brainz and burgerz.

I had an emotional breakdown in an In N Out drive thru the other night. Sometimes alcohol does that to me. I'd spent the evening drinking tequila out of a flask in an outdoor amphitheater, all the while dancing to the synthesized sounds of Passion Pit. Had I not been slightly drunk, the bazooka blasts of neon light might have been a bit overwhelming. Instead, I was mesmerized. Syncing lights to the beats of music will never cease to amaze me. Talking about beats and lights reminds me of a particular house in Eugene, Oregon that syncs their Christmas lights to a local radio station. The station plays a series of carols on loop just for them. A family fun attraction that boggles my head and leaves me speechless in my festive revelry. Computer programmers are magicians in nerd's clothing. Reminds me of a friend who has a dog that is part wolf. The other day she put a sheep hat on her. A wolf in sheep's clothing. It's the simple things in life people. Small joys to appreciate.

Brains are so weird. The connections we make are just so random. I just went from crying in line for a hamburger, to swaying drunkenly at a concert, to Christmas lights in the front yard, to dogs in costume all in a paragraph. As a part of "clearing my credential" I have to do this silly and rather menial induction program. Most people don't take it seriously. I'm trying to. My mentor is really making the experience for me. Anyway, as part of this program we get free books. And you know me, I'm all about the free books. Our latest text is called Teaching with the Brain in Mind. It's funny that they even give us the books, because three minutes after they've handed them out, they give us an hour long crash course on the main points of the book, therefore dissolving any and all desire we might have had to make the time to read the book in the first place. But anyway, in the crash course, the instructor expounded upon three main points:

• Brains change throughout our lifetime
• Our environment shapes our brain
• Change the environment, change the brain

Although they're all linked and they all seem pretty obvious, I guess I'd never really put much thought into my brain before. That sentence doesn't even make sense. Put much thought into my brain. That's all there is in there! So many thoughts. All tied to my environment. We also learned about bottom-up verse top-down processing in the brain. When we process under stress, we're typically in a bottom-up reflexive to cognitive direction of action. Therefore, we act without thinking. Normal processing is in a top-down direction...cognitive to reflexive...thinking before acting. All this makes total sense but seeing the pictures of the brain with the various parts labeled and explained really hit the "ah-ha" button in my brain. 

The two main points that hit home for me in my personal and professional life were these: 

• The 3 things children from age 0 - 3 need
• unconditional love from a consistent primary caregiver
• 10-20 hours of harmonious, reciprocal interactions
• safe, predictable, stable environments
• Exercise is proven to dramatically improve memory and the capacity for learning

The instructor made a joke in telling a story about someone getting angry with him and proceeding to yell and berate him for several minutes, all the while he was thinking "This isn't personal. I wonder what was going on in your life from 0 to 3." It shouldn't be a laughing matter but I chuckled. All the while, internally I'm thinking about what my environment must have been like from 0 - 3. Fairly certain I didn't have any of those 3 necessities listed above. In hearing those facts, I immediately began thinking about my behaviors now...which leads me to the emotional breakdown in the drive thru. Although you can change the environment and therefore change the brain, the imperativeness of the environment of those first 3 years cannot be absolved. And every once in awhile, most often when too much alcohol is involved, the voids present during those first 3 years coalesce into an embarrassing moment where the ugly face cry rears its ugly head. Then the moment passes and I laugh and make fun in hindsight, when really that force needs to be reckoned with. And so I go running.

Exercise is proven to dramatically improve memory and the capacity for learning. This point is a billboard for my job security. I'm a PE teacher. And although we fall egregiously short of meeting EdCode in the number of minutes our students spend in PE, I do still have a job, and will bring this point up if ever my job seems to be threatened. But then of course I'll be acting out of stress, in a bottom-up reflexive to cognitive thought processing pattern, and probably end up crying in line for a hamburger.

Writing is fun. I hope you enjoy my silly ponderings. 

The end.