Lee.org

What Grad School is Really Like:

The Stress(ed) Researchers

OMG, I’ve got like 7 weeks of academic study left!

Seen in a therapist’s waiting room..

(art by Aria Heller)

I don’t like the phrase “A cry for help.” I just don’t like how it sounds. When somebody says to me, “I’m thinking about suicide, I have a plan; I just need a reason not to do it,” the last thing I see is helplessness.

I think: Your depression has been beating you up for years. It’s called you ugly, and stupid, and pathetic, and a failure, for so long that you’ve forgotten that it’s wrong. You don’t see good in yourself, and you don’t have any hope.

But still, here you are; you’ve come over to me, banged on my door, and said, “HEY! Staying alive is REALLY HARD right now! Just give me something to fight with! I don’t care if it’s a stick! Give me a stick and I can stay alive!”

How is that helpless? I think that’s incredible. You’re like a marine: Trapped for years behind enemy lines, your gun has been taken away, you’re out of ammo, you’re malnourished, and you’ve probably caught some kind of jungle virus that’s making you hallucinate giant spiders.

And you’re still just going “Give me a stick! I’m not dying out here!”

“A cry for help” Makes it sound like I’m supposed to take pity on you. But you don’t need my pity. This isn’t pathetic. This is the will to survive. This is how humans lived long enough to become the dominant species.

With NO hope, running on NOTHING, you’re ready to cut through a hundred miles of hostile jungle with nothing but a stick, if that’s what it takes to get to safety.

All I’m doing is handing out sticks.

You’re the one staying alive.

————————————————–

I don’t know the source or if it has ever graced a therapist’s waiting room wall (after all, it’s not the right message for every client) but it’s a good and true message.

(via Karen T. and 9gag.com. Thanks!)

APA Reference Help

I’m looking for help turning web links into APA formatted References. Can you help or recommend someone who can?  Right now I have about 30 of these to do in a short period of time.

Here is an example. Turn this web link:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09515079208254474?journalCode=ccpq20

into this in-text citation:
(Hejri & Sorenson, 1992)

and this Reference:
Hejri, F., & Sorenson, G.(1992). Life satisfaction among Iranian and American graduate students. Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 5(3), 291-297.

No new mail!

The best thing I’ve seen all week

Now I can start on actually doing the things I have prioritized.

Big News:
If you think stress will kill you, then you are probably right.
And, if you think that stress won’t kill you, then you are correct.
This study says that high stress increases your chance of dying, but only if you think stress is bad for your health!

That is just the opening of Kelly McGonigal’s TED Talk:How to make stress your friend

Did Daylight Savings Time mess up your morning?
It messed up mine.

Do you live in California?
Contact your California assemblyman and state senator to abolish daylight savings time.

1. Go to the State Assembly page here
2. Type in your address to find your representatives.
3. Write a short letter to your assemblyman and senator… It could be as short as “Please support AB2496 and abolish daylight savings time. Thank you!”
4. Done

Article about a bill to abolish DST

Here was my letter:

Please support Assembly Bill 2496 and end Daylight Savings Time in California. It helps no one, saves nothing, and it causes a considerable bother to every person in the state for several days twice a year. It especially bothers my sleep patterns and those of my baby for about a week!

The most popular reasoning for keeping DST is “to save energy”. Here is a study by the University of California’s Center for the Study of Energy Markets offering evidence that daylight savings time does not save energy.
http://www.ucei.berkeley.edu/PDF/csemwp163.pdf
Thank you,
Lee Sonko

What’s the best team communication system?  Email? Slack? Google Groups with tags? What does your group use?

I got this missive from my friend Rachel McConnell. If you are interested in the story and worries about beehives collapsing, read his story!

Some of you have met my boyfriend Gerard and some of you have gotten
honey from him in the past. He has just launched an ambitious campaign
to improve bee genetic diversity in the Bay Area through seeding and
swapping hives – well, I had better let him tell you about it:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/urban-bee-genetic-diversity-project/x/3910178#/

Kick in a couple bucks???

I’m going to include his Indigogo post here for beautiful posterity.

Hello my name is Gerard and I’m an urban beekeeper.

About seven years ago I was living in the Niles neighborhood in Fremont. I decided to raise bees with the intention of improving the viability of my vegetable garden as well as increase the yield of an avocado tree on the property that wasn’t doing to well.

That year was fabulous. The avocado tree bore lots of fruit. The heirloom tomatoes, squash, melons, cucumbers, rainbow chard.everything in the entire garden was exploding with abundance. I couldn’t believe that such a small plot could produce so much food. The yields were so high that I resorted to knocking on doors around the neighborhood giving food away.

That one hive became two, then three, I was unabashedly splitting hives, and mixing them up, putting bees from one hive into another, and another. Soon I had installed numerous colonies between the cities of Fremont, Oakland, Alameda, Richmond, and the Sierra foothills. I even taught the scary looking old timers that belonged to a “motorcycle club” how to raise bees. Those bees eventually made it as far as Seattle Washington.

My approach was also an organic one. In contrast to my methods, The commercial beekeeping industry were losing colonies to collapse. In an effort to protect their livelihood they used interventions that I considered desperate measures. There were was an insecticide for controlling Varroa mites, antibiotics for a fungus called nosema, terramycin for foulbrood, and paradich-lorobenzene, a known carcinogen for wax moths, They were even putting things in the hive called oxalic acid. if you look on the labels of many of these things they will say toxic to humans! Some members of the local beekeeping club began to eventually use these methods. I was as if the pharmaceutical companies were coming around to sell you the latest antibiotic.

I ignored all these suggestions and carried on with my organic methods and continued to split my hives, experimenting and moving bees from one city to another, and across county lines. While colonies were collapsing all around me. I found that I had almost a 100% survival rate. Why? Hybrid vigor. The genetic diversity of my bees became a key to their survival. I was splitting hives, and mixing them up across county lines. My queens could be in Fremont one month, and in Alameda the next. This gave her the opportunity to mate with the drones where she happened to be at that moment, inevitably increasing the diversity and strength of the Hive. Recently researchers have found that queens that have mated at least seven times are almost three times more likely to survive.

These tough bees had developed resistance. The same resistance that they have had for thousands of years before humans came along. I have found by accident why my hives don’t collapse. I used a strictly organic method coupled with a limited amount of meddling, and a rationed approach to honey harvest. I leave the majority of the honey for the bees so that they can make it through the winter. Only then in the spring when the nectar flows begin will I take honey from the previous year.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/1…

We’ve had a great winter here in California and the wildflower blooms are going to be spectacular. I predict that the nectar flows will also be amazing. If theres any year in the history of California that will be conducive to the to the honeybee ecology. 2016 would be it.

Bees are dying from a number of factors, but what we can do we should do. and this includes raising genetically tough bees.

I would love to raise genetically tough bees and install these hives throughout every corner of the bay area, but I need your help to do it.

Each hive costs about $400 to set up. I would be happy to take care of them, and teach others how to take care of them also. Its fun, and it helps save the bees. the plan is to build as many hives as we can fund, and space them throughout the bay area. Ive set the funding goal to $8,000 so that we can add 20 hives to the area. Every $400 we go over, Ill install another hive. The more money raised, the more hives we install thus improving the genetic diversity of the bay area bee.

My master’s thesis will be on the relationship between stress and life satisfaction in occupational therapy graduate students.

Here’s our recruitment flyer.  (No need to respond, we’re only taking San Jose State OT students!)

I’m too busy with school, husbanding and fathering to put energy into presidential politics. But The Donald would make a really really really bad president. The thought scares me and I don’t have time for fear right now. So let me put this thought to bed.

Here’s my statistics-driven, finger-crossing conclusion: The Republicans love Donald Trump, but Independents and Democrats both hate him (via). Democrats are 30% of the vote, Independents are 43%, and Republicans are 26%. (via) The Donald is poised to sweep the GOP vote but lose heartily in the general election. So if Donald wins the GOP nomination, we will be welcoming either our first female or social democrat president.

I am reminded that “electability” is the most important factor when considering a candidate. The Trump simply isn’t electable. The rest of the Fivethirtyeight article I mentioned above is good further reading.