Achievement or Punishment ?

While evaluating the various career options available to me, I have examined the option of applying for the post of Probationary Officer in Nationalised banks. Selection is based on performance in a written test followed by an interview. While the only formal requirement is a graduation degree, I have also considered pursuing a diploma in banking from Indian Institute of Banking and Finance , to gain advantage for selection in the interview ( diploma-holders are given preference for recruitment by certain nationalised banks ). One can attempt the Bank PO selection exam upto the age of 30 years.

Sounds like a good plan. A systematic method of recruitment, no major investment required, and the possibility of gaining an upper hand in the interview because of my diploma qualification in banking . And of course , the peace of mind that comes with a lifelong permanent sarkari naukri with the benefit of perks like LTC, medical benefits etc.

But wait a minute : Where will i get posted ? No, not in the swanky neighbourhoods of South Delhi or amidst the splendour and glamour of Gurgaon or Bangalore. But , in all likelihood, I would have to render my services to the nation , posted in a dusty, sleepy town in Uttar Pradesh. Common, small towns have their own charms : Simple, rustic people, lush green fieds, open skies, relatively pollution and traffic free environments. Of course, well, regular power supply would be too much to ask for. I would get rewarded for my hard work with power cuts ranging anywhere from 4 hours to 10 hours in duration, possibily even more in peak summer season. And did you mention internet or Facebook ? Nah, these are luxury items for the humble servants of the nation , who relenquish the comforts of modern life for the benefit of the aam aadmi of rural and small town india.

My life would be enriched by the constant pleasant sounds made by the generator sets , their pleasant and rejuvenating exhaust fumes. ( That is, if there are generator sets where i live ) It would be a great privelege for me to taste the sweet sweat of my body , and to have the enjoyable experience of having my sweat drip from my arms , drop by drop. I might even be inspired to write a book " Tales of my experience with heavy-duty perspiration".

Common, not all things in life require electric power to work. You can read a newspaper , provided you have an "emergency lamp ". Wait a second, what did you say, newspaper ? haha.. do you really think english newspapers are published from Gorakhpur or Sitapur ?

Now wait a minute, don't other bank officers and clerks stay pretty much in the same environments and continue doing their job without complaining too much. After all, a bank officer gets a handsome salary. Is that not compenstion enough for the tough living conditions ? But then, there's a difference between me and other officers : The other officers have families back in their hometowns, and they have to " sacrifice " worldly comforts for their wives' and kids' welfare. ( thats what my father did all his life ). But whom would i "sacrifice" for ? Being a non-believer, I would never get to experience the bliss of married life . Hence , I would have no family to sacrifice for. My stay at Sitapur would seem futile : After all, what would i do with INR 25000 in a place without regular power, shopping malls, or good restaurants ? ( Money-currency notes have no intrinsic value, they are just pieces of paper. They have value only when they can be exchanged for attractive consumer goods or services )

I would wonder whether my job selection was an achievement or a punishment .

I have been very depressed since the past 2 days. At this hour, the depression seems to have subsided. I am taking this opportunity to write about the thoughts occuring in my mind since the announcements of the "results"
I have worked very hard for the past 7 years of my life. I have worked with good , if not exceptional , dedication and with ambition and planning. But I have got nothing in return, other than frustation, depression and mental illness. These 7 miserable years have destroyed my youth, my career , my life beyond repair. For the first 3 years, my hard work went waste because of B12 deficiency and the resultant memory and cognitive decline. Thereafter, it was mental illness which made my life hell and ruined any attempts to revive my career. And now this case of fraud has destroyed the effort i had put in since last year.
All these years of putting in hard work , but getting only frustation as result, have completely sapped me of morale. I wonder if i would ever be able to gather the motivation and dedication to re-start my career. Doing goal-oriented work requires motivation and dedication, where will i find them now ?
The most frustating thought is " Wish I hadn't worked hard, then i would have not been so depressed on getting a poor ( or no ) result ...... Its better to do nothing , and expect to get nothing , than working hard but getting no result "


one part of my mind says " manu, do not give up , try something new. work hard for a new goal and you will surely succeed " , while the other part of my mind says " .. haha, even after 7 years of continous failure, you still have dreams of success... what a fool you are "

How to make friends in india?

The past 7 years of my life have been dominated by two central themes- the first phase , from 2003 to 2006 being dominated by B12 deficiency and its disastrous effects on my memory, mood and of course, academics and career. Then the second phase , from 2006 onwards dominated by mental illness - something which has destroyed whatever i had in life.
Both these central themes have one thing in common- they are taboos in this country. B12 deficiency is extremely common in india, yet few know about it. There is little awareness ,either amongst the general public or the doctors, despite its alarming prevalence. Most probably, the absurd lack of awareness of such a common disease is due to the fact that this condition is linked to vegetarianism. In a country where many communities consider eating meat a ghastly sin, awareness about any medical condition related to this religious practice would be almost nil.

Due to cognitive and memory decline , my performance in academics during the most crucial phase of my career, declined greatly, and ultimately i fell prey to the stress and humiliation of watching one's career destroyed before my very eyes . I succumbed to full-blown mental illness- depression, anxiety, OCD . This destroyed attempts to revive my career, and has left me with no choice other than joining a substandard distance education course, which , has proved to be a simple case of fraud.

I have joined social networking sites like Facebook and DailyStrength, and i have made a great number of friends there with history of mental illness, but my greatest complain has that been that hardly any of those friends are from my own country, India. Understandable , since there is almost nil awareness of mental illness in india, so there its extremely difficult to find a mentally ill person , or someone who knows a mentally ill person. I have a strong suspicion that most mentally ill people in india simply commit suicide, as the society considers their problems to be symptoms of cowardice and weakness , instead of a severe illness. Unable to bear the double burden of severe suffering and the humiliation and condemnation, most of them commit suicide, and the Indian police force would register a criminal case under IPC.( Attempting suicide is considered illegal in india )

When i had gone to my distance education psychology class, i had told my classmates that i had joined this course due to my background in mental illness. Most of them just responded with puzzled faces . It was clear that even they did not know what mental illness is. I had thought that atleast students who have come to study psychology , would know something about mental illness, but it was clear that even they wondered what on earth was mental illness .
But i have noticed something else- that when i tell my facebook friends about the reality of B12 deficiency , most of my foreign friends seem to read and respond, but indian friends do not. It seems that they are too offended by the reality that their religious customs can make people severely ill.

It seems that Indian society is extremely immature and backward even today, and continues to have taboos ,superstitions, prejudices and lack of awareness about very important and basic issues. And i have been a victim of two of these taboos one after another.....

A Primitive tendency of Indian society- Exceptionally high Conformity

I have always been amazed at the many primitive tendencies prevailing in the indian society. One very absurd primitive tendency is the exceptional level of conformity. In western societies, the word " conformity " usually means "following the trend" in such inconsequential areas like fashion, music and movie preference. But in North India, exceptionally high levels of conformity are seen even in areas of grave importance , like career selection.

When I was in Std. 12th, I was left amazed at the level of mindless conformity among my classmates on the issue of career selection. All my classmates ( science students ) wanted to become either an engineer or a doctor. As if nothing else exists in the universe. India might be requiring talent and manpower in basic sciences,journalism, and countless other fields but sorry, these are not in fashion. Every Tom, Dick , and Harry with no exception wanted to go for either of these two careers; individual tastes, capabilities and interests be damned. A few females talked of a career in fashion designing and some males thought of a career in defence forces, but thats it. I wondered why India is called the " land of diversity " when everyone wants to do the same thing !!

Whats more, I learn that most of the engineering students just want to enter one field : Computer software. Again , as if engineering skills are not required anywhere else in this country. This rat-race is regardless of the specialistion of the student. When asked why , such people say " there is lot of scope and people get " good pay packages " in IT " --- This , I must say, is an extreme example of mindless conformity - how conveniently they have have forgotten that india's software industry is basically an offshoring/outsourcing industry, and hence , is bound to have an uncertain future -- in contrast to other industries, which cater to domestic demand and hence are likely to be more stable in the future.

Back to my own story - very few students in my undergraduate chemistry class wanted to take up careers in the subject of their study, and most of those who chose to do so , did out of compulsion rather than choice. Most general graduates , who are career minded, say that they want to go for management careers. Again as if , the country only requires MBAs ,and again, failing to realise that the high pay packages of MBAs come at the cost of peace of mind- in a capitalist economy , there are bound to be recessionary phases, with layoffs and "workforce reduction" . Teaching and administrative jobs may not give the fat pay packages of management, but they do give the person peace of mind and stability.

Whats more, there is a regional aspect to this phenomenon of conformity in career selection - Most students from Bihar and adjoining areas want to enter the civil services and even boast of the " high number of Biharis in the IAS " -- I am amazed at this level of conformity and collectivism. As if a person's individual interests, capablities and talents are of no importance and all that matters is what others of his ethnic/social/economic background are doing. The socioeconomic status of the student is also important, with most belonging to middle and upper class families preferring engineering, management careers while those in the economically weaker section preferring IAS and administrative vocations.

....And I thought, careers should be decided on the basis of an individual's personality, interests , intelligence and talents . What a fool , I am.

6. Memory performance boosted while walking
----------------------------------------

Psychologists usually think of attention as a limited resource. The more of it you use on one task, they say, the less you have left over for others. Supporting this, countless studies have shown that performance deteriorates under dual-task versus single-task conditions. But what if, rather than having one pool of attention to share around, we have multiple pools for fueling different types of activity. By this account, if two tasks are different enough from each other, there should be no performance decrement under dual-task conditions. That's exactly what Sabine Schaefer has shown in a new study that looks at memory performance whilst walking. In fact Schaefer's research goes further, showing that memory performance is actually superior whilst walking compared with sitting down.

Schaefer's team had 32 nine-year-olds and 32 adults (average age 25) complete the N-back working memory task in three conditions: walking on a treadmill at their own chosen speed; walking on a treadmill at a set speed chosen by the researchers; or sitting down. The N-back task requires that participants listen to a stream of numbers and indicate, in the easiest version, whenever the current number was the same as the number one back. For more difficult versions, it's a repeat of a number further back in the stream that must be spotted.

The headline finding was that the working memory performance of both age groups improved when walking at their chosen speed compared with when sitting or walking at a fixed speed set by the researchers. This was especially the case for more difficult versions of the working memory task, and was more pronounced among the children than the adults. So, this would appear to be clear case of mental performance actually being superior in a dual-task situation.

Why should the secondary task of walking aid, rather impair, mental performance? The researchers aren't sure of the mechanism, but they think the attentional pool tapped by a sensori-motor task like walking is likely separate from the attentional pool tapped by working memory. Moreover, physical activity increases arousal and activation, 'which then can be invested into the cognitive task,' they said.

What about the fact that memory performance wasn't improved when participants walked on the treadmill at a speed set by the researchers? The set walking speed was actually substantially slower than the participants' preferred speed so one possibility is that it wasn't rigorous enough to provide the increased arousal that could be beneficial to memory. Alternatively, perhaps the challenge of walking at a set speed is cognitively demanding, tapping the same attentional pool needed for the memory task.

Schaefer's team speculated that a useful application of their finding could be in relation to childhood ADHD. '...[H]yperactive children might also be able to profit from some type of consistent movement that does not require much attention, even though it is often argued that those children have more problems than healthy controls when they have to divide their attention between two concurrent tasks.'
_________________________________

competition increases cheating while not improving performance.

Does greater competition improve performance or increase cheating?
----------------------------------------

What happens when you recruit dozens of students to perform a maze-based computer task and then you ratchet up the competitive pressure? Does their performance improve or do they just cheat more?

Christiane Schwieren and Doris Weichselbaumer found out by having 33 men and 32 women at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona spend 30 minutes completing on-screen mazes. Crucially, half the students were paid according to how many mazes they completed whereas the half in the 'highly competitive' condition were only paid per maze if they were the top performer in their group of six students.

The students in the highly competitive condition narrowed their eyes, rolled up their sleeves, focused their minds and cheated. That's right, the students playing under the more competitive prize rules didn't complete any more mazes than students in the control group, they just cheated more.

To be more specific, the female students in the highly competitive condition cheated more. That is, although across both conditions there was no overall difference between men and women in the amount they cheated, only women responded to the competition intensity by cheating more. Schwieren and Weichselbaumer dug deeper into their results and actually this wasn't a gender issue. Competition increased cheating specifically among poorer performers and it just happened that the poorer performers tended to be female.

How did the researchers measure cheating? After a brief practice, the students were told to continue completing mazes on level 2 difficulty, but they could choose to break the rules by switching to an easier level. The game also gave the option of clicking a button to be guided through the maze solutions. Finally, the students could lie at the end on a score sheet about how many mazes they'd completed. Earlier the researchers had loaded a spy programme on the computers. This took a screen shot on each mouse click, thus revealing the students' true actions.

'It turns out that individuals who are less able to fulfill the assigned task do not only have a higher probability to cheat, they also cheat in more different ways,' the researchers said. 'It appears that poor performers either feel entitled to cheat in a system that does not give them any legitimate opportunities to succeed, or they engage in "face saving" activity to avoid embarrassment for their poor performance."

The links between bloggers' personalities and their use of words
----------------------------------------

You can tell a person's personality from the words they use. Neurotics have a penchant for negative words; agreeable types for words pertaining to socialising; and so on. We know this from recordings of people's speech and from brief writing tasks. Now Tal Yarkoni has extended this line of research to the blogosphere by analysing the content of 694 blogs - containing an average of 115,000 words written over an average period of about two years - and matching this with the bloggers' (predominantly female; average age 36) answers to online personality questionnaires.

Some commentators have suggested that the internet allows people to present idealised versions of themselves to the world. Contrary to that idea, Yarkoni found that bloggers' choice of words consistently related to their personality type just as has been found in past offline research.

More neurotic bloggers used more words associated with negative emotions; extravert bloggers used more words pertaining to positive emotions; high scorers on agreeableness avoided swear words and used more words related to communality; and conscientious bloggers mentioned more words with achievement connotations. These were all as expected. More of a surprise was the lack of a link between the Big Five personality factor of 'openness to experience' and word categories related to intellectual or sensory experience. Instead openness was associated with more use of prepositions, more formal language and longer words.

The sheer size of the data set at Yarkoni's disposal allowed him to look not only at links between personality factors and broad word categories (as past research has done) but to also zoom in on the usage of specific words. Among the most strong and intriguing correlations were: Neuroticism correlated with use of 'irony' and negatively correlated with 'invited'; Extraversion correlated with 'drinks' and negatively correlated with 'computer'; Openness correlated with 'ink'; Agreeableness with 'wonderful' and negatively correlated with 'porn'; and Conscientiousness correlated with 'completed' and negatively correlated with 'boring'.

'The results underscore the importance of studying the influence of personality on word use at multiple levels of analysis,' Yarkoni concluded, 'and provide a novel approach for refining existing categorical word taxonomies and identifying new and unexpected associations with personality.'
_________________________________

Yarkoni, T. (2010). Personality in 100,000 Words: A large-scale analysis of personality and word use among bloggers. Journal of Research in Personality, 44 (3), 363-373 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2010.04.001

Author weblink: http://talyarkoni.com/