Life Outside the Lines

So much has happened over the past week that it is hard to know where to begin! My days have been absolutely jammed packed with new experiences and adventures, and I will try to include the highlights here.

My awesome classmates

Monday: Monday's positive psychology class meeting gave me hope that my class will be able to maintain the sense of community that we developed on our Study Tour. My classmates' enthusiasm for using what we had learned (and their desire to use some of the activities/strategies during class) impressed me. I'm even more eager to see where the semester takes us. After class I practiced a presentation for my Applied Psychotherapy course, which I gave on Tuesday. I then had the opportunity to meet with Mads (awesome positive psych professor) for coffee, and ended up having one of the coolest conversations I've ever had with a professor!

If I could give a theme or title to our conversation, I would call it Life Outside the Lines (which I have made the title of this post). We considered the way that we build our world and just how tightly we have defined the paths to success. We discussed perfectionism, fulfillment, goal setting, and learning, and one of the most interesting things that we discussed was the difference between "performance goals" and "mastery goals." Basically what I took away from our talk was that performance goals are ones that we perceive will take us places because they give us status and immediate validation. Things like getting a certain grade, earning a certain title, winning a certain event/award are all performance goals. Mastery goals, on the other hand, are goals that are about building skills and broader personal development. As a society we have structured our systems (both in terms of educational/organizational system and value system) to be much more performance focused, but what gets lost when we have such a clearly defined path to success is all of the learning that takes place when the scope of your world is much larger. You may get where you wanted to go in some sense, but you've missed out on the things that makes life so exciting.

I don't have a picture for this section of my post, so I am
borrowing this one (given that the building has funky lines)
It's a stretch, I know, but it's something! 

I considered how in my own life I've always wanted to be more mastery driven, but until coming to college (for reasons I couldn't then explain), I was so focused on grades and concrete achievement that appreciating the larger picture came second. From where I stand today, I am proudly more mastery focused. Yes, grades are important because that's one of the things that I know I need to get into grad school, etc. However, first and foremost, I really do appreciate learning for the sake of learning, and learning in ways that stretch far beyond the classroom. While this is always what I have wanted to embody, I think that I was only able to do so once I had developed a greater sense of self-worth. I think that my old obsession with grades, etc. really stemmed from a desire to build some sort of confidence, though it didn't really work too well. Anyway, it was a very, very interesting conversation, and left me with a ton of things to think about (and research and journal about). While we talked I made connections between course material, personal experience, research I've done, and aspirations for the future, and I also was reminded of just how important it is to me that my abroad experience be about far more than learning in the classroom. (This is a theme you will find throughout the rest of this post).

Tuesday: Tuesday was the first day that I absolutely hated the weather. It was sleeting sideways and was freezing. There were about 2 inches of snow when I woke up, which turns out is more than enough to through the public transit system out of whack. My bus was 17 minutes late so I missed my train (but luckily JUST made it to class on time).

Evan, frantically preparing part of the meal (well, he was
calm, but I was frantic)

I had my presentation (which went reasonably well) and did some work in the afternoon. About 4:30, I met up with Evan, who was coming over to my host family's house for the evening. Since he doesn't eat meat, we offered to make the family a vegetarian dish, and they agreed (though were obviously nervous about what a meal without meat would be like). When he and I got to the store, we could only find half of the ingredients that we needed to make our dish (pasta with a ricotta sauce that basically tastes like Alfredo). We bought half of the things we needed at the first store (which was a complete zoo) and then went to a different store to find the ricotta and zucchini, but ran into a big problem... no one sells ricotta! It was already 5:30 and we needed to get home, so we found what we thought would be an adequate substitute and hoped for the best.

Of course (murphey's law) when we got to Herlev, the bus never came. We waited 23 minutes and finally arrived home at 6:40pm (!!!!). Everyone in my family was starving having just come home from their various athletic activities (horseback riding/soccer/spinning/running) so we got right to work. It was slightly chaotic and I was definitely stressed, though Evan was calm as always. Finally at 7:45 pm we sat down to taste the result... not terrible, but definitely not great. My family politely ate their way through the meal, though Helle offered me many suggestions for the future. I tried to explain the cheese situation, but I think the solution will be to make them the real dish when they come to the States this summer! ;)

Wednesday: I had no field studies this week, so I spent the first part of the day volunteering at Muhabet. Ilana (new friend from my positive psych class) texted me in the morning to see about exploring the city, so I invited her to join me. In the end, she, Evan, and I spent roughly 4 hours there helping to prepare, serve, and clean up the meal, in addition to having many conversations with the customers. Before we left, one of the staff members took us aside to tell us how wonderful we had been and just how much the customers seemed to like and connect with us! Yay! It was really nice to have them there with me and to be able to debrief about the experience afterwards.

Ilana found a blomsterskuret (plant/flower shop)

Before we headed home, we spent about an hour and a half walking around CPH. We took completely random turns and wandered through neighborhoods I never would have seen otherwise and had a truly awesome time. We found one of my new favorite spots (though I feel like I am constantly saying that!), which was especially beautiful given that the sun was setting.

We saw a dog with bright red shoes, whose fur matched its owner's hair

Rushhour in CPH=lots and lots of bikes! (also note the children on the bikes)

We walked by a school at pick-up time. SO many kids being strapped to bikes

We stumbled upon this huge lake, frozen over and glowing in the fading sunlight

We strolled along the path that circled the water and found many, many children in snowsuits! 

Lake + ducks + children + snowsuits + sunset + colors of the buildings=priceless beauty!

The birds were having quite a good time flying around and trying to elicit snacks from passers-by. Unfortunately the kids thought it was hilarious to trick them by throwing snow.

The colors of the sky

When it was finally time to head home I boarded the train and sat quietly looking out the window. Something exciting suddenly occurred to me... it was well after 5 o'clock and it was still light outside! I was finally getting to see my trip home by sunset!

I will leave you here now because I have to be getting home, but I still have a LOT more to say. I'm somewhat exhausted because of a very, very late night yesterday, but it was an experience totally in the realm of living my life outside the lines; I may not have finished my reading for today's class, but I did get to have awesome conversations with Alex and her Danish teammates over several bottles of wine and a 2am breakfast feast! More details and pictures to come later, but for now I need to be heading home... we are going to family bingo night and Mira wants to review my numbers with me before we go! To be continued....