The Meaning of Health
In 7th grade, our science class for that year was "Health Science." A whole year of Health. It was taught by our biologoy teacher and our wellness instructor (which in most schools is simply called a "p.e. teacher"). Our wellness instructor was also the japanese teacher. A year or two later, she moved next door, by chance, and became my next door neighbor, until her husband cheated on her and they both left, to be replaced by a young couple which had to move out a couple years later because apparently the husband was selling drugs. The house is now occupied by a very friendly carpenter, and his anti-social wife and two anti-social kids.
Moving back to 7th grade, in health class. Health class was an odd mixture of general biology, anatomy, nutrition, sex-ed, althetics, social science, and psychology. Of course all of it was a bit toned down because we were in seventh grade. Overall, the purpose of the course was to teach us hormonally imbalanced kids that the changes we were experiencing were perfectly normal, and we ought to be nice to one-another, and not rape people, and not eat too much fat or sodium, and generally speaking behave like boring, politically correct, liberal preppies. Which we were.
Anyway, I find this interesting because, now that I'm a boring, politically correct, liberal preppy who's in graduate school, I find that once again, I am enrolled in essentially the same class. Except now it's called "The Psychology of Wellness." I am enjoying The Psychology of Wellness (PoW) much better than I enjoyed Health, in seventh grade, for a number of reasons. First, everything is better when you're no longer going through puberty. Second, my PoW teacher has realized that the class is out of phase with the rest of our studies (i.e. it's fluff), and she's making it easy for us: no homework.
That's right, she promised us no homework on the first day. The subtle irony of this is that none of my classes have homework. It's graduate school: it's simply expected that you'll be studying on your own. Anyway, last week, she did assign homework, and to make it up to us, she said we could have no class next week (a crafty coverup for a trip to Vegas, no doubt). Anyway, here's the punchline that all of this has been leading up to.
I've done this homework assignment already... in seventh grade.
The assignment was a handout that basically had you keep track of what you spend your time doing over the course of 3 typcial days. Then you figure out how much time you spend doing various things, like traveling, spending time with family, studying, excercizing, watching porn, etc. (adria, do you remember this?)
So I was working on it, filling out my Time Audit (as they called it), and gradually things starting seeming familiar to me. Then I realized that the font, and page layout, all seemed familiar. Then I remembered having done something very similar a long time ago. Then I realized that the handout was actually a photocopy of a page from our Heath Science textbook. Theoretically, if I had kept better track of my paperwork, I could simply hand in my 1994 version of the assignment to my PoW teacher.
The point of the Time Audit, other than to make you resentful, is to show you what aspects of your life could use more time, and what aspects are perhaps given too much. For example, if you have
"3:00pm-10:30pm -- T.V."
in your audit, then you are probably have a healthy lifestyle and are in no need of change.
The other thing the Time Audit teaches us is that before the developement of Health Science textbooks and Xerox machines, humans had no way of knowing whether or not they were healthy. This is an interesting lesson to learn in the context of studying Chinese Medicine, which arose out of a 3,000 year old tradition which is based on a balance of physical, mental and spiritual health.
I can see why our teacher wanted to give us a week off.
Moving back to 7th grade, in health class. Health class was an odd mixture of general biology, anatomy, nutrition, sex-ed, althetics, social science, and psychology. Of course all of it was a bit toned down because we were in seventh grade. Overall, the purpose of the course was to teach us hormonally imbalanced kids that the changes we were experiencing were perfectly normal, and we ought to be nice to one-another, and not rape people, and not eat too much fat or sodium, and generally speaking behave like boring, politically correct, liberal preppies. Which we were.
Anyway, I find this interesting because, now that I'm a boring, politically correct, liberal preppy who's in graduate school, I find that once again, I am enrolled in essentially the same class. Except now it's called "The Psychology of Wellness." I am enjoying The Psychology of Wellness (PoW) much better than I enjoyed Health, in seventh grade, for a number of reasons. First, everything is better when you're no longer going through puberty. Second, my PoW teacher has realized that the class is out of phase with the rest of our studies (i.e. it's fluff), and she's making it easy for us: no homework.
That's right, she promised us no homework on the first day. The subtle irony of this is that none of my classes have homework. It's graduate school: it's simply expected that you'll be studying on your own. Anyway, last week, she did assign homework, and to make it up to us, she said we could have no class next week (a crafty coverup for a trip to Vegas, no doubt). Anyway, here's the punchline that all of this has been leading up to.
I've done this homework assignment already... in seventh grade.
The assignment was a handout that basically had you keep track of what you spend your time doing over the course of 3 typcial days. Then you figure out how much time you spend doing various things, like traveling, spending time with family, studying, excercizing, watching porn, etc. (adria, do you remember this?)
So I was working on it, filling out my Time Audit (as they called it), and gradually things starting seeming familiar to me. Then I realized that the font, and page layout, all seemed familiar. Then I remembered having done something very similar a long time ago. Then I realized that the handout was actually a photocopy of a page from our Heath Science textbook. Theoretically, if I had kept better track of my paperwork, I could simply hand in my 1994 version of the assignment to my PoW teacher.
The point of the Time Audit, other than to make you resentful, is to show you what aspects of your life could use more time, and what aspects are perhaps given too much. For example, if you have
"3:00pm-10:30pm -- T.V."
in your audit, then you are probably have a healthy lifestyle and are in no need of change.
The other thing the Time Audit teaches us is that before the developement of Health Science textbooks and Xerox machines, humans had no way of knowing whether or not they were healthy. This is an interesting lesson to learn in the context of studying Chinese Medicine, which arose out of a 3,000 year old tradition which is based on a balance of physical, mental and spiritual health.
I can see why our teacher wanted to give us a week off.