It's been a few days since I've written, which I don't feel bad about at all since I never said I would post daily. But, a few good and interesting things have happened in the past few days, so I'm going to share before life gets overwhelming and the details are forgotten.
Friday was mainly spent on human learning, reading about behaviorism. I hate behaviorism. Well, it's not so much that I hate it, as I don't see it as an valid all-encompassing learning theory. There is definitely some merit to operant conditioning, and probably even to classical conditioning. But I don't think it's the ONLY way that people learn. First of all, if you are a behaviorist (which my professor and the writer of the book claim to be) then you wouldn't write the book or assign it as reading with the belief that I will learn anything. According to behaviorism, I did not learn by reading those 2 lengthy chapters. There was not increase in any sort of target behavior due to my reading. In fact, other than the need to get up and walk about the apartment more often than necessary, there was really no change in my behavior at all due to the reading. Therefore, by behaviorist standards, I did not learn. That also means either I have inherent knowledge on the subject (something else behaviorist vehemently are against) or else something freaky was happening that caused me to ace the brief quiz on the readings, since I hadn't learned anything. Thus we come to my problem with behaviorism. True, learning can be indicated and even motivated by behavior. But I think it is also true that knowledge and learning is in part cognitive, otherwise no one should expect me to learn from a book or listening to a lecture. As a teacher I know that those 2 things alone don't lead to the most solid understanding and learning of information, but reading and listening don't count for nothing either. Would any of the behaviorists out there like to explain that to me? Didn't think so...
Once the evil behaviorist class work was done, it was on to more important things: preparing for the barbeque. The church held a send-off barbecue cook-off for our 2 priests who will be leaving us this week. In order for my pescaterian friend to be able to eat, we chose to cook a non-red meat: shrimp kabobs. Being potentially over-the-top in all things, we had a theme to go with our food, and thus "Baarg-B-Que" was born. In case you're unsure what that means, I will explain by saying that I spent the afternoon dressed as a pirate, serving tasty victuals, putting booty in our treasure chest, and handing out pirate stickers. I also managed to get a splendid sunburn in the process. It looks like it could be on its way to becoming a nice tan though, even if it does leave me with some serious tan lines.
To be fair, I must state that most of the nautical antics, and the shrimp kabobs that went in less than an hour, were not my doing. For that my friend must take the credit. Many of the cool things we found were due to the Friday night shopping "spree" through the party store, followed by staying up all night (and I mean all night as in no sleep until 6 am) drinking and sharing stories. I love listening to people's stories. I think the stories of a person's past can tell you so much about that person, more than they even realize. Learning about the events in someone's past helps you see who they are now, at least it does for me. I think in that regard it has always bothered me when people I've felt close to have not wanted to share their stories with me - it's like they don't want me to really know them. Thankfully this was not the case on Friday.
Due to the all-nighter on Friday, Saturday was spent sleeping. Three cheers for having no internal clock - let's hear it for 2 years of summer swing shifts! I occasionally feel jealous of people whose body automatically wakes them up around a certain time every day. Especially during the school year, it would probably make getting up for work a lot easier if my body just felt "now it is time to give up." But then days like Saturday come along, and I am eternally grateful for the capacity to sleep whenever my body is tired.
Sleeping all day Saturday helped shorten what would have otherwise been a long and agonizing wait for the Rascal Flatts concert on Saturday night. Still can't really believe I finally got to see them in concert... Several people have asked me how it was, and my best explanation is to say it was one of those moments you just never want to end. During one of the songs I remember standing there thinking, "this could go on forever, and I'd be quite all right. I never want to leave this moment." Sadly, it did end, and (for once) I don't even have pictures to prove it was real. But, at least I finally got to say them, and whatever negative comments you would like to make (I have suffered through a few in the past couple of days) it was well worth the money spent, and like everything that happened this weekend, I can't wait to do it again (with the exception of the behaviorism reading).
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