I have four more classes left in the year, and all four of those are just review sessions. Of course, since it's the end of the year, things are due, and there's some stress going along with it. Stress and happiness.
I only took developmental psychology this year because I was looking for any course that was still open and fit into my schedule. I was even looking at physics (yikes!). However, I am so so immensely happy that I took it. Everyone should take this course. Every parent, (moms and dads), educator, administrator, anyone, should take a developmental course. Not only do you appreciate what kids/babies you know are going through, you appreciate your own development, and how things influenced you. It's really fun!
We've been doing adolescence the last couple of weeks, and just listening to lectures about all the stressors and awkwardness and stuff, has made me feel more stressed and awkward.
So, there was a huge snowstorm Saturday night, and I drove back to Antigonish Sunday after church. Church?! Me?! Together? Shocking, I know. Anyways, the roads started out looking okay near Saint John. The closer I got to Nova Scotia, though, the worse the roads were. I passed a semi overturned between the two directions of traffic, with a backhoe attempting to push it back up the slope on its side, and a full mile of traffic at a dead stop behind it (a full mile of cars is pretty hard to get around here). Happy that I wasn't going in that direction, I was just at the Nova Scotia border (right under the Nova Scotia and New Brunswick flags), when I stopped for a crash/accident/sliding of many cars. Bright side: I was the second car stopped, so I had an excellent view of everything happening. Second bright side: Because I was stopped, and saw what happened to the other cars, I myself did not slide off the road. Thing Making Me Not a Bad Person For Enjoying Watching: I really don't think anyone was hurt. There were three cars, but I think they all went off the road at separate times, and just thudded into huge snow banks. Why, you may ask, did this happen. Mostly, the roads were okay. What made them dangerous was their unpredictability. One second, you could be driving along a nice, dry section of road with good visibility, the next second, you're blinded by snow, no visibility, nothing but hard, packed snow on the road, because snow gusting presents serious difficulties with the roads. For intermittent sections, the road might as well have not been plowed at all. There were nine more cars off the road in the Halifax direction. Everyone was being told not to drive unless there was an emergency. By the time I realized this, I was already halfway to my destination. Besides, I needed to be here to work on my group project! Anyways, I'm safe, aren't you all relieved.
While talking about possible causes of aggression, and obedience to authority sometimes as an explanation, the Milgram shock experiments and Zimbardo prison study of course came up. While watching a movie on this, though, a modern, real-life example of obedience to authority was shown from the media. And I was shocked. Perhaps you guys have heard of this. The specific case I was told about, was that someone saying he was a police officer called a McDonald's, asked to speak to the assistant manager, told her that an employee was suspected of stealing a purse and asked the assistant manager to bring the girl into her office. Following what the "police officer" on the other end of the phone said, the assistant manager stripped her of her clothes and made her do jumping jacks naked. Since the assistant manager needed to go out to the counter to work, the police officer told her to call her fiance, and have him watch the girl. So the fiance came, and continuing to follow orders from the police officer on the other end of the phone, forced her to dance, spanked her whenever she wouldn't comply, and forced her to do some really horrible sexual things. Meanwhile, there's a security camera in the office, recording everything taking place. This lasted for over five hours, until the fiance had to leave, and the janitor was asked to come in and watch the girl. The janitor walked in, was told by the cop to describe this naked girl, said no, asked what the hell was going on, and everyone sort of realized what was happening, and the "police officer" on the other end of the phone hung up.
I won't even go into what these people were thinking, and I thought this was bad, but it turns out that this has happened over 70 times in something like thirty states, almost the same everywhere. Really horrible things happening to girls as young as 14 (the girl earlier was 18). And these people in positions of authority are sometimes so reluctant to do these things, they cry and sob as they're spanking their naked employees on the ground, but they still do it. Others are kind of sick, and won't stop, while family members eventually arrive, and have to forcefully take back their daughter/girlfriend from this person who's actually imprisoning them. Meanwhile, the person who's the focus of these attacks is young, terrified, thinks they're in trouble with the law, and locked in a room with these people.
I just couldn't believe this. If anyone's interested, here's an article that has a lot of information on the history of these calls, and a suspect they found.
So, pardon my long rambling about this horrible thing, but I was just amazed by it. Time to go work on one of my labs.
