa in an official capacity. I think it’s own criteria has enough of its own strengths to stand up to such a thing.

Chapter 10 First Impression

--Original published at Noah'sPSY105blog

To start off chapter 10 I decided to take the emotional intelligence quiz. I received a 14 out of 20 on the quiz, which was quite a bit worse than I had expected to receive initially. I usually find that I am able to read other’s moods fairly easily and is why this score came as somewhat of a surprise to me. I believe that the test is fairly credible, but it seems as if the individuals who organized the material for the test tried to purposefully throw some of the test takers off by including several emotions that looked so similar, many individuals would not be able to tell that they were different emotions based solely on the very small differences.

Throughout the test, there were several emotions that stood out compared to the rest which were outlined in the test. Two of the emotions that stood out the most for me were disgust and happiness. However, as I had stated previously there were quite a few pictures that were almost identical which made identifying the emotion they were representing very difficult. These photos were mainly comprised of emotions of affection.

I can use the information I received from this test almost every day whilst I am working. Whilst at work, I converse with numerous customers and being able read someone’s body language and facial expression to gauge what type of mood they are in is crucial. Taking this test has further solidified my ability to read facial expressions and accurately assess what emotions a person, or people are experiencing at a given time.

Chapter 10 First Impression

--Original published at Courtney's College Blog

For this assignment, I watched Dan Gilbert’s Ted Talk, “The Surprising Science of Happiness.” He described how our psychological immune system allows us to be happy, even if the situation does not seem favorable. For example, he described how people that won the lottery and people that became paraplegic are equally as happy one year after the events. This was surprising to me. I had always thought that people’s happiness are mostly controlled by their situations. The presentation encourages me to have an optimistic outlook on life. The speaker was Dan Gilbert. He is a Harvard psychologist and the author of “Stumbling on Happiness.” Gilbert is credible because he is a scholar at a top institution. The talk was also credible because of the research that supported his point. Gilbert analyzed the lives of Jim Wright, Moreese Bickham, and Harry S. Langerman. Jim Wright was a powerful Democrat that ended up losing his money and support once a secret was leaked. Moreese Bickham was imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. Harry S. Langerman almost invested in McDonalds before it became famous, but missed out on gaining large sums of money. All of these men were happy with their situations. Bickham even described his experience in prison as “glorious.” It did not matter how unfortunate their situations were, they were able to generate their own happiness. There was a study done which allowed participants to rank which Monet print they liked the best. Then, they were given the choice to keep one of the two middle rankings. After some time, the painting they chose was ranked higher, and the painting they chose against was ranked lower than before, when the participants did the test again. This shows how people become delighted with what they have, even if it did not seem favorable at the beginning. Another study was done at Harvard during a photography class. There were two groups: one got to pick which one of two photos to keep, the other had no choice of which one to keep. After some time, the students that had no choice were more satisfied with their photo. People become content with what they have when not given a choice. The message is reasonable because it is backed by data and is easily applicable to life. After watching the video, I realized that happiness is not determined by situations that happen in life. If people in terrible situations can be just as happy as those in great ones, I should not focus getting what I want, but instead make synthetic happiness. This can me done through acknowledging that you will be happy with either outcome, so you should not stress about the decision or situation. This will allow you go through life without worry.

Chapter 11 First Impression

--Original published at JVershinski's Blog

So I’ve never really gotten too stressed about things. Tests and quizzes don’t stress me out. Job interviews don’t stress me out. Don’t ask me why, because I have no clue why these things don’t stress me out, but they just don’t. For the occasional event I do get stressed about, I take some very thorough steps to ensure I can try to minimize the stress as much as possible.

My first step in minimizing my stress is to ensure that my daily routine does not change significantly. I’ve tried to change it up before when I’ve gotten stressed, but that just made me more stressed about the entire situation. I will wake up at the same time, eat breakfast at the same time, workout at the same time, and do my homework at the same time I would on any other day. The next step I take in minimizing stress is to ensure that I get a good couple nights of rest. Sleep deprivation is something that I’ve noticed does not treat me well if I am stressed out. Making sure I get enough sleep allows me to still feel good when I wake up and go to the gym, and it helps keep my stress in check. One thing that I do like to change up is that I will take somewhere between 5-10 minutes of my day to meditate. A lot of people may laugh at this, or joke around about it, but it has really worked for me in the past and still does. It clears my mind, relaxes all of my muscles, and just leaves me feeling good afterward. I think these things help me keep my stress levels low, and keep me going through the stress.

I’m not really sure of any other stress-reducing techniques I could incorporate into this routine. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know because I would like to try new things as well.

Chapter 10 First Impression

--Original published at JVershinski's Blog

I do not think that this criteria is appropriate to determine whether some is eating healthy or has a mental disorder. First and foremost, the criteria states that it does not have a set standard for what is considered obsessive. It states that individual beliefs may vary and I think that is the biggest problem. If you can’t set a standard for which to compare how people are acting, how is someone to diagnose this mental illness? I think this is the problem with a lot of mental illnesses and even some addictions. There is not a clear universal standard for which to say whether or not someone is addicted or obsessive about something to the extent that it can be considered an illness.

Another non-specific qualification in this criteria is when the article states that violation of dietary restrictions set by one self can cause exaggerated fear of disease. First, there is not a standard for what dietary restrictions must be met in order to be considered eating healthy or obsessive. Also, there is not a baseline for exaggeration. What some people may see as exaggerated, others may see as normal. I understand that it is going to be difficult to set standards for these things when each individual is different, and hoping to achieve something different by eating healthy, but this lack of standards makes it difficult to determine whether someone is just eating healthy of is obsessive about it. If there was some way to set standards for things like healthy eating vs obsessive healthy eating, and other mental disorders, I think that would be the best thing to try to do.

The Myth Regarding Sleep

--Original published at Sherika's Psych Blog

A longstanding joke is that once you enter college, sleep is no longer an option that exists. For many college students, sleep is a luxury that gets tossed onto the back burner compared to the multitude of obligations that college students are under. Such as homework, projects, or even senior thesis’.

Currently my sleep habits/schedule aren’t what I would describe as healthy. I’m naturally a night owl. I tend to be more productive than I am during the day and have jokingly admitted to friends on several occasions that I can’t remember what the sun looks like. On any typically day I’ll wake up some time after noon or closer to 2 o’clock and go about my day, by doing work, catching up on the news, etc. I’ll stay up until maybe 3 or 4 in the morning, fall asleep and repeat the process all over again. I typically want change my sleep habit unless I have a planned engagement that calls for me to be awake at 7 or somewhere before noon.

While my sleep schedule/habits aren’t healthy. I feel that it works best for me since if I naturally get up before noon my mental capacity isn’t at it’s best until way later in the evening. Even if I eat breakfast and hydrate myself. However, according to several sleep studies over the years the most amount of sleep that one should get in order to live healthily is 8 hours in total. While I don’t sleep at a normal time, I feel that with my own sleep schedule I get 8 hours of more of sleep, regardless. So I don’t feel there needs to be much changes to my sleep schedule. The only thing I would do is maybe go to bed at a reasonable time so that I can get up earlier than noon.

Chapter 3 First Impression

--Original published at Noah'sPSY105blog



College students absolutely have some of the worst sleep habits out of almost any group of individuals that you could imagine. Many students will attest to the difficulty of being able to balance a good night’s sleep, completing assignments on time, and keeping a social life. I often find myself deprived of sleep, especially during the school year. However, even when I make it home on summer break, it is extremely difficult to find a way to get back into a normal sleep schedule. Currently I would say that my sleep habits are extremely unhealthy. I often have to wake up fairly early to make sure that I have ample time to get myself ready for work. After I work most of the day, I tend to work on my course work for several hours on end, usually into late hours of night or the earlier hours of morning. Following the completion of my work, I usually enjoy watching TV for a short while to help myself relax and get ready for bed. Utilizing this schedule, it is nearly impossible for me to get around 8 hours of sleep and sometimes I may even struggle to get 6 hours of sleep.

I would say a realistic amount of sleep for myself would be within a range of 6-7 hours of sleep, depending the night. I think some of the ways I would be able to improve my sleeping habits would be to manage my time a bit better so that I will be able to finish my course assignments earlier than usual which would give me more time to rest. I also think that I should attempt to prohibit myself from staying up past a certain time so I will be able to set a sleep schedule for myself, which will also give me more time to sleep.



Why Do We Sleep?

--Original published at Rickster's Psychology Blog

The first prominent theory is for restoration of the brain. This has been a rising and dying fad throughout time. This theory is making a resurgence because new studies are suggesting specific genes only activate during sleep. These genes help with restoration and metabolic pathways

The second theory is energy conservation. The idea behind this theory is when we sleep, we save calories. However, if you compare someone who slept all night with someone who stayed up all night with limited movement, the difference is only 110 calories. This theory is much less credible due to the small difference in calories saved.

The last theory advocates for brain function. It suggests we sleep for brain processing and memory consolidation because when you sleep after learning a task, you are much more likely to learn and remember the information. You also have more creativity after sleeping on information so you are more likely to come up with simple solutions to complex problems. The more important synaptic connections are strengthened after a good night’s rest.

I believe the 1st and 3rd theories are the same. I feel like the 3rd theory gets more into detail about what the 1st theory does. If you combine both theories it would be, “We sleep to restore brain processes and memory consolidation.”

I think sleeping is like checking email. When we sleep, we’re checking all the important emails from work or staying up to date with our fields of study from newsletters we receive. Then we clean out the junk mail and delete it because memes and dad jokes aren’t important and don’t need to be stored in our hard drives.

Then we wake up in the morning. We go through our daily routine. Then we check our email again.

First Impression Post; Sleep

--Original published at olivyahvanek

During the school year I would not go to bed until later at night because I was never tired until then because of the work I had been doing for classes. Now that it is summer and I don’t have nearly as much homework to be doing and I don’t have classes to be attending daily, I find myself able to sleep a lot earlier than during the school year.

As a college student I feel as though I do get a decent amount of sleep, but not as much as I should be getting. I think that my sleep habits could be better and I could manage my time differently so that I can get more sleep, while also succeeding academically. My sleep schedule during the school year was definitely much different than my current sleep schedule.

During the summer time I find myself going to sleep a lot earlier and getting to sleep for a higher number of hours than I did during the school year. I think that an ideal number of hours of sleep a college student should be getting is somewhere around 8 hours because then they wake up more refreshed and then are less likely to be taking naps during the day, wasting time that they could be using to study.

I think that one way I could improve my sleeping habits would be to take less naps during the day and spend more time doing homework and studying, rather than sleeping. This would allow me to sleep more at night and get the correct amount of sleep that I need, rather than getting small bursts of sleep during the day and not a lot at night.