I received an email last night alerting me that I hadn't yet picked up a package from the office downstairs, and I needed to do so as soon as possible. I received my thermos on Friday, so I couldn't imagine what else I could have. I stopped by this morning, and the lady at the desk said there seems to be a glitch in their system, because a lot of people have been getting emails like that. At least there isn't an automatic fine or something if you don't collect your packages.
I had Literary Analysis this morning, and we talked about Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story, "The Birthmark." I swear, we always have to read the weirdest short stories in college. At first, I was excited to move on from poetry and study fiction in this class, but I haven't enjoyed it. The last part of the class will cover plays and dramas, which doesn't sound exciting, either.
I then had an hour break before Sensation and Perception, so I spent it working on my film review for Much Ado About Nothing, for my Arts class. For our essay, we're supposed to examine and cite a review for a different film in the same genre: In this case, either drama or romantic comedy would be acceptable. I searched the "reviews" section on the Chicago Tribune website and came up with a few reviews for the recent film, "Crazy Rich Asians." I haven't seen the film myself, but I'd seen enough trailers to get the gist of it. After I'd clicked on a few articles, Chicago Tribune blocked me, saying I'd reached my free limit and needed to sign up for a subscription to continue browsing. No problem. I opened an incognito browser in a new window so the site couldn't track my cookies, copied and pasted the URL of the article I'd tried to open, and wallah. No more problem. You have to try harder than that to catch me!
We began project presentations in Sensation and Perception. The kid who went today had prepared a PowerPoint on music, and had also brought his cello to do an activity. He called 8 people to the front of the room and gave them a ball to pass between them as they stood in a row. As they passed the ball, he would play the note on his cello that corresponded with what note in the scale the people in the row would be. The fourth and seventh people weren't allowed to touch the ball because their notes aren't actually in the cello's pentatonic scale, though.
After Sensation and Perception, I chose to go home for lunch instead of eating in the Marketplace. I thought I'd have an easier time focusing on my notes that way. I made some microwaveable pizzas and reviewed my notes until it was time to take my final in Consumer Behavior. Although I struggled with a question about temporal antecedence, I think I did well. It's nice to have that off my plate.
I've enjoyed this class. I learned some fascinating things about marketing, such as the time Apple Jacks secretly reduced the size of their box from 11 oz to 8.7 while still charging the same price, and that Dove and Axe are owned by the same company even though the brands portray drastically opposite messages about women, and that grocery store tiles are placed closer together at certain points in the store so your shopping cart's wheels will sound like they're going too fast as shoppers drive over the cracks in the tiles so shoppers will automatically pull back and slow down near certain items, and that 99% of all sunglasses in the entire world are actually owned by a single company called Luxottica, and (my personal favorite to eye-roll at) that around Christmas time, some toy manufacturers intentionally give toy stores a low supply of popular toys when demand is high because they know children will want the popular toys, moms will promise to buy the toys, then not be able to find the toys when they get sold out and will buy a different toy for Christmas, then the toys will "mysteriously" become available again and moms will then buy that toy in order to keep their earlier promise to their hopeful child, thus winning extra purchases for the toy store.
Just to clarify, my instructor made clear that he despised all the practices I listed above, and that he considers marketers to be some of the most devious people on the planet. When he isn't teaching class, he spends his time as a researcher trying to find ways to convince people to recycle more, by studying how often people recycle things that hold meaning to them (like papers with their school's name or country's flag, or a plastic cup with their name written on it) vs. things that don't hold meaning to them (like papers with the name of an Australian university or the flag of Eritrea, or a plastic cup with their name spelled horribly wrong). His research so far has found that people tend not to recycle "useless" things like crumpled paper or dented cans, and he's partially responsible for all the Coke ads that encourage you to recycle damaged soda cans.
Consumer Behavior was a really interesting class that fit well with my interest in psychology. It was enjoyable to take, but it's also a huge relief to be done.
Just to clarify, my instructor made clear that he despised all the practices I listed above, and that he considers marketers to be some of the most devious people on the planet. When he isn't teaching class, he spends his time as a researcher trying to find ways to convince people to recycle more, by studying how often people recycle things that hold meaning to them (like papers with their school's name or country's flag, or a plastic cup with their name written on it) vs. things that don't hold meaning to them (like papers with the name of an Australian university or the flag of Eritrea, or a plastic cup with their name spelled horribly wrong). His research so far has found that people tend not to recycle "useless" things like crumpled paper or dented cans, and he's partially responsible for all the Coke ads that encourage you to recycle damaged soda cans.
Consumer Behavior was a really interesting class that fit well with my interest in psychology. It was enjoyable to take, but it's also a huge relief to be done.
