The Spontaneous Huddle

Obama’s speech at ASU made the perfect statement about the controversy surrounding this honorary degree crap. He noted that we should not become complacent with our previous achievements, but instead keep pushing to work harder in your life.

Most importantly, Obama stressed the importance of thankless work that often goes underappreciated. A label such as an honorary degree is an example of something that should not be valued as much as the spirit and drive of a person truly making an effort to improve our world.

Watch his speech here. It was fantastic.

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Shayna Skelley Main Education, Government

In case you haven’t heard, Obama’s giving the commencement speech at ASU TODAY… in the 101 degree heat… and he’s NOT getting an honorary degree.

What’s up with that? There was a great vignette on the Daily Show about it. It also does a great job making fun of our undergrads. I agree that not every commencement speaker should be given a degree, but ASU has been so patchy about this in the past that it only makes us look ungrateful. Well, I suppose that reflects ASU’s high level of selectivity in their admission process….oh wait. (Except for our graduate programs, which are highly acclaimed, despite the pathetic undergraduate record)

p.s. I have a ticket to commencement! I’ll be sure to post photos. They’ll probably be of the crowd of literally tens of thousands of people filling the stadium. I hope I don’t melt.

Shayna Skelley Main Education

I found this t-shirt while prepping to give a lecture on Autism Spectrum disorders… Is this an attempt at Asperger’s awareness or an excuse for bad behavior? Students in my class thought it might explain the reasons why more parents want their odd child to be diagnosed…

Shayna Skelley Main

Drawing's more fun than Xanax.

Like most people, I’ve always had at least one regular hobby. It didn’t really matter what it was, but it usually ended up being some creative outlet, like ice skating, drawing, singing, or dancing. I would spend my free time enjoying that hobby whenever I wasn’t doing other, more important things.

Since beginning graduate school, though, I haven’t felt like I had the luxury to continue my hobbies. For most grad students, there’s an end goal in sight in all your work. Everything you’re doing is propelling you closer and closer to being the successful professional you’ve dreamed of. Why would we want to waste time drawing a picture or going to take a dance class?

As I’ve discovered, I can’t deal with the stress of my program without my hobbies. For a while, I thought I was just being weak, and that if I worked harder, longer days I would get used to it. While I’m sure (I know, in fact) that some people have unlimited energy and work ethic, I personally can’t keep going at such an intense pace. At least not without breaks to enjoy myself in other, less intellectual ways.

We often forget about the health benefits of the arts, although art therapy is a widely-used strategy in mental health settings. At a 2003 seminar of the Institute for Public Policy Research, Mike White discussed the importance of the arts. He noted some important related findings:

An arts in health questionnaire survey carried out by the Health Education Authority
in 1998 produced 90 responses from arts organisations, an ‘overwhelming’ number of
which identified improvement of mental health. There was observational evidence of
participants achieving stress reduction (53% of projects), therapeutic benefit (57%),
improved sociability (59%), and skills development (70%).

~From White, Mike (2003). ARTS IN MENTAL HEALTH FOR SOCIAL INCLUSION– A Discussion Paper. Mental Health and the Arts IPPR Seminar, London.

After some deep thought about my own mental health, I have realized that I won’t become an effective Psychologist without taking care of myself first. While at first it seemed trivial, I bought a sketchbook and some colored pencils, and started to spend time in the evenings drawing. I’m going to yoga or the gym a couple times a week too. Nothing too crazy, but it’s making all the difference. In the end, it makes my hours devoted to work more efficient and reminds me that there’s more to life than schoolwork.

For most students and young professionals with so many responsibilities weighing us down, it’s difficult to remember to prioritize our own well-being, but vital to our success in life. Ultimately, we can either be exhausted and too stressed to function effectively in our careers, or instead sacrifice a few hours a week to partake in some creative outlet. The latter option will make us physically and mentally healthier and more content overall.

If you, like me, are getting sucked into the American workaholic frenzy, I suggest you give some hobbies a try. They might improve more than just your drawing skills.

Shayna Skelley Main Career Development, Employment, Mental Health

"Good parents are percistant and show understandment."

My classwork in college usually consisted of essays and big research papers, with our professors expecting us to use critical thinking skills to analyze the world around us. Often you hear that a liberal arts degree mostly just teaches you to think critically. But in TAing a class this semester at Arizona State, I’ve come to realize that skills such as these are not necessarily the norm at a big state school.

The class I TA is an upper-level, advanced Psychology course which is offered only to Juniors and Seniors. The prerequisites include your typical classes like Psych 101 and Research Methods. Most of my students are Psychology majors. And yet many cannot write complete, coherent sentences. In fact, in a short-answer question on our first exam, two–count ‘em, two– people out of 42 described the ideal parent to demonstrate good “understandment”. The second time I saw it I actually started to doubt myself and looked it up to see if it was a new word recently added to the English language. Nope. The only place it’s listed is on urbandictionary.com.

While my graduate program, like most graduate programs at ASU,  is well-known and highly respected, there is something very troubling with the undergraduate system here. Everyone here knows it… in fact, many of my professors crack jokes about the incapabilities of the undergrads.

How did a big research institution like ASU become so polarized? Who’s to blame? In a public university setting, there’s plenty to go around. First, Arizona as a state mandates that the public universities be available to nearly everyone in the community, with very few requirements or limitations. Second, it requires them to be “as close to free as possible”. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that many of the people who ASU caters to should not receive an education. I’m saying that there are community colleges here that should be the catch-all for the students who don’t belong in a four-year college.

Another roadblock to raising the educational quality here is… you guessed it… funding. The new governor of Arizona has decided that the economic crisis can be solved through cutting education funding– effective immediately. A huge chunk of this fiscal year’s budget was stolen out from under the university. As a result, all faculty and staff are required to take at least 10 days of unpaid furloughs from work. That means that even my mentor has to take off 10 days this semester and not work on the grants, papers, and other projects that need to happen. An entire polytechnic campus of ASU will be closed and several programs will be entirely completely shut down starting next year. Not only will many students lose the resources to get an education in their home state, thousands of faculty and staff will be jobless.  To top it all off, the legislators of Arizona are resisting the stimulus package funding we so desperately need. It seems like education is one of the worst places to “cut the fat”.

As a result, it is only expected that classes will continue to increase beyond the current 400-person introductory undergrad class (seriously, it’s 400 people). There’s no way anyone can expect to recieve the attention and feedback required to cultivate writing and critical thinking skills. Given the lack of training, we can’t penalize students for their poor writing. So we end up easing up on the way we grade them to allow most of them to continue and graduate without being able to write a thoughtful sentence. Honestly, it makes me feel a little dirty to be a part of it. And meanwhile, I sit in my 5-person classes with top-notch professors and stipend, feeling guilty for the education I’m receiving here. What is there to do? We’ll just blame the undergraduates, I guess. Can’t wait to read those 15 page drafts that are due in a few weeks.

Shayna Skelley Main Economy, Education, Writing