Never Again

I saw this post on my Jenni and Brad's blog and it got me thinking.

Since going back to school I haven't made it to the gym as frequently as I was before. So I went through some old photos to remind myself why I need to go to the gym.

This is me maxed out at 210 in March 2005:

Currently I vary between 175-180, but I was below 170 earlier this year.

I guess I need to start being careful again and get some gym time back in my schedule. Thanks for the reminder Brad.

Wikipedia

Having never edited a Wikipedia article before I decided to give it a try. No one had ever done anything for the comic strip "Retail" so I gave it a try. It isn't the best wiki article ever, but I thought it was okay for a first try.

Wikipedia

PSYC 4470

I've been sitting on this blog post for a while now, but finally got around to writing down my thoughts on my PSYC 4470 class, aka Psychology of Sexual Behavior.

Now, first of all, let me state that I wanted to take Psychology of Marital Adjustment. Unfortunately that class was only offered at 6:00 pm on Tuesdays, and being a one-day-a-week class, it goes until 8:50 pm. That would have been acceptable except for the fact that my Tuesday morning class gets out at 9:45 am. So in order to avoid being stuck in Denton for 10 hours between classes, I opted for the Sex class, which starts at 2:00.

For those of you wondering, this class would definitely be rated "R" if anyone ever made such a scale. In fact, the teacher warned us that one class will be "NC-17" since he will show a sex instruction video that leaves nothing to the imagination. Fortunately, that is the only lecture in the course that is optional, and will not be in the tests. Also, I've read ahead through the textbook, and it is to say the least from a "liberal" mindset.

Now, let me tell you about some of the students in the class. In our first class as everyone was sitting down I saw a guy walk in who was wearing socks with his Birkenstocks. This caught my attention because I always got annoyed by the Californians at BYU who would say that socks and sandals was a fashion faux pas only preformed in Provo. Then I looked over the rest of this guy: his hair hadn't been washed in days and he wore it in a pony tail, I think he was trying to grow a mustache but couldn't, and was wearing a white t-shirt that had stains all over it. As the teacher [totally unrelated: Laura just turned on Christmas music, feel free to mock her] was asking what professions we students are interested in he asked if anyone was planing on becoming a sex therapist (think Barbara Streisand in Meet the Fockers) this guy's hand shot up so fast, he looked like a preschooler being asked "who wants candy!?!" During the class he kept on interrupting the professor asking about theories no one in the class seemed to have ever heard of. The professor professor handled himself quite professionally, and kept on replying that these theories went beyond what we'd discuss in this class, and kept on asking him to save such question until after the lecture. Fortunately this individual did not attend our second class, so I'm hoping he dropped the course.

During the second class though, despite the weirdo being gone, several other students in the class surprised me with their attitudes. The lecture was on the specific techniques used to study sex, which is by far one of the hardest areas in both psychology and medicine to study properly. We had just finished discussing interview and survey techniques, so the teacher asked the class who would be willing to participate in a detailed interview with a researcher. In our class of about 100 all but about two raised their hands (myself included, I'm willing to sit through an embarrassing interview in order to make sure that our conservative viewpoints aren't overly underrepresented). Then the teacher asked who would be willing to participate in a laboratory experiment . . . seven people raised their hands, including the guy I was sitting next to. The professor was even surprised by that, and he said that in previous classes he rarely had more then two people raise their hands.

Given all that information, some of you may be wondering why I'm sticking to this class. I actually have several reasons. First of all, it is very relevant to what I want to do as a professional. My end goal is marriage and adolescent therapy, and no doubt sex tends to cause a lot of problems in both of those areas of life. We'd all love to assume that things are fine, but sometimes big problems do occur. Whether it is something as dramatic as a teenage being raped, or something that may seem innocuous, such as using sex as bribery in marriage, I need to be educated in what the problems can be, what to look for, and how to help clients find solutions. The second reason is more general, the scriptures teach that we need to seek for light and truth. Unfortunately, too many in our church subscribe to the old Victorian notions of sex, which are extremely unhealthy, while at the other extreme we are surrounded by a world that is as dark and stupid as it could be regarding sex. Somewhere in the middle is truth, and I think we need to find it.

I'll leave it at that, I'm interested in any thoughts you may all have. Let me just say for any of you who read this, and find yourselves wanting more information, I recommend The Act of Marriage. It was written by a minister and his wife and provides good information balanced against Christian beliefs.