Engagement

"Hyde and Jenkins (1973) found that incidental and intentional learning conditions produced equally strong memories provided that subjects in both conditions were engaging in equally deep processing."

-John Miyamoto, 2008.

Why do I care? Because it points out something of enormous importance. Seligman and Csíkszentmihály have demonstrated that engagement is *deeply* related to happiness. And Hyde and Jenkins pointed out that it doesn't matter if students *want to learn*, as long as they are engaged in the material, they *will* learn.

So why the hell do we arrange school in such a way that it's *so* deadly boring/unengaging? They can still learn if they *want* to, but ... they're not going to be as happy.

Mr. Miyamoto is doing a relatively good job of teaching some deadly boring subject matter in my congnitive psych class this quarter. So Clinical psych is too depressing, and cognitive too boring. Social psych, on the other hand, both quite fascinating and not super depressing. =)

In five weeks, I'll be done with *all* my undergrad psych courses, and I can move on the the really beautiful stuff--the mathematics. Hooray.