In my fourth year/graduate seminar on Thursday, the professor ruminated on an interesting human behavioral psychology phenomenon. With the Olympics having taken place recently, it's obviously something that's been on everyone's mind. But in any case, as we were speaking about [social science research] methodologies and how some decisions and constraints are, at the core of it, arbitrarily chosen, she brought up the point that it's a human construct that we have three medal places. Way back, it used to be only gold and silver. Later on, bronze was added in. And stemming from that, to place in the top three is to medal - to come fourth suddenly seems like a significant difference.

And even more interestingly - as a result of this - people who win bronze tend to be happier than people who win silver. Because those who come second almost came first, so it's a bittersweet mix of being proud of the accomplishment, and disappointed at being so close. But for those who get bronze, it's yay, placed!

Some interesting thoughts. Anyway. Not that this is entirely align-able, but February is the second month of the year, and this one has been very rough, to say the least. But there's no point in letting what can't be controlled create a pervasive negative influence, and focus instead on making that which can be controlled as positive as possible.

As always, tomorrow's a new day.

*Photo of a sticky note found in a bathroom stall on campus. Cute.