As an unemployed, unoccupied person, I like to occasionally do something fun or interesting in between filling out applications forms and reading rejection letters. At the moment, my favourite thing to do is volunteering for psychology experiments, which fill the multiple purposes of filling up my time, earning me pocket change, and feeding my academic curiosity, which has been so sadly neglected since I finished my degree. I’ve always been fascinated by how the brain works (I’m carefully referring to the brain here and thus avoiding all kinds of philosophical hot topics such as dualism, functionalism and the identity theory), and while reading or watching talks online can be illuminating, being part of an experiment brings a whole new dimension to my interest.

Today I took part in an eye-tracking experiment, which involved me reading a sentence in which all but the word I was currently looking at was magnified. First of all, seeing words change size as you glance at them is very strange and distracting. As I read I was made aware of my own particular reading technique – I tend to skim sentences for meaning unless making an effort to concentrate on them, and found myself often having to go back to the beginning of the sentence having reached the end. I also had to look at a certain spot once I’d finished each sentence, and it made me aware of how quickly (yet ineffectively) my habits are formed.

The second thing which caught my interest while reading was trying to identify the purpose of the experiment – I often find myself trying to second-guess the goal of any given experiment, although my success is often entirely subjective. In this case, I decided it must have something to do with awareness – how we assimilate meaning, and how thoroughly we pay attention. But thinking about this, (as well as several random chains of thought inspired by individual words), made me quite pre-occupied, thus affecting my concentration and awareness of the task in hand. I’m never sure if this makes me a good subject or a terrible one.

At the end of the experiment I discovered the true purpose of the project was to develop on another discovery: apparently when we read a word, the speed at which we are able to identify and understand it depends upon how common the spelling is. For example: the word ‘cow’ begins with the letters ‘co-‘, which can be used to form many other words – ‘company’, ‘college’, ‘coerce’, ‘coat’, and so on. By comparison, the word ‘dwarf’ had the fairly unusual opening ‘dw’, and therefore as there are fewer possibilities as to which word it could be (‘dwindle’, dwell’ and that’s about it), it takes the brain less time to identify it. The study I was taking part in was attempting to see if making words and their openings more distinctive helped the brain to identify them more quickly – but knowing very little about psychology, I found it fascinating for what it revealed to me about my own habits, and the way my brain processes information.

In the past I’ve had brain scans and taken part in a study involving visual synchrony (based on, as far as I can tell, the premise that it is easier for native speakers of a language to identify whether someone’s speech coincides with the movements of their mouth). While sometimes the experiments themselves may be boring, I’m intrigued to see what they reveal about how my brain works – although of course, as a layman, all of my assumptions may be entirely false. Next stop, the medical labs to watch a dissection...

Spacehopper Challenge

What do you like to do at weekends? One Saturday in September, I’ll be heading north across the Forth Road Bridge – on a spacehopper.

The idea for the Spacehopper Challenge was born (as all the best ideas are) at a barbeque while we were enjoying some cocktails. My friend Gillian had recently been diagnosed with Coeliac’s Disease, and was intending on running the Edinburgh 5k to raise some money for Coeliac UK. Unfortunately, however, the race was cancelled, leaving her in the lurch, as she’d already gathered some sponsors.

She had to do something else worthy of people’s hard-earned cash, something spectacular. And so the Spacehopper Challenge was created. Gillian, our friend Jen and I will bounce across the Bridge on 19th September in aid of Coeliac UK and Cancer Research. It’ll be tough. We’re planning some pretty intense training sessions – just as soon as we can all purchase noble steeds.
And so to any kind soul who fancies making our pain and sacrifice worthwhile, we implore you, donate to our charities. Any money you donate will go towards combating cancer and Coeliac’s, and if that isn’t a good reason to bounce across the Forth Road Bridge on a spacehopper then I don’t know what is.

http://www.justgiving.com/alisonmdwilson/
http://www.justgiving.com/gillianrenilson

Mousehunt

Life as a student in Glasgow has been full of adventures and learning experiences. Life as a graduate promises to be similarly exciting - I spent my Saturday afternoon chasing a mouse around my bedroom with a pint glass, like some kind of glorified Tom and Jerry episode – and I was definitely the hapless cat figure.

I live in a flat in the Woodlands area of Glasgow – an area which, I’ve now been told, is notorious for rodent infestation. It started almost a year ago – my boyfriend at the time and I were lying in bed when we heard a strange noise. After ruling out rogue pigeons and a nearby Velcro obsessive (it seemed like a reasonable idea at the time), we came to the regrettable conclusion that we had some unwanted pets. We pulled out all the furniture, but were unable to catch a glimpse of the culprit – and indeed, over the following months, we’d occasionally hear gnawing noises coming from the walls, with the occasional odd visual manifestations of our ‘pets’ – chewed clothing, or shredded paper. But aside from these infrequent interruptions, I was largely unbothered by the mice.

At least, until one started brazenly running around my bedroom, in blatant disregard of the old ‘they’re more scared of you than you are of them’ adage. After numerous failed attempts at capturing it in a handy pint glass, I paid a visit to the local hardware shop for a more substantial weapon, coming back with two mousetraps. However, my comedy of errors was not over yet – firstly, I experienced countless moral qualms (largely unhelped by the poems of Robert Burns) about killing a defenceless mouse; albeit one running amok in my flat. I also couldn’t help remembering that those who try to catch mice generally come off worst in popular culture – Tom and Jerry, Mousehunt, possibly several other films... And secondly, when I tried to set the bloody traps I only succeeded in catching my own thumb, which hurt quite a lot and further added to my moral dilemma. I resorted to running at the mouse and shouting whenever it tried to venture into my room, and left the catching duties to my flatmates, who duly procured one small mouse in a wine glass.

There have been a couple of casualties in the battle for our flat, although I like to spring traps in some sort of militant veganist movement when the mood takes me. Rodney has been released into the wilds of Kelvingrove Park, and last time I visited his bushy abode he seemed very happy performing for all the local children. So the moral of the story is that mice are best left outside. And you can never trust an adage.

Life after graduation

Everyone keeps telling me that it’s a tough time to graduate – but the recession isn’t the biggest problem. As a new graduate, I feel I have something to prove. I don’t want to move back home with my parents and get a job in Tesco – otherwise what was the point in going to Uni at all? But I also don’t want to accept that as A Graduate, I should go for some faceless job where who I am and my personal aspirations don’t matter – where the only thing that’s important is that I have a decent degree. If I’d wanted to be manager of a supermarket, I would have started working in one after leaving school, rather than coming to University. Similarly, I don’t see how my degree in Philosophy and English Lit equips me for a job as a faceless suit at some corporation – especially not if an equivalent degree in Geography, Biology or Computing Science would have exactly the same effect.

In short, I resent the implication that simply having attended University qualifies me for a job entirely unrelated to my degree. Furthermore, I believe that University is a choice rather than an expectation for school leavers – you should go to University because you enjoy the course, or because it will somehow make you more qualified for your desired career, not just because having a degree is better than not having one. I like to think that my degree itself has been worthwhile – as well as the friends I’ve made and the experiences I’ve had along the way, it in some way brings me closer to having a job I’ll actually enjoy. Maybe my course wasn’t what you would call vocational, but I believe that the subjects I studied – and, importantly, the free time I spent working in student media – have helped to prepare me somewhat for a career as a journalist.

But now I face a tricky navigational decision – should I hold out for a job I will like, that will help me into the career path I want, or should I apply for generic jobs, in the hope that at some point I’ll be able to hop over a fence somewhere into my chosen route? Maybe I’m being too ambitious in looking to find a career, rather than a job, right now. But I don’t see any point in rushing into a job I won’t be happy in, and I guess there’s no rush to instantly find A Career – after four years living as a student, and working part-time jobs, I think I’ll manage this lifestyle for a little longer, if it means getting a job I’ll enjoy.