Study Tour: Day One (Thursday)

I am back and have so much to share! From the moment that my class loaded onto the bus Thursday at 7am, we were a united community, and through our experiences over the next three days we bonded more than I ever thought possible. We had fun, saw many new parts of Denmark, and witnessed (and were a part of) really cool applications of positive psychology! With all that I have to say and show, I figured that perhaps the best way to do this would be to do one post for each day of our trip. So here we go:

Highlights Day One: Torsdag (Thursday)
I woke up at 5:15am and it was pitch black outside (and remained so until well after we loaded the bus and were on our way). I ate breakfast, threw some of my last minute items into my small suitcase, and headed off into the darkness, excited and ready to go.

The commute to CPH was kind of strange; my walk from the station to Flue Plads (where we were to meet our bus) felt like it was taking place at about 2 or 3am (both because I was traveling in total darkness and because I was exhausted). At 7:15am sharp, my class filed onto the bus and one of our two chaperones, Louise (pronounced Louisa) took role. We had a giant charter bus and only 24 students so each of us got our own row of two seats (perfect for sleeping, which every one of us took advantage of). The fact that we all had our own private space to relax and take some personal time during the commute between activities was actually very nice. Somehow as we pulled out of the parking lot, I already felt closer to my classmates.

Photo opp!!! (with Joanna, Julian, and Evan)

I slept soundly until Louise got on the loudspeaker to tell us that we were about to cross this famous bridge that connects Zealand (the island where Copenhagen is located) to Funen (the middle island). We all looked out our windows to see the much anticipated engineering feat and were wildly disappointed. It really just looked like a plain bridge (but don't tell the Danes; they are apparently very proud of it). Louise told us that we were taking a pitt stop where there would be a photo opp, but when we filed off the bus we found ourselves in a parking lot with a Dominos pizzeria and some billboards!

Evan found a playground behind Dominons

We arrived in Odense, our first destination, and walked from the bus to one of the buildings of the University College Lilebaelt, the site of our first two lectures. We talked with a woman who works as an academic coach and runs workshops with high school students to help boost motivation and help them to gain a deeper understanding of the necessary steps to thrive.

A lot of her work has to do with helping students to identify their passions, potentials, and goals. She made the interesting point that so often in education students are expected to arrive with strong motivation, a clear idea of the importance/application of their work to their futures, and self discipline. If they don't have these things then they are left behind. Her work helps students to develop these pre-study skills.

We also did an interactive goal setting exercise and worked with partners to identify a personal goal and break it down into manageable steps. One of the most interesting things that we talked about was the importance of framing a goal in a positive way. The example that she gave was that if you are wanting to change your eating habits and you say to yourself, "I will not eat cake this week," your mind only hears "eat" and "cake," which makes abstaining from eating it much more difficult (it's like that exercise where you say to yourself, "Don't think about an elephant," and so of course all you can see in your mind is an elephant). Instead, she said that you should frame your goal in terms of what you DO want to do. It is much easier for your mind to focus on doing something than to focus on not doing something. For example, "I will eat five carrots at 11am and then have an apple in the late afternoon." This whole idea makes a lot of sense to me, and it was fun to practice with a partner.

One of the main streets in Odense

After the workshop we were free to explore Odense over a lunch break. I hung out with some new people including Ilana (who had been my partner), Megan, Christie, Hannah, Rosie, and Evan, and after eating we went exploring the town in search of Hans Christian Andersen's house. The city was GORGEOUS, just absolutely beautiful, and we had a blast walking around. I took about 50 pictures, but have selected some of my favorite ones here.

 

Approaching a neighborhood near Hans C. A.'s house

Walking the streets

Such beautiful rooftops

Cute house with bike

Ilana (unsuccessfully) trying to duck out of my photo

More beautiful windows

Peering in the window of Hans C. A.'s house (this is one of my favorite photos)

After our lunch break we went back to meet the class for our second lecture of the day. This time we heard from a sports psychologist, Rasmus Jacobsen, who works with professional athletes in Denmark. Hearing about his work and the way that he uses positive psychology principles was a very different application of course material. He made the argument that what changes from day to day in the performance of a professional athlete is not skills/talent level, but is his/her mental state (something that I hadn't really considered).
We were asked to describe what it was like when we were really "on our game" (performing optimally), and 9 of the 10 words that we came up with to describe the experience were positive feeling/emotion words (i.e. calm, confident, proud, excited, etc). We talked about how whenever people perform at their best, they are in a positive emotional state. However, not many people train to be in a positive emotional state despite the potential to help them achieve higher performance. We instead wait to be performing well to reach a positive emotional state. We did many exercises so demonstrate these points, two of which I have described below. If you aren't interested you can skip the next two paragraphs and pick up when we leave for dinner/handball. (Although I think the activities were really cool)

Exercise One: Rasmus asked us to imagine that he had a long wooden board, which he placed on the floor of the room stretching form one wall to the other. He said to imagine our task was to walk along the board from one end to the other, turn around, clap twice, and walk back. Would we view this task as easy or difficult? Of course we all said easy. Then he asked us to imagine that he took the same board, opened the window and stuck it outside stretching over the rooftops below (we were on the 4th floor). Our task would be the same: walk from one end to the other, turn around, clap twice, and walk back. Would we view this task as easy or difficult? We all emphatically said difficult, and then stopped to consider what was really different. The task still should be the same (and really isn't that difficult) , but we view the stakes as so much higher because the risk of failure caries a lot more weight when you are 4 stories about the ground. The result is that we psych ourselves out and are in fact a lot more likely to "mess up." It was an interesting introduction.

Exercise Two: Rasmus asked us to remember a time when we performed really well and another time when we performed really poorly. With a partner, one at a time, we were instructed to raise both arms straight in front of you, and to visualize one of the two scenarios (without telling your partner which one). Then, while our partner applied pressure to our arms (trying to push them down), we were supposed to think of all of the things we were telling ourselves during the time of our success or failure while also trying to resist their pressure. It was amazing! The time when I was imagining a failure and was internally telling myself that I was ruining everything, messing up, letting myself down, and was never going to be able to turn things around, I couldn't resist my partner's strength at all. However the time that I was visualizing great sucess and was saying things like, "You're doing it!" and "Keep it up!" I was much, much stronger. It made perfect sense; when I was expending energy telling myself that I was failing, I couldn't use energy to motivate myself to keep going. Super cool!

Dinnertime! 

After our lecture we loaded the bus and departed for Ikast, where we had a group dinner and then went to a handball game. At dinner I sat with more new friends and we stuffed ourselves with delicious food.

Next stop was a women's handball game! We went to see the team that Rasmus had coached last year (when they went from being in second-to-last place to being the champions). I can't tell you how hilarious/fun/exciting it was. Highlights included the game itself (of course), the creepy wolf mascot (who's costume looked like it had been in someone's basement for about 15 years), the coffee ladies who would circle the court with canisters of coffee on their backs, and making tons of positive psychology jokes. Julian and I got really, really into it, and several times I got dangerously close to hitting Hannah in the face with my noise maker, so I had to tone it down. The end of the game was SO exciting... our team won by ONE POINT in the last 45 seconds... so much cheering and fun.

Getting ready to begin the game

Julian and me making intense faces (he looks like an angry dog; I look like an old, slightly blind, angry neighbor)

Mads (our awesome prof) and the weird mascot 

New friends (Megan, Ilana, Evan, Christie, Hannah, and Me)

Handball=incredibly rough/violent and SO fun

After the game we got back on the bus and drove about 55 minutes to Skanderborg, where the hostel was located. I got very carsick as we drove, but managed to make it there without throwing up/passing out. The hostel was beautiful and unlike any that I had ever heard of/stayed at before. It was a series of cabins right on a giant lake and though we were disappointed to have arrived at 10:30pm, we knew that waking up the next morning would be beautiful.

How many DIS students does it take to make a bed?

In my cabin were three other girls who I didn't know too well. We got off the bus and Helen, Joanna, Felicia, and I were handed our room key and went off to find cabin 11. It was very small, but felt even smaller once we realized that the beds were folded up into the walls. We had brought sheets, pillow cases, and duvet covers with us and had to make our beds, but first we had to figure out how to make the beds fold out! This turned out to be a lot easier said than done. Joanna consulted an instruction manual (in Danish), Felicia and Helen tried pushing, pulling twisting and turning various parts of the framework, and I (of course!) documented the whole thing on camera! We were laughing so hard that it made being productive a bit difficult.

Luckily after about 8 minutes, they figured it out (and yes, I did make an attempt to be helpful). We had to take turns being in the room to make our beds because with four of us trying to move around in the small space nothing was getting done.

We then ran into another problem: our bathroom light wouldn't turn on. We all desperately wanted to shower, but with no light it would not have been very easy. When we told the single employee at the front desk he casually said he would come over to fix it, and 15 minutes later he did show up (to our surprise). He changed the lighbulb, but it still wouldn't work so he offerred another solution: candles (the Danes really do love their candles)! We agreed, though we weren't too sure how it would work out, and he showed up a short time later with three giant candles and a lighter. He lit them, placed them in the bathroom, thanked us and left. I can tell you that I had the most relaxing shower of my life!

We successfully set up our room! (L-R, me, Helen, and Felicia)

Helen getting ready for her shower in
the candle-lit bathroom!

The four of us had a fabulous evening together, and I laughed more than I have in a long time. We got along really well and I am hoping that we will be able to room together in London. Helen became a really good friend over the course of this trip and you will hear much more about my adventures with her in my next post about FRIDAY!...

But for now I am going to start on some homework and then go for a bike ride while it is still sunny outside. I will hopefully get one more post completed today so you will hear more soon. Love!