Description: No matter how you spent the past year I suspect that it was different than the previous 5, 10, or many many more years and that the biggest difference was the nature and extent of your social contacts. Perhaps you got really good at zoom (despite the force personal appearance fixations it can produce);… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Student Success
Psychology of Covid: Pandemic Negative Thought Patterns
Description: Try this statement on for size. The way we think, the way we focus our attention, the way we organize and reflect upon our thoughts are, in large part, best thought of as adaptations to the world we are living in (the physical AND the social world). Does that make sense? OK, now, how… Read more »
Psychology of Covid: Hitting the Pandemic Wall
Description: Have you heard of something called the General Adaptation system (GAS)? Hans Selye (1907-1982) working at McGill University in Montreal was trying to find a model with which he could use rats to study the impact of longer-term exposure to moderate to high levels of stress. What he came up with as a rat… Read more »
Emerging Adults and Parents’ Levels of Psychological Control
Description: There has been quite a bit of speculation about what is “wrong” with emerging adults (18- to 29-year-olds) these days. This typically occurs as part of reflections upon the significant rise (jump) in levels of anxiety among undergraduate student in general and first year students in particular. Putting aside non-useful hypotheses such as that… Read more »
Psychology of Covid-19: Resolutions THIS Year
Description: I will not say Happy New Year. That seems a bit trite and unreflective this year. How about Wishing you a Happier and Free-er New year as 2021 unfolds? You may also be thinking that what with all the pandemic driven hopes for things just getting less worse and for our progress towards broader… Read more »
Psychology of Covid-19: Loneliness Epidemic
Description: How long could you live without air? How long without food? How long without companionship (social contact with someone you know)? Minutes, days, months? As we head in to what may be the worst weeks of Covid-19 impacts and lockdowns that stand between us and vaccine driven relief (and winter here in the Northern… Read more »
Psychology of Covid-19 and Sleep: Get What You Need
Description: How are you sleeping these (Covid surging again) days? It will likely not surprise you to hear that more people are having trouble sleeping or are having weird dreams or both these days. The direct and indirect stresses and anxieties of the Covid-19 pandemic and the related uncertainties are definitely making it harder to… Read more »
How Distracted is YOUR learning?
Description: Ok, imagine you are sitting in your first class in a new course at college or university (yes in the old world where you were sitting in a lecture hall with 200 to 300 other students). Further, imagine that the professor arrives and announces that they have a few rules that MUST be followed… Read more »
The Psychology of Covid 19: Unselfish Self Care
Description: Have you read anything about Positive Psychology? It is a relatively new sub-discipline within Psychology that is based on the idea that Psychology can do more that focus in on the ways in which things can go wrong for us in terms of things like mental illness. Research in Positive Psychology looks at what… Read more »
The Psychology of Covid-19: Uncertainty about Uncertainty Itself
Description: You have heard the Roosevelt quote from a speech celebrating Human Rights Day in 1948; “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Now, without diving too deeply into what that might mean, but taking it as a metaphorical lead, think about this. Uncertainty (of outcomes, processes, and next steps) is a… Read more »
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