Last night was Halloween. Taking my daughters and their friends Trick or Treating is pretty amusing. Since one of the couples from my Lab didn’t have plans, I asked if they wanted to join us in the 2-hour pillage of the neighborhood. The woman showed up as a pink fluffy unicorn and her husband (a graduate student) showed up . . . as me. This reminded me of grad student days. Even though I didn’t meet much with my advisor, I was really impacted by him. Not so much by how he did research (those days were past), but more by the way he viewed the world and the way he said things to me. Small example: When I was applying for jobs, he asked for a list of schools where I’d like to apply. When I showed up with my Top 30 list, he could have easily said, "Be realistic or “Are you smoking crack again?” Instead, he said, “Let’s cast the net wider.” A subtle choice of words, but things like this must have made a difference. Here's a case in point. A couple years after I miraculously graduated, one of my buddies visited me in New Hampshire for a long weekend. While visiting, he asked why I had replaced my broken-down grad school car with a different type that was just about as old. I said, “Because I specifically liked the way this other one looks.” He then said, “Didn’t your advisor have the exact same car in that exact same color of white.” Yes, he did. Hmmm . . . For Junior Faculty, it’s easy to develop tunnel vision that's only focused on your research. By doing so, we can overlook the legacy or long-term impact we will have on advisees, grad students, and teaching assistants. You can leave these students with a real gift, or you can leave them with a lump of coal. They may not remember the details of your theories, but they may remember how hopeful or excited you were about them or about the field. They might not remember any paper you published, but they may remember how you treated them when you were clearly distracted and stressed about something else. For Grad Students, you’ll never become the Mini-Me version of your advisor, but you might be influenced more by them than you realize. Fortunately, you can partly control this. First, you can have some control over who you have as an advisor or mentor. It might take some work to switch away from an abusive or disinterested advisor, but it can be done. Second, you can also choose what it is from those encounters that you want to focus on, repeat to others, and replay over and over in your mind. Last night was spooky Halloween. Today is saintly All Saints Day. No advisor or mentor is all spooky or all saintly. Fortunately, you can choose what you focus on. Choose carefully. You might end up with the same car they had.
All or nothing. That's the mindset that a lot of people have when it comes to a lot of things. It's either all good or all bad. It's either all wonderful or all horrible. It's either all healthy or it's all junk food. This is also what seems to sabotage a lot of our best intentions toward eating better. We think we're going to start our new health kick and eat only kale and tofu (all), but after our willpower caves in to a chocolate muffin, we throw up our hands and say, "What the Heck," and we fall off the bandwagon (nothing). Tonight is Halloween and this all or nothing thinking is at a peak. Little Twix and Snickers bars, little bags of M&Ms and Skittles. It's easy to say "What the Heck," and eat until they're gone. In one of our studies we analyzed weight gain and showed for Americans it steadily starts rising from about now until January. Here's something you can do tonight. Put a bowl of fruit out on your counter as an antidote to the candy that will be probably be sitting there for the next week. It least the candy will have some competition. It seems to be working for the police.  As a researcher, I am very sorry for any mistakes I have made in my papers. I apologize about how they negatively reflected on my colleagues, my wonderful school, and on social science research in general.
This is a time when it’s important for me to listen and reflect upon how I can make amends. It’s always been my hope that my research make people healthier and happier. I want to find a way to support and further the work of the next generation of scientists. If there are concerns or other ideas you have and if you would want to talk one-to-one, I’d be interested in hearing from you. Can you trick yourself into eating better? You can easily set up your kitchen (and some habits) that lead to eat better or less. But since you will know what’s going on, you won’t have to feel tricked. Quartz used this catchy title for a catchy story on my Cornell Food and Brand Lab colleague, Aner Tal. It’s about 3 minutes long and has a lot of eye-opening tips and insights. What’s unusual is how Aner describes why these work in a suave James Bond style and how Quartz cleverly illustrates them. Too cool for school.  Here’s some of what they mentioned:
1. Use lighter plates 2. Use smaller plates 3. Cut your food into pieces 4. Don’t watch TV when you eat 5. No scary movies 6. Don’t shop when you’re hungry 7. Deprivation always backfires Some of these might sound pretty basic, but it’s Aner's description of how they work and Quartz's funny illustrations that really make them pop. Aner flew out to visit me from Israel this past week, and we were talking about how people react after they hear about some of these discoveries. Some people hear about suggestions like these and say to themselves “That would never happen to me,” so they don’t try to do anything different, and nothing changes in their life. Other people say to themselves, “Yeah, that makes sense” but they never do it, so, again, nothing changes in their life. No one is going to hear about 7 discoveries and make 7 changes in their life. It’s too much. But you can make 1 or 2 of them. After they become habits, you can always come back to the table for another course. |
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