by Chris on March 7, 2012
I’ve been such a slacker with writing blog entries that it’s shameful. Luckily I had some inspiration to write this afternoon. I’ve recently decided to change my specialization at school from educational psychology to health psychology, and I’m excited about it since health psych fits my interests so much better. Two years ago when choosing my specialization I was unsure of where to go with my doctorate aside from eventually teaching and doing research. Now I’ve been learning on my own about how to improve my own health (as well as the mind/body impact of health) for over a year and this change is long overdue.
Since I’ve been putting together my thoughts for the beginning of the quarter and my second health psych class (last quarter I took Behavioral Nutrition which was fantastic) I thought I’d share my definition of health and what it means to me on a personal and academic level. Living in Colorado lends itself to thinking about being healthy since on the whole, the people here tend to engage in physical activity due to the great weather and recreational opportunities. I’m acutely aware of being overweight and am excited about meeting my initial weight goals within the next several months. I always seem to be the fattest person among parents at my son’s school or almost anywhere in our area and it sucks.
Health is so basic to our everyday quality of life that we know if we have it or if we don’t. I look at health with a biopsychosocial approach since I believe that it’s rooted in every facet of our lives, from the biological/genetic influences and factors, our mental health and feelings, our social environment and how we relate to others, to our environment including where we live and the stressors we experience. I’ve personally struggled with mental health issues for most of my life, which have caused physical problems and have impacted every aspect of how I experience relationships, nutrition, work, school, being a wife and parent, sleep, and more.
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by Chris on October 4, 2011
I’ve always been more comfortable writing nonfiction than fiction. I think that the issue is fear of having people criticize work that I’ve made up. The only attempts I’ve made at nonfiction are poetry (as an angsty teenager) and playwriting. I loved writing plays, and since it was during college, other students acted out my scenes. It’s great fun to watch people act out something you’ve written. Sadly, despite being very cool, it didn’t seem like something that could sustain me financially. Writing original stories, or a fictional book, seemed crazy. What if people hated it? Could I handle that rejection?
I create stories in my head constantly. Why not put them down on paper? I’m finally working on writing fiction, and it’s more fun that I’d expected. It’s a pleasant change from the academic writing I work on several days per week, and I can already see progress. Part of the process for me is working on improving my craft and reading about writing. For months I’ve struggled with forcing myself to write blog entries, and apparently what I needed to do in order to gain motivation was get outside of my comfort zone.
I’ll be honest; I’m not working on a great masterpiece. In fact, I’ve started out by writing Harry Potter fan fiction, which I can’t make money on and will go nowhere other than possibly making people who love fan fiction happy. However, I can post it on fan fiction websites and get feedback, which I love. It’s fun to have instant gratification from people about my story. It’s different than a professor’s comments about a paper I write for school. It’s nice to hear when I’ve done a good job on a paper, because the papers are usually technical and take a great deal of research. But I’ve been writing academic papers for so long it’s hardly a challenge anymore.
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by Chris on September 11, 2011
As I think about 9/11, I remember where I was that morning – with Jason on a United flight bound for San Francisco. Here’s an excerpt from Magical Shrinking about our experience:
On September 11, 2001, we have an early flight out of Baltimore, and I’m tired. I nap on the plane, and a couple hours into our flight I wake up to the captain talking about terrorist activity. He says he’s landing the plane in Lincoln, Nebraska.
I’m groggy and it doesn’t make any sense. I look out the window and we’re close to landing. I can’t imagine what could have happened in America that would cause our flight to land. There’s a buzz on the plane, and the minute we land people are on their cell phones trying to find out what happened.
Once deplaned, we aren’t sure what to do. We doubt it’ll be very long before we’re allowed to get back on the plane. I walk toward the front of the terminal to go outside for a cigarette and pass a television with an image of a World Trade Center tower collapsing. I stand there for a moment in disbelief. Surely I didn’t see that correctly. I call my grandmother. She tells me the events of the morning. The World Trade towers have collapsed, a plane has hit the Pentagon, something about another plane. I’m too overwhelmed with information.
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by Chris on September 10, 2011
Please assist me in my dissertation work by taking this short survey! It is completely confidential so please feel free to answer honestly. If you have any questions, please email me at chris(at)christianewells.com.
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Thank you for your time!
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by Chris on August 14, 2011
Please assist me in my dissertation work by taking this short survey! It is completely confidential so please feel free to answer honestly. If you have any questions, please email me at chris(at)christianewells.com.
If the survey did not automatically load on this page, please click here for access.
Thank you for your time!
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