CPB Classic: Where the Jobs Are—and How to Get One

From September 2013:


Where the Jobs Are—and How to Get One


In which the president and founder of Express Employment Services, the fifth-largest employment agency in America, bemoans the fact that 25% of would-be workers in the U.S. can't pass a drug test. (Guess what -- legalization of marijuana isn't going to make employers want to hire you! They care that you are a pothead, not that pot is illegal.) The same fellow claims that psych, poli sci, and sociology grads are unemployable, which is actually a baseless claim. The ability to complete a four year degree in any field signals a degree of cognitive ability and conscientiousness that is vanishingly rare in the pool of job applicants.

CPB Classic: A Modest Proposal for a College Curriculum

From August, 2013


A Modest Proposal for a College Curriculum


"A "return to rigor" in the college experience is certainly in order. College graduates should differ from non-graduates in more ways than just their projected lifetime earnings, SAT scores, and high school GPAs. They should actually know things that non-grads do not, and they should behave in ways that non-grads do not. In my view, a college graduate should be readily discernible from the non-grad in his appearance, presentation, manner of speech, work habits, leisure activities, physical fitness, morals, and social relations. Graduates should be different from when they matriculated four years earlier."


Freshman Year


"The fall seminar would cover, at a minimum, Homer, Plato, Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Herodotus, and Thucydides. The spring seminar would add Aristotle, Euripedes, and Sophocles. See here to see how all these works can be read in a year."


No Latin?


"Four years of high-school Latin would dramatically arrest the decline in American education....Nothing so enriches the vocabulary, so instructs about English grammar and syntax, so creates a discipline of the mind, an elegance of expression, and serves as a gateway to the thinking and values of Western civilization as mastery of a page of Virgil or Livy (except perhaps Sophocles’s Antigone in Greek or Thucydides’ dialogue at Melos)."


What about athletics?


"Seniors will compete in Modern Penathlon, endurance running, open water swimming, and multi-day wilderness trekking."


The End Product


"How would a graduate of such a program differ from typical college graduates? This would not be a person to trifle with, a person inured to hardship and possessing extremely strong self-discipline. They can read Ancient Greek and French, paint a portrait, and ride a horse. They have extraordinary mental and physical endurance. They have mastered both elements of the liberal arts and sciences."

CPB Classic: Some poems, a song, and a couple of books

From July, 2013


Acquainted with the Night -- Robert Frost


I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.


Childhood is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies -- Edna St. Vincent Millay


Nobody that matters, that is.
Distant relatives of course
Die, whom one never has seen or has seen for an hour,
And they gave one candy in a pink-and-green stripéd bag, or a jack-knife,
And went away, and cannot really be said to have lived at all.


The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock -- T.S. Eliot


And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all."


You're the top -- Louis Armstrong (Cole Porter)


I'm a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop,
But if, baby, I'm the bottom you're the top!


Escape from Freedom -- Erich Fromm


"Fromm's thought merits the critical attention of all concerned with the human condition and its future."


Heart of Darkness -- Joseph Conrad


"Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of unextinguishable regrets."

CPB Classic: Somes Notes on Education

"The lion prefers not to listen to boring lecturers."

From June 2013, excerpts from some great books:




The Art of Teaching -- Gilbert Highet


"...even if they have been too lazy or stupid to master first-year geography they are pushed on to second-year geography to get them off the teacher's hands, and to avoid the danger of giving them a feeling of inferiority to their intelligent and hard-working classmates."


Civilization and its Discontents -- Freud


"In sending the young out into life with such a false psychological orientation, education is behaving as though one were to equip people on a Polar expedition with summer clothing and maps of the Italian Lakes."




Epictetus -- The Enchiridion


"And though you are not yet a Socrates, you ought, however, to live as one desirous of becoming a Socrates."




"I don't know why we are here..."


Excerpts from a review of a biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein: "I don't know why we are here but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves."

CPB Classic: Psychiatric Medication, Suicide, and Morality

"Now do you understand why you stay awake all night, horrified that you are wasting your life?"

An assortment of mental health related posts, from May 2013.


Nothing is funny to a psychiatrist...


In my experience, patients are often too eager to attribute positive treatment gains to pharmacological effects. The psychological effects of medication are especially clear when patients report significant improvement within a day or two after starting SSRIs, or after taking homeopathic doses of their prescribed medications, or when they say that they "only take my Wellbutrin when I'm having a bad day."


Lost in Medication


Some psychiatrists seem to be more effective than others, and their patients tend to do better whether or not the patient is receiving active or placebo medication.


The Lethality of Loneliness


This is one of the best psychology-related magazine articles that I have encountered in a long while. It is well worth reading by anyone interested in the field. The scope is remarkable: from Frieda Fromm-Reichmann to the biology of stress to evolutionary psychology to behavioral genetics to MRI studies to Romanian orphans to Harlow's and Suomi's monkeys.


More Americans die by suicide than in car crashes


"The number of deaths caused by suicide has risen precipitously in the last decade, surpassing those caused by car crashes and even some of the most fatal diseases, according to a government report released Thursday."






The moral burden of war


"Soldiers know all too well how much killing — mostly of civilians — goes on in war. Congratulations make them feel that people back home have no idea what happens when a human body encounters the machinery of war.


...the obscenity of war is not diminished when that conflict is righteous or necessary or noble. And when soldiers come home spiritually polluted by the killing that they committed, or even just witnessed, many hope that their country will share the moral responsibility of such a grave event.

Their country doesn’t."


"Finding our way through is what we are called to do."


A spiritual response to the Newtown elementary school mass murder.

CPB Classic: Clinical Psychologists and the Scientist-Practitioner Divide

"Perhaps if you participated in some research studies over at the university, I might understand you better."

From April 2013:


The Boulder Model on who should become a clinical psychologist


Who is the "right kind of person" to become a clinical psychologist? Are you more interested in people than in things? Do you read great literature?


Unspeakable, Unbearable, Horrible Truth


What good are the data drawn from empirical research studies? Maybe only clinical data matters.


WHAT'S THE QUESTION ABOUT YOUR FIELD THAT YOU DREAD BEING ASKED?


Apparently, research psychologists dread being mistaken for clinicians. Well, same to you, buddy. I hate it when I tell people that I'm a psychologist and then they instantly assume that I spend all my time conducting useless studies and publishing worthless research.


Uh-oh, I'm still annoyed by something I read on the Internet...


"Much has been said about the hazards of people practicing psychology who do not have adequate scientific training, who do not consistently demonstrate the habits of mind associated with the scientist. However, not enough is said about the converse hazard: research psychologists who know about scientific methods but who lack understanding about people, who lack what James Bugenthal (1987) called, "the normal sensitivity that all of us have in relating to others, but...carried to a greater than normal acuity" (p. 11)."


So why did you become a clinical psychologist?


Probably because, in part, I watched this episode of M*A*S*H at a tender age (most likely when I was 10). It's available on Netflix -- Season 7, The Billfold Syndrome.

CPB Classic: Suicide in the Military

From March 2013, three posts:




CAPT Peter Linnerooth, RIP [U.S. Army psychologist]


Military Suicide [The Life and Death of Clay Hunt]


Suicide in the Trenches [poem by Siegfried Sassoon]

CPB Classic: Nothing for a man to do but sit around and think

From February, 2013 [follow link]:


Nothing for a man to do but sit around and think




I had failed to include the lyrics to the song, so here they are:


"Country Death Song"

I had me a wife, I had me some daughters
I tried so hard, I never knew still waters
Nothing to eat and nothing to drink
Nothing for a man to do but sit around and think
Nothing for a man to do but sit around and think

Well, I'm a thinkin' and thinkin', till there's nothin' I ain't thunk
Breathing in the stink, till finally I stunk
It was at that time, I swear I lost my mind
I started making plans to kill my own kind
I started making plans to kill my own kind

"Come little daughter", I said to the youngest one
Put your coat on, we'll have some fun
We'll go out to mountains, the one to explore
Her face then lit up, I was standing by the door
Her face then lit up, I was standing by the door

Come little daughter, I will carry the lanterns
We'll go out tonight, we'll go to the caverns
We'll go out tonight, we'll go to the caves
Kiss your mother goodnight and remember that God saves
Kiss your mother goodnight and remember that God saves

A led her to a hole, a deep black well
I said, "Make a wish, make sure and not tell and
Close your eyes dear, and count to seven"
You know your papa loves you, good children go to Heaven
You know your papa loves you, good children go to Heaven

I gave her a push, I gave her a shove
I pushed with all my might, I pushed with all my love
I through my child into a bottomless pit
She was screaming as she fell, but I never heard her hit
She was screaming as she fell, but I never heard her hit

Gather round boys to this tale that I tell
You wanna know how to take a short trip to hell?
It's guaranteed to get your own place in hell
Just take your lovely daughter and push her in the well
Take your lovely daughter and throw her in the well

Don't speak to me of lovers, with a broken heart
You wanna know what can really tear you apart?
I'm going out to the barn, will I never stop in pain?
I'm going out to the barn, to hang myself in shame

Songwriters
GANO, GORDON

CPB Classic: So you want to be a marine biologist?

"Say, that old wine in a new bottle wasn't bad. How about some day-old whiskey?"

I am re-posting a piece from December 2013. It's pretty good, though, and didn't get as much readership as it should have. So here it goes again, out into the ether.


So you want to be a marine biologist?