Anyways, my little life experience about this is when I am at work. I see obese people all the time, usually going to the pharmacy for medication. I want to note though that I am not talking about big people, I am talking about BIG people. I know that a lot of genetic problems can go into obesity, but I also feel a lot of it is life style choices. Many obese people find comfort in food, and who can blame them, but everyone can make some choices that lead to a healthier lifestyle. The good thing with food is that it provides immediate comfort. The thing is that people need to find something that brings them comfort that is also beneficial, like going for a run or boxing, something involving some sort of physical activity. Don’t get me wrong, you do not have to be ripped and in perfect shape in my eyes. As long as you can go for a run, or play a sport, without sounding like you are going to die after five minutes, it is ok.

In short, I really would prefer if I did not allow some of the more obese people to buy $50 worth of M&M’s. There is one guy, a regular customer, who always comes into CVS, goes and gets his prescription, and then gets A LOT of candy. By the time he walks to the register he can barely breathe. I really want to ask him, “Do you really want to buy all this, what makes you think your lifestyle is beneficial?” granted I don’t want to sound like a hypocrite because I want everyone to accept my lifestyle, and I am not obese so I do not know what it is like to be obese. I just hope that they can find the inner strength to obtain a livable weight, one that will not lead to heart disease at the age of 35.

In Freud’s idea about the Id, Ego, And Superego, the Id tells us what we want, the basic drive center. The Ego tells us how to accomplish that drive. The Superego tells us what is socially acceptable and then compromises with the Ego on how to fulfill the drive. I feel that these two ideas go very well together.

Our drives are basically the Id. The Ego and Superego tell us how to fulfill those Ids to restore to a sense of homeostasis. Drive reduction theory does normally pertain to the physical self and Freud to the psychological, but in this instance, I feel that they can go hand in hand very well. If you see a shirt that you want then your Id is telling you that you want the shirt, your Ego tells you to take it and your Superego tells you that it’s wrong to steal and to buy it instead. All of this fulfills a psychological imbalance.

I am sure everyone has had the experience where they remember learning about a subject, but cannot remember the specific information you need, even when you could the night before. This happened to me one time on a leadership test. I was trying to remember aspects about House’s definition of charismatic leadership to define John Adams with. Side note: John Adams was not your typical charismatic leader, but he fit House’s definition very well. Anyways, I could remember three of the five points I was trying to make. All I could think of for the last two were key points of a different definition of charismatic leadership. Needless to say I was extremely frustrated the twenty minutes I was trying to think of the answer. I think this would have been an example of interference. I knew the five main points for the entire week leading up to the test. During the test though, other definitions of charismatic leadership were blocking my ability to recall the ones that I needed, leading to some interference.

I am not sure whether these terms apply to long-term memory covering decades, or the span of a week like my story, but it fit. Interference is even worse than decay for me because I know I know the information, it’s just on the tip of my tongue.

I want to talk about Kathy Bates, because for some reason I cannot remember her name at all. She is one of my favorite actresses and I absolutely love the movie Fried Green Tomatoes. Usually when I try to remember her name I fail. All I can think about is the Unsinkable Molly Brown, her character from the movie Titanic. Even now, when I googled her name out of curiosity, I googles Molly Brown instead.

This is very weird to me. If I had to make a logical assumption it would be that I never developed a cue for her real name, just Molly Brown. Since I love Titanic, I associate her character first, because I learned her character before her real name. I feel this makes it hard to relearn a name, since I now associate the face, a cue, with the name Molly Brown before Kathy Bates. I have to be thinking of the actress instead of the roles. The roles are more cues to Molly and it is just one big mess in my head, haha. Since it is hard to relearn cues without intense training I assume, I feel that I will probably do this the rest of my life.

I remember one time when I was at a hypnotist show. I was a junior in high school, which was only four years ago actually, and it was our after prom. The first thing the hypnotist did was ask for volunteers, after he did that the volunteers all sat in chairs and the hypnotist started to do some preliminary tests to see if the volunteers were going to be able to be hypnotized. He gradually worked his group down from like twenty-five to somewhere around ten. What the hypnotist was doing was seeing if the volunteers were able to be hypnotized, or had a high level of hypnotic susceptibility. Hypnotic susceptibility is “the degree to which a person responds to hypnotic suggestion.”

After he weeded through the volunteers that were faking it we finally had a real show. He was able to get people to do what he wanted like getting guys to act like Victoria’s Secret models and females to pretend like boxing champions. The show was very entertaining, but at times I had a hard time believing that everything was done unwillingly. There were moments that I felt were done entirely for laughs, and not what he told them to do. I feel that this might have been some subconscious decision made because the person knew it would get a laugh.  Hypnotist shows are interesting, but I still do not understand hypnosis, like many other people.

I have formed one of these relationships with a girl named Lindsay. Lindsay is my best friend. One would think that we wouldn’t fight, but we do, all the time. We act just like a married couple, but we don’t have sex (but many married couples don’t. Ha-ha.) We go shopping together, eat together, buy and share groceries, even though we don’t live in the same apartment; we even sign-up for classes together, even though that number is limited because she is a psychology major and I am majoring in music. Just as a side-note, she wants to be a criminal profiler.

The one question that I want to talk about is why this relationship forms. One reason could be that this fulfills some inner need to be close to the opposite sex. As a gay male I get my sexual intimacy from males. As humans though, we need more than that need however. I believe that having one really close female friend fulfills social needs, especially in the absence of a sexual partner. I have always noticed that the closeness of my friendship with Lindsay dwindles a little bit when we have boyfriends, though once we are single again, we go right back to our previous level of inappropriate (and unhealthy) relationships.

The male gets his fulfillment for a same-sex and opposite sex partner, but what about the female. Lindsay would then have two men in her life. The only answer I can come up with is that generally, the gay male tends to have feminine qualities, such as a like for shopping, pedicures, and other such things. That does not mean that they have to be girly or do not like ‘manly’ things, I was just making a general observation.

Overall… I am not sure about why this relationship manifests and why it is so strong.

There are multiple reasons I wanted to talk about this. In order to talk about this and still follow the blog rules is that I have to have a personal experience with this lately. Well since I am a homosexual I guess that this would be enough of an encounter to blog about. Many people ask me, “When did you know?” Well the simplest answer to that is “about the same age you knew you were straight.” I did not come out however until I was about 17 and a junior in high school. I came out to my closest friends and then that gradually grew. Next I came out to my sisters and finally my parents over Thanksgiving Break my freshmen year at Christopher Newport University. Overall I have had supportive encounters, no one was freaked out and my parents did not mind at all. My mom took it the worst of the three (I consider my grandmother to be one of my parents). I do know several people however who had horrible experiences coming out and lost parental love. This was my biggest fear and the same fear many young homosexual teenagers fear.

The cultural backlashes from the fight for same-sex marriage is not helping I feel. Because the fights are growing ugly the line is only growing between the two sides. Many (but not all) opponents of gay marriage like to use religious scripture to make the case that homosexuals should not marry. This use of scripture can turn ugly and can make many homosexuals fearful of coming out, especially when the family is very religious/traditional. I do want to state that I know not everyone is the same and I AM NOT generalizing anyone’s beliefs or values. Personally I believe that everyone is entitled to their opinion, but in my own opinion the government should allow same-sex marriages and the church can do whatever it wants, but that’s just my own opinion.

So, as a sum-up, society has instilled a fear in young homosexuals that can lead to destructive behavior to cope with their insecurities about who they are. On top of that, same-sex marriage is a legal matter, not a religious one.

When someone does a good deed, then it fulfills a need inside of them to do something good. I know for me personally, when I consider doing a good deed, the idea of hearing the “thank you”, or the “aw, you didn’t have to do that,” the idea of hearing a phrase like that motivates me to do that deed. I actually talked to my grandmother about this one day. She told me about how she used to be asked to babysit regularly by some church members when she was younger. Though she was looking to having the weekend to her and the kids (she was a single mother) she would do it anyways because she liked the recognition of doing a kind deed.

If we were to take a look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (another concept we have not gone over in class but I’ve talked about in Leadership) I think that this altruistic attitude is just helping to fulfill the need for esteem. By fulfilling this need, people can move onto the last need which is self-actualization. I know that this may seem like a stretch, but I have always drawn this conclusion.

Don’t get me wrong, my hope is not to sound cynical, but just analyze this ideal. I believe that it is great for people to do these deeds, and I personally see no harm in that by doing these deeds and helping others, they only make themselves feel better.  My idea behind this is just that human nature is not to just do good deeds to do them, but they do them to make themselves do better.

Colorblindness is a defect in the cones in your eye. This defect effects one or more (but usually one) of the three different types of cones in your eye. Those who have a defect in all three will only see in black and white.

As far as my type of colorblindness, I am red-green colorblind. That specific type is genetic. I technically received this from my mother, though neither of my parents shows this defect. In order to be red-green color-blind in a male the mother must either carry one or both recessive genes. Since my mom is not red-green color blind I figured that she carries it recessively. For a daughter, it is a little more difficult. The father must be red-green colorblind (since this is an X-linked disorder) and the mother must either be red-green colorblind and carry it recessively.

Since I am a music education major and performance major, I really have no problems with my color-blindness. It is not something I struggle with or have to cope with daily. I didn’t even know that I had it until I was diagnosed at the age of like sixteen. Even then I was not really phased, my response was more on the “wow, that’s interesting…. I can still drive though right?” type of spectrum.

The only other sensory problem I should have is hearing, but I actually don’t. When I was young I went through multiple procedures to have tubes put in, then out… then in…. then out again. Now I have a hole in one of my ear drums, but the tubes are out. One would think that this would cause me problems, especially being a music major, but I have not faced any problems. I have a great sense of pitch and intonation.

Since physical disabilities can affect self-esteem one would think it would affect mine, but this is not the case. I have never had a problem or faced any ridicule, so who knows, maybe I just don’t care. Plus it helps that no one can tell just from looking at me.