[Orin] Mostly Recipes

[Orin Fenix]

Okay, so I've posted this in a few places and notified a few people via PMs, but being back at school, while it's even more amazing than I remembered and I'm so incredibly happy with all my classes, has seriously cut into my free time. I don't think you'll see much of me in chat, so any plots you'd like to discuss should be PMed to me. To those I've promised threads to and to my current thread partners, I am still posting, albeit at a severely reduced rate. Expect to mostly see replies and whatnot thrown up on the weekends, rather than the weekdays because my timing there is much more flexible. Thanks for being patient!

p.s. if anyone would like to hear me go insane with happiness about my classes I am more than happy to oblige!

[Orin Fenix]

So I know that I've been scarce around here recently and I want to thank all my thread partners for their patience. I am, indeed, still a person here who will still be replying periodically. It's just gonna be much slower than usual (and as some of you might know, that's probably not the worst thing in the world). This is just an update to say that now that I've gotten through the first full week of classes I have a much better idea of when I'm gonna have time to write and when I'm going to disappear into the black hole of academia. So hopefully you'll see a bit more of me moving forward. Excited to see you all around!

Another note is that unless I've already promised you a thread (via PM, I forget if it happens in chat), I don't think I'll be taking on any more until the ones I have conclude. At least for the time being. Those I have discussed threads with, even in a "ooo I want to thread with you" way, should still expect to hear from me though. And I'm not gonna have much time for anything other than replies (such as grading or development), although that's entirely dependent on how well I'm handling the work load. Thanks again all!

[Orin Fenix]

Beware, A Rant is Below! Enter at your own risk

So, as some of you might know I am a psychology major, assuming I actually complete my degree of course. And I really love psych. Probably because I've always been slightly fascinated with the human brain, what makes people tick you might say. Beyond that as someone who has come up against quite a bit of both developmental disorders and mental illness, it seems like a fitting subject for me to study. Also, as someone who wants to go into management in a field that has more than its fair share of personalities it seems like a useful skill set to have. And most of the readings I do make me quite happy in terms of the subject matter and the experiments and the findings.

BUT! This week has been absolutely insane in terms of the academics. To start with I had a forty page reading on the behavioral economics behind poverty and the potential psychological effects of poverty alleviation. Which is obviously an incredibly important issue and I can totally get behind it. But when your findings are things like "people were less stressed" and "their consumption went up" I have to question the point of the study. Especially when you wrap what are actually fairly simple discoveries up in the most complicated and convoluted language you can find.

A side note here on jargon: psychologists are terrible about it. I swear that sometimes I read reports that are clearly trying to increase their credibility by the inclusion of the most difficult vocabulary they can find. I'm almost convinced that because we're barely a science (and that's a topic I am more than happy to talk about, because in so many ways we are NOT scientific) we use jargon to obscure this issue. It's annoying, and it makes me feel terrible for anyone who isn't used to reading psych studies. I'm okay with technical language in other fields such as physics, engineering, biology, chemistry, medicine etc., because they actually are highly specialized and difficult fields that need the added classification. But psychologists just seem to be trying too hard in my honest opinion.

On a similar tangent, psychologists either do not understand statistics or deliberately choose interpretations that are BARELY supported by the data because they go in with preconceived notions and refuse to accept a change. You can't say that you did an experiment with approximately ten undergraduate students at an American university and use it to generalize to the entire population of the world. That is just NOT how representativeness of sample works folks! Another huge issue is what's called publication bias, which is that studies that do not prove their hypothesis aren't published because who wants to publish a study that finds, for instance, that men and women are fundamentally the same in most categories. That's just sooooo boring right? Wrong. All these combined means that we give far too much weight to studies that have tiny effect sizes and ignore studies that might actually do some good in the world. And then the media picks up the studies, runs with them, not realizing because we've disguised it with our essentially meaningless statistics.

You also shouldn't create experimental designs that will create self-fulfilling prophecies, but hey, how else are researchers supposed to make a living? Also just saying NEUROSCIENCE and throwing some brain scans on doesn't mean your study is valid, although almost all untrained observers will inevitably give more weight to studies that do include some of that even if it has absolutely nothing to do with the study at hand. And if you're a writer who knows that, it's kind of underhanded to throw it at people in the hopes of making your findings look more valid.

Some of you might have heard the phrase psychology is WEIRD. Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that until you start saying that studies done with tiny amounts of college students have profound impacts on the entire field of psychology. Because that's small-minded and completely against what psychologists should stand for if we wanted to be true scientists.

Anyway. Rant over. This was triggered by a specific reading so I should get back to it. If you actually read it, thanks for listening I suppose.

[Ball]

Cook I read about a third of it... i kept getting distracted by the sandwiches...

[Revali]

I'm currently taking an introductory psychology class, and I am very much enjoying it. The teacher is beilliant, and she has brought up many of these same issues to discuss with us (BBias in studies, misrepresentation of results, etc).

She actually had us conduct a study that she designed, and asked us to write a hypothesis as a class. She managed to convince us to write a hypothesis which she knew would be incorrect, just to see how many students would report the results as though it did work. There were far too many kids who reported fake and skewed information, just because they thought that they would be reprimanded if their original hypothesis was disproved.

Anyway, just thought it was interesting. I enjoyed your rant.

[Nivel]

I enjoy your rants and the pictures of sandwiches keep them coming
Also I wouldn't mind hearing you gush about your courses.

[Orin Fenix]

Hi all. I owe many of you (some more than others) a pretty major apology. I did that really annoying thing where instead of recognizing that I was overcommitted and telling you all I'd be taking time off I just kind of poofed. It's unfair to you and it's unfair to me and it's something I'm really trying to work on as a person. I'm not sure if I'm actually coming back but I thought I'd let those of you who might remember me know what happened.

If you want to know a bit more about my circumstances, read on. If not, stop here. I don't know how much you all know, but last academic year (about a year and a half ago in real time) I had to take some time off because of some major depression. It was during this year off that I discovered not only Mizahar, but rediscovered my love for creative writing. It had gotten lost somewhere along the way with my happiness. I kind of threw myself into the thick of things here because I had the time and I needed an outlet for all the emotions I was feeling that I couldn't really get anywhere else. And I think Mizahar helped a lot with the healing process. Then, however, the return to school happened, and I threw myself into both my academic and extracurricular work with the same abandon I gave to Mizahar. Unfortunately, there simply aren't enough hours in the day for that. So inevitably something had to give. Since I was frankly terrified of messing up my academics again, that ended up being Mizahar.

Thankfully I'm in a much healthier and happier place than I have been in the past. I got a successful semester under my belt and I've found a new group of friends here that've really welcomed me. I'm still probably overcommitted, but I've also gotten the urge to be creative again and Mizahar seems like the perfect place for that. So I'm going to try coming back in a limited capacity and see what happens. Hopefully those of you who I left hanging with threads can forgive me, and if there's any way I can make it up to you, please let me know.

[Sayana]

I'm glad to hear that life is feeling much better for you. =) it's great to see you around again. Don't worry about any of our threads. I already have them wrapped up. =)

[Pulren Marsh]

I kept the GST in case you returned and felt like it. Circumstances IC are different but it doesn't affect that time or thread. Glad you are feeling better over anything else. Come back if you want. We're all here, doing our thang.

[Orin Fenix]

Remember when I poofed and then came back and then poofed again? Yeah, that really wasn't well done of me. In all honesty, I thought I'd have more time than I ended up having in my life and school just kind of took over, as it is won't to do sometimes. I'm hoping to be smarter about it this time. I'm hoping not to try and bite off more than I can chew, to keep my commitments, both on this site and off it, to a minimum. So that means I'll probably have to make a few changes from how I was doing things before.

Frankly, I'm back because I like writing. I didn't think I would like writing as much as I ended up liking it, but it's an amazing outlet for me, and so I'd like to keep it in my life as much as possible. I like stories, I like characters, I like fantasy, and this place has an amazing combination of all three. I like the chance to see a world get explored, to be surprised by it, to be satisfied that my place in it seems to make sense.

That being said, I'm here for me, mostly, because I think it's fun and because I get enjoyment out of it, and while there are threads and plots that I would love to run with others I know where I'd like Orin's story to go, for now at least, and I don't know if I'll be able to plot with someone if I don't think I or he is going to get anything out of it. That's just the way it is right now and it might change, but I don't really have the energy for more than that right now. If it happens that our plotlines converge, great, fantastic, but I'm not going to go out of my way to make it happen.

I'll say hello in chat and answer PMs obviously, but I'm trying to keep myself from disappearing again and I think this is the way it's going to have to be. A big part of the reason I ended leaving before was because a lot of people abandoned me and I was doing the plot more for them than for me, and that just wasn't sustainable. So now, I'm putting my plots first, because if I don't, and life gets tough and busy again, as it is won't to do, this place isn't necessarily going to be meaningful enough to stay. And I want it to be.

So, again, apologies to those I ended up leaving in the lurch regarding plots because I've been there and it's not a good feeling. Hopefully you'll trust me when I say that life happened, I didn't necessarily handle it in the best way, and I'm hoping that this time around I'll do better.