Many people are familiar with "The Ten Commandments" (they can be found twice in the Bible: once here, and again here), but one of my favorite texts in all of the Bible is the beautiful passage that follows one of the givings of the law. In Deuteronomy 6 the Israelites' are told what their response to God's law (and love) was supposed to be. As I continue to search for God's call for my life, I am continually moved by this passage; however, I have recently found myself grappling with this portion of it.

Deut. 6:5-9
5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

The implication here is clear: God's commandments (law, love, etc.) are to be on the forefront of our minds all the time. We are to seek God with all of our might. Unfortunately, when I'm studying, teaching, and practicing psychology, it is psychological principles, not truths of the gospel, that I am 'tying as symbols on my hands'. Don't get me wrong, I'm not unhappy where I am now. I continue to enjoy studying psychology, but I always assumed that it would be easy for me to integrate psychology with serving God. As a psychologist, I thought that I could 'help people.' I assumed that I could teach psychology either at a Christian university (and help Christian students grow in their faith), or at a secular university (and be a light to the darkness).

As of late, I'm not so sure. In my practicum classes I am told that psychologists are only effective if they minimize who they are and maximize the focus on the clients. Sharing my faith would be considered both a procedural and ethical blunder that would hamper my effectiveness as a therapist. (Some of you may choose to argue this point, but I think it's fairly accurate). As an instructor, I am able to show Christ's love to my students, but there are few opportunities for me to share my faith, to share WHY I am so 'nice'.

In all, I have recently found myself wondering whether I could love God with all my heart, soul, and strength as a university professor of psychology and a practicing psychologist. At this point, I'm not convinced that I could. Referring to God and money, the Bible suggests that a person cannot serve two masters, and I'm confident that this applies to all areas of life. The trouble, I'm learning, is that, if I want to excel as a psychologist, I must allow psychology to consume most of my resources, to be my master. And I don't think this is a good idea.

Sarah and I watched "Are You Smarter Than A Moron" again last night. I thought that one answer, in particular, was worth repeating.

Q: "Budapest is the capital of which European country?"
A: "But I thought Europe was a country (pauses). Is France a country? (pauses). Well, I don't know if France is a country, but I guess I'll go with France."

In this person's defense, this question wasn't exactly fair. I remember learning the European capitals in the 7th grade, so perhaps the question was a little advanced. At the same time, I also remember learning that Europe was a continent, not a country, when I was 4, so maybe it's a wash.

At church this morning, it was announced that a couple was celebrating their 57th wedding anniversary. When asked of the secret to their success, the couple responded with some words of wisdom.

Woman: "Always love each other, never go to bed angry, and..."
Man: (Interrupts) "...stay at opposite sides of the house."

Hilarious.

Today I'm going to write everything that comes to mind in the next five minutes, and I'm not going to go through my normal editing process (spelling, grammar, making it interesting, etc.). Prepare to enter my psyche. If you dare. Starting...now.

Theres' a cat on my lab (two errors already; nothing I can do). Anyway, I wonder what would happen if I just pit her on the ear. It doesn't really make sense with the error. I'll move on. In my defense, the cat bites me all the time for now reason. I thought you were moving on. I am was. I just itched my nose but it probably looked like a pick. It wasn't. Not this time, anyway. I thought you were going to write whatever came to mind? YOu're just writing what you're doing. THat's no what comes to mind. YOu know when you don't edite. you're really a tierrible writer. You might think I'm mkaing this up; these arreors, I mean, but I'm not. Learning disability? Probably not, just not a great typer. I am a great ytper. I'm also probably the fastest person you know. That's an inside joke that most of you might not understand. I'm thinking of crickets--because I just went blank for a second, but you woun'dt know that because I just didn't type anything, and you can't really type nothing. Well, you can, but it doesn't really look like anything, which is exactly my point. Anyway, it turns out that give minutes is actually a long time. What are give mintues? I'm pretty sure I was supposed to write five minutes. It also appears that I've completely sotpped yousing the backspoace key. WHich I appearently use a lost. Idd you notice that I just wrote yousing. Not bad. I'm pretty sure that I won't ever do this again, but I really didn't have anything intersting to say today. It really is amazing that I can even write a coherent sentence in real life (you know, when I use backspace keys and eddit for punction, grammar, interst, etc.). I think mmy eye q just went down obout 40 point in most of your minds. Maybe this was just to probve a point about the importance of proofreading. Maybe not.

I'll let you be the deciders. (And the cat just woke up and starting biting me--I knew I should have struck first).

Nothing comes to me today. Oh well. It was a good run.

Let's say you have $4681.17 laying around your bank account. What do you buy?

(a) 1 down payment for a small mortgage
(b) 2 tickets for a luxury cruise
(c) 3 50-inch, widescreen, plasma HDTVs
(d) 4 MacBook laptop computers
(e) 5 Iphones and 1 used Honda Civic

Wrong. You pay off Sarah's student loan debt and know that the government will probably be using your money to buy bullets to shoot at 'insurgents'.

Note to self: look for an additional $11,000 so that you can (a) pay off Max's student-loan debt, and (b) help the government get enough bullets to shoot all the 'insurgents'.

Zing.

In Sarah's most recent post, she talked about how she's feeling unchallenged at work. Some recent conversations with others have led me to see that Vocational Disdain (as I'll call it) may be have reached epidemic proportions. Here are the symptoms and progression, as I've decided them, of this debilitating and frustrating condition. Bear in mind that this is only a description of a TYPICAL presentation: symptoms often show slight individual variance and often present across stages.

Stage One: Ingnorance

• Find a new job and get oriented
• Find a routine
• Say (to many people) that you like your new job a lot

Stage Two: Denial

• Realize that there are parts of your job that you would prefer not to do
• Separate your colleagues into three categories: dullards, dolts, and dunces
  
• Focus on getting your work done and being a good employee
• Ignore any misgivings because you just told everyone how much you like your job

Stage Three: Rumination

• Realize that you'd rather repeatedly jam a fork into your thigh than do many of your work-related responsibilities
• Think of everything else you'd rather be doing and spend inordinate amounts of time looking for opportunities to change jobs/career paths
• Share your feelings with select family members and friends
• Stay up late at night (to squeeze out as much non-work time as possible)
  
• Begin surfing the internet and running personal errands while on the job
  

Stage Four: Depression

• Realize that there's no escape from the torture that you call a job
• Tell your friends, family, and that guy who stands on the corner by the highway how much disdain you have for your job and how you'd rather do any other job in the world (including holding a position titled "highway-corner, cardboard-sign holding for booze/drug money")
• Some people may also lose concern for personal hygiene in this stage (you know who you are)
  

Stage Five: Smoldering Hatred (a.k.a. Tenure)

• Call in sick when you get a hangnail or an itch on your butt
• Take unnecessary visits to multiple physicians--to have that 'itch' checked out and to stick your employer with as many health-care costs as possible
  
• Show flagrant disregard for company policy
• Homicidal ideation (toward your boss, clients, customers, or students, depending on your vocation) is probable (if not inevitable) at this stage

Stage Six: Resolution

• Cluster A
• Quit
• Repeat stages 1-6

• Cluster B
• Retirement
• Sweet relief

Vocational Disdain is a serious condition and should only be treated by a professional. If you think you may be suffering from Vocational Disdain, please make an appointment via our comment hotline. Sufferers may see a decrease in symptoms during a long weekend or while on vacation, but treatment must not be discontinued: the course of Vocational Disdain is lifelong.

If only it were this easy...



P.S. Has I-75 always run between the two?

Current temperatures (Fahrenheit) :

North Pole, Alaska: 23
Butt-Cold Thumb, Michigan: 6

What the heck!!!!

Tonight, Sarah and I watched the moderately-popular game show, "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?" on TV. I, for one, was shocked to learn that even Miss America isn't smarter than a fifth grader!

In fact, to my knowledge, none of the contestants, in all of the show's airings, have been smarter than a fifth grader. So, I came up with an idea for my own quiz show.

I'll call it "Are You Smarter Than a Moron?", and the questions won't pull any punches, asking such enigmas as, "What sound does a kitty make?", "Can you tie your own shoes", and "Where are we right now?".

On an unrelated note, I was watching a quiz show tonight and didn't come up with the correct answers to two of the questions (turns out, Lake Superior does touch Minnesota, and Patrick Henry said "Give me liberty or give me death!"), and I had an epiphany for a reality series. I'll call it, "Can You Give a Smug Little Know-It-All an Atomic Wedgie?"

The morons would probably dominate that show.

Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) is a popular online encyclopedia. It is set apart from other encyclopedias (e.g., Encyclopedia Brittanica) by the fact that Wikipedia isn't published by a company; instead, individuals from all over the world contribute to it and edit its entries. In this way, it's information is always ultra-current. In fact, studies have shown that this method makes Wikipedia equally as reliable as its 'real' alternatives (i.e., actual books). Personally, I think that it's a great reference, but it is susceptible to pranksters.

I came across a spectacular example of this today while searching for the definition of "weenie" online (for reasons that aren't necessary to discuss at this juncture). Apparently, Wikipedia's definition has a lot to do with a certain Republican presidential hopeful. It's possible that you can see what I'm talking about by clicking here (as of 4:10 PM on 1/18/08, the link has been fixed, so I took it down [because it now takes you to a page titled "Penis"--am I allowed to say that on the Internet?]), but, by the time you read this, the page will likely have been edited back to the original entry for weenie. So, I included a "screenshot", below (the marks in red are mine, click on the picture to enlarge it).

The most disturbing aspect of this whole situation becomes evident when you actually take the time to read Romney's biography: he's purportedly 60 years old!?!?!? What!!

Question: which parts?
Fact: certainly not any that are visible in that picture.

Zing.

But I'm sure he's a nice man. After all, we shouldn't judge books by their surgically restored covers.

Double zing.

It's bedtime, and I don't have anything to write about. In the past, I've written a lot about bedtime, so that's out. And I've written lots about not having anything to write about, so that's out.

I'm bored with this now, so I'm out. As the kids say.

When I am a professor, I will NOT...

1. Assign too much reading because I think my students won't do it all anyway
2. Assign too much reading because I think my students only have reading for my class
3. Assign too much reading because I've lost touch with how much a human can possibly read in a given time period
4. Assign too much reading because I want my students to know everything about my field after taking a 3-4 credit class (even though I learned my field with 125 undergraduate credits, 95 graduate credits, and 20 years of experience)
5. Assign too much reading because I haven't considered what the core concepts are for my class
6. Assign too much reading because I like to read
7. Assign too much reading because I love the subject and I want my students to love it too
8. Assign too much reading because I want my students to be prepared for their jobs in the real world

Not that I'm accusing anyone specific about anything specifically. (But I'll probably assign too much reading because of numbers 3, 6, 7 and 8 as well--so I probably shouldn't be spouting...)

Getting up early? Annoying. Going to bed early so that I don't feel quite as tired when I get up early? Super annoying. That is all.

The weather is back to being cold, and I am back to being annoyed. As it turns out, I like 65 a lot better than 25. I move that we all increase our carbon emissions until Michigan has a Mediterranean climate. I realize this will inconvenience a large portion of the world's population (with destruction and, ultimately, death), but I'm pretty sure they should have chosen to be born somewhere else, perhaps a more-powerful, colder nation. Like Denmark. Or as we'll soon call it: The Dominican Republic, EU edition.

Today I purchased the last (I hope) of my textbooks for this semester. Now all I have to do is read several thousand pages. Tonight. I also met for the first time with two (of three) of my new intro psych sections. Because of all the prep work I did last time around, I'm pretty sure things will go smoothly again this semester. Only better. And funnier. And better. And better.

Bring on the evaluations: I need more reinforcement. And a career. Can someone work out the details on that?

It was 65 degrees yesterday; this morning, I've heard thunder rolling in the distance, and there's a flood watch for most of the state; tomorrow, snow showers are expected. Welcome to a Michigan winter.

Christmas break has come to an end: this is a sad day. Blah, blah, blah. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to be able to come to deal with it: I don't retire for 45 years.

Fact: I ate too much candy today.
Question: Will the binging ever cease?

Roses are red,
Violets are violet,
The cats smell funny,
And so do I because they just jumped on me.

I'm pretty sure that's how it goes.

P.S. Regular posting will resume shortly.

The new year began with a veritable butt-load of snow. And then, I began the new year by saying "butt-load" in public. In front of my parents, grandparents, in-laws, other assorted relatives, people I know, and people I don't know. How embarrassing.