A Curious Girl: Psychology and the Values Conference

When my psychology investigation is over, I am never going to listen to Rage Against the Machine again.

Anyone who knows me and knows RATM, is probably asking 'Why do you listen to them?' Very good question. They did some of the music for The Matrix, and I liked it so I bought an album. Haven't listened to it in ages - buried it somewhere in my room. It even has a sticker on it saying 'Smile God loves you' because whenever I did listen to it I was frustrated or else Stephen was playing Britney Spears. Now besides the lyrics that I could just overlook then (figured I'd ignore them), there is also the fact that the music, though enticingly headbangingish (I have made up a word!) is very harsh. And I was playing it deliberately to induce stress in my participants. It worked quite well, but not nearly as well as it worked for me. We had a values conference today to discuss values we share, values we ought to share etc., and I was doing the presentation for my group to half of the year. As this helpful webpage points out, you can't do something properly with too much (or too little) stress (or arousal), and once you've 'toppled over' that point, you have to get yourself back to optimum stress (arousal) levels from scratch, practically. Which is why during my presentation I could hardly say a word properly. Any suggestions to the vile torture I could subject my RATM album to? I'm thinking of smashing it several times with a mallet and burning the lyrics booklet. It really is horrible stuff.

The day went quite well, however, and towards the end my presentation became a little more intelligible, and I even heard some whistles at the back when everyone clapped me. I like it when people do that, it makes me feel encouraged - that they care enough to to make it sound like I was really good even when we all know I wasn't! My group said it came out all right. I guess I'd agree that it did, in the end.

12D produced the most - three spider diagrams on the applications of values, another and some blurb on the meaning of values, and Lee's rather long Statement of Values which produced huge laughs when he presented it on the OHP. Mainly because they'd already spent ages on presentation. We, by contrast, had four lines on acetate, but Dr. A II defended us, as he and Mrs. Smith had been discussing it with us.

Lee's talk was really good - not saying that the others weren't, it's just that he, very bravely, confronted the issue of relationships, and more specifically, sex. Obviously, I didn't agree with him totally, (being rather stricter in belief) but he said all good stuff - that sex isn't just for pleasure and reproduction, it's also about love; it's not enough just to ensure that you don't get pregnant or a disease. He said that schools should be promoting love in relationships. I approve and I told him so - I once wrote a letter to the acting Head of the time on the subject, but nothing materialised. Should have pressurised more, I think, because it's all sex, sex, sex in the Sixth Form, it seems. The average age for a girl to lose her virginity is 17. One girl said that 'it's natural for us (Sixth Formers) to be in relationships', when illustrating that she believed intimacy should not be displayed in front of the rest of the school; not sure I'd agree it is natural. Conventional, certainly.

Lee, rather startlingly, is going out with Abi.

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