Different, but the Same

Today was relatively uneventful, compared to the excitement of recent days. I didn’t go anywhere except for the library, because I had a big assignment due at 9 PM. However, we did do something in class that we don’t do every day.

In class, instead of starting out with a lecture like we usually do, we went to a school on campus that houses preschool to high school during the academic year, but is currently housing a summer camp for elementary school students. We were there to write up a running record, which is basically an account of everything that happened in a certain area in chronological order, and frequency count, which is a tally of how many times a specific event occurred in the area. The class was split up into pairs and dispersed among the various classes; my partner was Lucy, and we attended first a writing workshop and then a reading class.

In the reading class, I based my running record off of what a 3rd or 4th grade girl was doing. The class members were writing plays on their laptop, and the girl was sitting by herself, so she seemed like an interesting subject to study, because I could focus more on her behavior preceding and following certain actions as opposed to her interactions with other people. Basically, when you write a running record, you’re supposed the least amount of interpretation as possible; for example, you would write, “the boy smiled,” as opposed to “the boy was happy,” because you don’t actually know if he was happy or not, but you can say that he smiled. Even better would be to say something like “the boy’s lips curled upwards and his eyes squinted gently,” but that would take way too long. Anyway, the girl would do all sorts of little things like brushing her hair out of her face or touching her nose, and I kept having to remember to write down exactly what she did, instead of writing something like “she was fidgeting.” One thing about writing in psychology that I’ve noticed is that it has to be really specific.

Another day, another library picture.

My second home.

Based on what I gathered from the girl's actions, I was able to make a few general claims after the session. It turns out that the girl would play with her hair or switch positions on where she was sitting before a question, and otherwise she would be relatively still, so I reasoned that she would show these nervous tics before asking questions.

After class, I didn’t do much but study and play basketball with George again. I feel like during school days, I’ve been spending most of my time either in the library studying or in the dining hall eating. There’s a lot of work, so I can’t go out every day, but I’m fine with that because I’m interested in the subject matter.