This week I was thinking about books. I was thinking about people I meet who do not own books.  Or who do not read.  Times are rapidly changing and many people read only online sources for leisure, but I still love the smell and feel of an old, hardcover book.  I relish the moments I receive books as gifts or I come across a first edition hardcover in some used bookstore somewhere.  I miss reading for leisure.

~~~~~~~~~~

I have loved reading since I was a child.

One summer my great-grandmother came to live with us when we lived on a farm in Maryland.  My mom says my great-grandmother read to me constantly that summer and she thinks that was the beginning of a beautiful hobby.  I do not remember that summer because I was only in preschool.  But I do remember my mother reading to me as far back as kindergarten.  My mom read to me or we would read together EVERY night before bedtime until I was old enough to read on my own.  Books will also hold a deeper meaning for me because my grandmother and I shared a love of reading.  We shared books with each other every year.  When I see a book, I see my grandmother.

Reading was not always easy for me, but I loved it enough that reading slowly did not bother me.  I was usually one of the last people to finish reading anything in class in elementary school.  Still, I was usually placed in Gifted classes and read books well beyond my grade’s reading level.

As I got older, reading aloud TERRIFIED me.  I would read ahead so I would not stumble over my words when it was my turn.  Remember when we would read plays in school?  That was my first taste of social anxiety and panic.  My stomach would hurt, I would sweat, and I would read aloud slowly so I would not make a mistake.

I was reading every word one at a time. I was reading in my head like I was reading aloud.  Even as I type this, I can feel my tongue move in mouth as I say the words in my head.  It is not that abnormal, but it is limiting enough to be a learning disability.  I did not recognize this limitation until too late because I had already developed severe test anxiety.  Unfortunately, my inability to read quickly interfered with my ability to do well on standardized tests.

In college, I learned to read faster out of necessity.  Eventually I was able to scan sentences and comprehend paragraphs without too much trouble.  I did well in college and learned how to manage my test anxiety (for the most part).  I still constantly read for leisure, sometimes multiple books in a single week.  In grad school, I continue to learn strategies to comprehend as much as possible in a short amount of time.  So far so good.  But my desire to read for leisure has slowly disintegrated during grad school.  I read all day.  Empirical journal articles, textbooks, manuals, dissertations, reports.  My leisure reading takes place every day when I catch up on Google Reader.  I love reading all of your blogs, but at the end of the day, I prefer to unwind by watching movies or television now.

~~~~~~~~~~

These are just a handful of books I tend to read every few years because they have touched my heart so deeply.

The Phantom Tollbooth – Norton Juster

The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho

The Upanishads

Neverwhere – Neil Gaiman (my favorite author)

The Undiscovered Self – Carl Jung

His Dark Materials Trilogy – Phillip Pullman

The Upanishads is an Indian spiritual text that guides much of what I now believe to be my core values.  The Undiscovered Self by Carl Jung opened doors for me that I wished had not been opened at first, but doors that made me a better person.  It began a  journey of self-awareness that made me embrace all things in myself.

But the other books are fiction… fantasy, in fact.  I adore fiction.

“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.” ~ Jessamyn West

~~~~~~~~~~

I want to start reading again.

I read a few books over my Christmas holiday.  My family and friends gave me a handful of books for Christmas. Those books are all sitting on my bedside table.  I have already read a few of the ones I received as gifts, but I enjoy reading good books multiple times. Here are the books sitting next to me, begging me to read them any day now.

The United States of Arugula – David Kamp

Up in the Air – Walter Kirn

Lamb:The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal – Christopher Moore

Eat Pray Love: – Elizabeth Gilbert

Crow – Ted Hughes

Wicked – Gregory McGuire

{sometimes my cat hates grad school, too}

This is the first week of a six-week Q&A series.  I asked all of you to submit your questions about grad school.  Have you submitted your question yet?

What do YOU want to know about grad school?

~~~~~~~~~~

The lovely Doniree asked:

When you’re done (with the Master’s), will you continue on in a PhD program, or will you launch right into work?

Yes, I plan to go on to get a PhD in Human Factors or a related field (e.g., Applied Experimental Psychology or Applied Cognitive Psychology).

It is beneficial to first earn a PhD before trying to find a job in this particular field.  Most people who are Human Factors psychologists work in academia, but it is also important to be competitive if you want to work in Industry.

At the PhD level, it becomes all about matching student research interests and experience with specific faculty members in a program.  Only a select number of applicants will enter a Human Factors program each year because PhD students generally have their tuition waived and earn a stipend each semester for teaching or assisting with research.  Schools only want to fund people who they know will be a good match with the school because it is truly an investment on their part. Faculty members want to work with students who will help them with their own research, who have a good work ethic and who have past research experience.

In December, I wrote personal statements, filled out applications, requested letters of recommendation and applied to four PhD programs in Human Factors Psychology.  I would prefer to stay at my school because I am familiar with the faculty, have already completed the Master’s requirements, have a stellar Internship, love my new friends and love where I live.  It is rarely wise to only apply to one program when it is in a competitive field.  Human Factors programs only accept a handful of students each year.

I would continue to work in the REACTS (Research Environment for Alarms and Complex Task Simulation) lab if I stayed at Old Dominion University. If I didn’t stay here, I’d like to work with faculty in a number of other programs around the US.

I am interested in multiple types of research: Automation and robotics, simulation and video games for training, and teams.  So, yes, I am interested in distributed simulation training, team performance in computer game-based architectures, and individual learning with video games.  I am also interested in human factors related issues in unmanned/autonomous systems. I completed research to investigate how task difficulty impacts team performance and emergent leadership in a modified version of Half Life 2.  I am in the process of submitting that research to the National Human Factors and Ergonomics Society conference.  My Master’s Thesis is a second phase of my previous research.  I have improved my voice chat content coding measures of emergent leadership and found a “hole” in the literature.  I will investigate if role assignment (or the type of information one has during a task) predicts leadership emergence above and beyond personality, sex, and gaming experience in a computer game based architecture.

My ultimate career goal is to work in Industry, specifically the military.  Right now I have an Internship with the Navy.  It has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life because it has helped me focus my interests and understand better what I want to do with my life.  I love to do research, but I want to see science and knowledge in ACTION. I am an applied girl, as I like to say.  I like to play outside the lab and get my hands dirty.  I want to improve people’s lives more directly than conducting experiments and being published and teaching.  Without the professors and academics and without the labs, we would know nothing about the human brain or human abilities and capabilities in the context of a larger system.  I admire those people, but I don’t want to be those people.  I don’t mind doing work that people do not notice because, at the end of the day, I know what I am doing is meaningful.

But in the meantime, I will continue to do research in my lab, take courses, finish my Thesis, and work for the Navy… and hope that I get into one of those PhD programs I mentioned above…. so I can take more courses, go to more professional conferences, write a Dissertation, and take qualification exams.  I must really love what I do.  Sheesh. 

~~~~~~~~~~

Matt asked three questions:

1.  What classes are you actually looking forward to?

I really enjoy one of the classes I am taking this semester: Sensation and Perception.

I love this course for two reasons.  First, sensation and perception are are the foundations of EVERYTHING.  Sensing and perceiving form the foundation of our reality.  The sensory systems are the brain’s contact with the external world.  The sensory systems exist to supply the brain with information about the external world and we assign meaning to that filtered information through perception.  Life, as we know it, could not exist without perception. The second reason I love this course has to do with the split between psychology and philosophy.  I have never been interested in studying philosophy to the extent I wanted to study psychology.  At one point in history¸ philosophy and psychology were one in the same; but as scientists learned more about the human brain, psychology and philosophy became two separate disciplines.

Consider this question: Does a physical world exist independent of our ability to experience it?

Philosophers have been pondering this question for eternity.  It is a valid, important question and I hope philosophers and theologians continue to explore it.  Psychologists are not interested in this question because if the brain is not there to take sensory information and perceive it, it is not there.

Deep enough for you yet?

Let’s try again.

Mary’s room is a philosophical thought experiment:

• “Mary lives in the future where scientists know everything about physical processes and the brain. Mary’s specialty is neurophysiology and color. She knows everything about the eye, color perception, light, colored objects, etc. However, Mary has been raised in a black and white room her entire life. One day Mary is let out of her room and sees colors for the first time.”  Imagine Dorothy landing in Oz.
• Will Mary be surprised?  Will Mary understand what she sees?

Philosophers like Dennett, Lewis, Perkins and Wright have answered this problem in a number of interesting ways. But the psychologist’s answer would be this: Trying to convey what color is to someone who cannot see it is impossible because without the subjective experience of color, you cannot completely understand it.  Don’t believe me? Try to describe the color red to me knowing that I have never seen the color red before. You just can’t.  I might be able to understand the science behind the color red, but I cannot completely understand it without seeing it.

2.  Which classes have been a pain in the butt?

Exhibit A: Analysis of Variance (ANOVA): Research Methods and Experimental Design

The first day of class our professor told us to get used to the fact that we were all the smart kids in undergrad.  He said grad school was going to be a wake up call and for us to not be surprised when we did less than stellar on our first exam.  Low and behold, there was a bimodal distribution of grades on that first exam: half the class did well and the other half failed.  I think I cried over that class more than any other so far in grad school.  But I made it through alive… and with a B.

Exhibit B: Multiple Regression and Correlation (MRC): Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences

We had something called “Random Student” in this class.  It was a computer program with all of our names in it.  When the professor asked a question, he would press “Select” and the program would randomly generate one of our names.  It caused a lot of sweating, stomach aches, panic attacks and red cheeks between 4pm and 5:30 on Mondays and Wednesdays every week.  Enough said.

3.  How did you get into Human Factors?

Completely by accident, actually.

I wanted to get my Master’s because I had been out of school for a few years.  I needed to get my feet wet before launching into a PhD program.  I also was not PhD material yet because my GRE scores were seriously lacking.  After working in a management position, I knew I wanted to pursue Industrial/Organizational (I/O) Psychology.

So I applied to Applied Experimental Psychology Master’s programs at schools with good I/O programs in the hopes of eventually moving on into that field.  I landed at Old Dominion with an advisor who does Human Factors (HF) and I/O research.  Over time, I discovered that Human Factors had a warm place in my heart and I chose to go over to the “Dark Side” last semester.

My Internship in Human Factors SEALED THE DEAL.

I will still be able to do I/O research because Human Factors lends itself well to cross-pollination.  I/O and HF are really two sides on one coin…. Or three sides of one triangle since I/O is already a two-headed coin in and of itself.

~~~~~~~~~~

These questions are great because they help me explain how grad school:

• helped me see things in a way that I never expected I would see things.  Just when I thought I knew something, grad school made me realize I know NOTHING.
• opened doors that would not have opened for me otherwise.  Without my mentors, advisors, research experience, and knowledge, I would not be where I am today.
• challenged me in ways that my undergraduate education and my jobs never challenged me.
• introduced me to Human Factors.  If I had continued in a career in the Health and Beauty Industry as a spa manager or Esthetician, I would never have lived up to my full potential as a student, a scientist, or a human being.

I have stumbled, tripped, fallen flat on my face, failed a few exams, wanted to give up… but that is how I learned who I was and what I was made of.  I would not have discovered all of that as quickly without this path.

There are no foolish questions and no man becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions

~Charles Steinmetz~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Over the weeks, there has been a GREAT debate about the benefits of grad school versus professional experience at BrazenCareerist.com. People were very passionate about this topic.  Some can see both sides, while others firmly argue for or against one side.  I see both sides.  Graduate school was and is the best option for me. BUT I work for Industry.  I see the best of both worlds.

This week, Andrew at Wordpost.com interviewed the lovely Cali wherein she Defended Grad School.  Miss Caligater is one of my favorite grad school friends I’ve never met (in real life).  And I agree with every point she made in her interview. Now… stop. Go read the interview.

That post got me thinking (like most great posts out there): What might YOU want to know about my time in grad school?  What questions do you have about my decision to walk away from managing a hotel spa and becoming a makeup artist to attend grad school and pursue a career in Human Factors Psychology?

So… here’s the deal.  Over the next 6 weeks, I will answer all of your questions!  I know, I know, it’s so spread out.  But here’s the thing… I have SO much writing to do the before Spring Break and I think I need to make good grades, prepare for professional conferences and collect data for my thesis before I really get rolling on weekly blog posts.  I think if I can answer your questions every week, it will help guide the discussion here.

This IS about connecting with people.  I want to get to know you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What do YOU want to know about grad school?

Here are some example questions I’ve gotten since I’ve been in school:

• How do I decide what assignments take priority each day?
• How did I live on 4 hours of sleep for a year?
• How many people become alcoholics, gain weight, get divorced, or are hospitalized due to stress?
• What have my favorite graduate course has been?
• What is the difference between a split-plot ANOVA, hierarchical regression and point biserial correlation?
• WTF does Human Factors has to do with the Navy?
• Have you ever wanted to quit?
• Wait… you were a makeup artist and could have been a spa manager and are now going to spend the next 4 years in school? Are you insane? (that counts as two questions, btw)

You can leave your questions in the comments section here.

You can Tweet @ or DM me on Twitter.

You can email me: alexandra.proaps@gmail.com

~~~~~~~~~~

I will leave you with a little video produced by a Human Factors lab at the University of Cincinnati.

Human Factors Vigilance, Perception and Performance Rap

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIoToBCSOfM]