Classical Conditioning

Eons ago, when I was taking my first General Psychology class I learned about Pavlov's dog experiment. For those of you who don't know this story allow me to condense it for you. Basically Pavlov noticed that whenever his caged dogs heard footsteps of those who feed them they began to salivate. He took this one step further and had the feeders ring a bell before giving the dogs food. After a while, they were able to remove the food and just ring a bell to trigger the salivating response.

Now when I had learned of this principle in Psychology, my mind began to wander. I started thinking of extravagant experiments I could conduct. One of them roamed my mind quite frequently. My question was what if I could condition my roommates to "go to the bathroom" by using a song that only played while they were going. It would be hard to pick out a song, and no doubt it would require lots of time and effort to follow them around; however this thought has amused me for the past couple of years. One folly to this experiment is what if I mess them up for life? If I pick a popular song that suddenly appears on the radio they will have no where to go! A law suit would be inevitable. I guess this is the main reason why I should never be a psychologist and just stick to dissecting animals.

Bless Their Heart...

Having been surrounded in "Mormon culture" for the past 3 years I have made a very astute observation. It's not uncommon to find the phrase "bless their heart" thrown around in day-to-day conversation. However, while observing this phrase's patterns I have realized that the full expression goes something like this: "Bless (insert name)'s heart, but ____________________ (start dissing them, their family,their dog, their honor, etc.). I don't know how we rationalize this bashing. I think we must think if we at least say something nice about this person I'm permitted to open a can a worms and start dishing on them.

Some examples I've construed are as follows.

1) Bless Kimmy's heart, but she cannot sing for the life of her.

2) Bless Jacob's heart, but he reeks.

3) Bless Sammy's heart, but she will never get a boyfriend.

It's a sad, sad bubble I live in.

"Go Read Job"

Not too long ago (okay perhaps half my college career ago), my roommate and I were conversing about her worst day that she had ever had in her life (very dramatic). She began by telling me how she had awoken very late one school morning in winter and realized it was about 15 minutes before her first class. She hurried and put on her dress, because she was delivering a presentation in this class, she also had to bake some cookies (that turned out looking like garbage). She sprinted to her class only to have one of her heels give out. Luckily, a guy driving by saw this and offered her a ride to her class. She arrived only a few minutes late and was able to give her presentation. She then concluded there, which kind of left me hanging cause I surely thought there had to be a death of a pet or loved one coming up (because everyone's worst day should center around DEATH). I sat there a moment confused about how this was her dreadful, terrible, utmost worst day she had ever experienced. I then told her, "go read Job." See I had learned from Doctrine and Covenants 121 that if you think your having it rough you should compare yourself to Job. D&C 121:7-10 reads,

" 7 My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment;

 8 And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high; thou shalt triumph over all thy foes.

 9 Thy friends do stand by thee, and they shall hail thee again with warm hearts and friendly hands.

 10 Thou art not yet as Job; thy friends do not contend against thee, neither charge thee with transgression, as they did Job."

Whenever you think your day is horrible just remember that Job had it worst. Just sayin'. 

Job being chastised by his "friends"