I Believe in Sex Cleavage, or Things I Learned in Graduate School

So I am way behind on this whole blogging thing. Fear not, good readers, writing more is on my winter break to-do list.

I have officially finished my first semester of my masters program in Social Work. And it feels good. Unfortunately, it has left me rather brain fried. So I'll admit I'm struggling a little to think of something Funny, Witty, Memorable, and/or Philosophical to say here.

But I'm here to assure y'all that I'm working on it. Really. If I don't write something non-academic soon I'm gonna explode.

Hey, that's a thought. Maybe I'll share Things That I Learned During This Semester:

-If you use enough of the right buzzwords, you can convince anyone that you know what you're talking about. Examples:

WRONG: The scientist believed that children sometimes act out because they did not develop a good relationship with their parents.

RIGHT: The psychobehavioral-ologist concluded that children between the ages of 18 months to 18 years sometimes exhibited anti-prosocial behavioral tendencies due to a lack of a sufficiently matured parent-child emotional modifier, also known as a Freudian scaffolding phase substage.

In the above example, the "wrong" phrase actually makes a lot more sense to the average person. But the "right" phrase sounds a heck of a lot more impressive...even though it's complete bull.

-"Sex cleavage" is an actual term in developmental psychology. And it doesn't mean what you think it means.

(Leave a comment if you want to know the definition.)

(I promise it isn't dirty at all. It's quite innocent, actually.)

-Similar to the buzzword phenomenon, when in doubt, just start ranting about The Man keeping people down. Works every time.

-APA citation guidelines are a great way to pad the length of your paper. Even with the most basic of citations, they're significantly longer than an MLA citation. For maximum results, try to get articles with ten million authors, because --- while MLA will let you get away with the bare minimum --- APA wants you to list EVERY BLESSED THING about EVERY BLESSED PERSON involved. Observe how --- with the right articles --- APA citation can stretch out your paper:

In a recent study, a research team from Lucrative University discovered that graduate students are "very whiny" (McSnooterton, Fugley, vonWeinerschnitzel, Fassbender, Jackman, Firth, Berkley, Harvardson, Patrick-Harris, & FitzMcMac, 2012, p.1999).

See? That's almost three sentences for a two word quote! Awesomeness!

-Always, always, ALWAYS check your email before going to class to make sure class is still happening. And to be safe, check every form of communication available to you: text messages, bulletin boards, Facebook, calling and harassing classmates to ask if they've heard anything, local newspapers, skywriting, smoke signals, etc. Likewise, if you find out anything, be sure to share the word with all your classmates via all the aforementioned communication venues (plus any others that I've missed). They'll be annoyed with the constant barrage of messages, yes, but not as annoyed as they would be if they showed up for class and the professor wasn't there.

-Always have money for vending machines. Always.

I'm sure there's more, but as previously mentioned...brain dead. Plus I'm pretty pooped. Today I was mostly off from work (had to do a presentation at a downtown high school) and I've spent the day doing heavy cleaning and running various errands. What happened to days off being fun? Anyone else remember that, or did I just imagine the whole thing?

Anyhoo, read the blog. Love the blog. Comment on the blog. Tell your friends about the blog.

And stay tuned!