Today's work?

I spent most of today reading articles and making notes. Though I may have a high level of cognition (a word I use after hours of reading psychology and sociology articles) , I feel I have a low literacy level of putting my thoughts on paper (on computer screen?) and writing them down coherently. I feel I should have been at this stage two or three weeks ago, rather than now. This may be expected -- it's been many years since I was last at university. I'm learning there's a lot more to learn, that I have far to go, not that I didn't know that. But this is where I am now.

Reading Steele's book Whistling Vivaldi I was most impressed with his experiments on stereotype threat and anxiety at Stanford. Reframing a potential stressful interracial interaction as a learning situation lessened stereotype threat. Or, participants became less anxious when an exercise on race relations was presented as an opportunity for learning rather than as a examination. So see this assignment as a learning exercise. Whether or not I pass or decide to go on to further study I will have learned skills that I can apply to my volunteer counseling and library work as well as to living generally.

During a break from assignment preparation, I read the chapter in Nystul's book on Classical Theories. I've read works and articles about Freud and Jung, but wasn't familiar with Adler. ; from Nystul's description Adler's work has influenced a number of counseling theories -- STEP, strengths, positive psychology to name a few. I'm interested in reading more about his theories. Note to myself : After the paper is finished, look for an introductory book on Adlerian psychology.